Apparently it’s World Mental Health, a good trigger / reason to talk about mental health. Saw a poster recently that stated that 43% of adults (in Australia) will experience a mental health event at some stage in their life. My experience is that a lot fewer than that talk openly about it for a myriad of reasons.
Talking about it certainly helps. I’ve suffered from low level depression for many years and have had the occasional (thankfully quite rare for me) very severe episode. I’m fortunate to have a very good marriage and when I feel the black dog nipping at my heels will say to my wife “I’ve got a bit of mood today”. Often I’ll grab my guitar and play music and invariably feel better, often within 15 or 20 minutes.
Only a couple of weeks ago I had a much different experience with regards to music and mood and that was that music made my mood far far worse. In this case I was writing a song. This was triggered by a statistic that during our 3 times a year “state of origin” football matches, equivalent to an al start match in other countries, the incidence of domestic violence goes up 40%. Sobering stuff.
It had been on my mind for weeks after hearing that statistic and finally one morning the flow state was quite good and I was churning out lyrics telling a story of a woman worrying that her abusive husbands team might lose the game and the subsequent beating that would result. Heavy stuff for sure.
Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the song as it triggered my mood in a most unpleasant way. Hence my statement that for a change music worsened my mood rather than improving it.
If / when you suffer from mental health issues, I encourage you to open your mouth and talk about it to trusted friends / loved ones. it does help.
Well said Toni, I think any forum or community whether it be guitars football, woodwork, or anything at all that one subject brings people together in a group like ours, Justins is a large community and while we focus on our guitar and music its nice to see or read some life facts and help on a different subject, just like the other day the post, Guitar through natural disaster, one of our own in a bad place but we as a community responded it helps people we read help and return to our group our music. But posts like this could help one or two or more people out of hundreds and help them on their way so it’s nice to read and share, After all, we are one big family in this community so again well said HEC
The only bad side of music I see is the frustration of learning your instrument(s); it’s easy to get grumpy and thinking “is it worth it” - short answer, 100% absolutely!
The good side, when you’ve learned enough to make reasonable music the world is your oyster!
I’ve mentioned this on other threads but for years I struggled with perfectionism and it meant that learning an instrument was a non-starter. Over the past few years I’ve learned to let go of this mindset, I’ve learned to be more forgiving of myself (like I would be with others) and I’ve learned to enjoy the journey (which previously I’d have said was such a cliche).
The frustration, believe it or not, is a choice you make and you can choose to let go of it. I’ve accepted I’m never going to be some amazing guitarist and to get even being reasonable is going to take quite a long time and this really helps. I now don’t have unrealistic expectations so all progress is good progress. If you don’t get frustrated then you enjoy playing and you get better. I know it sounds too simple but it’s all just mindset.
And to the wider topic of World Mental Health Day, guitar playing and yoga are what set me free. When I’ve had a bad day at work and I’m constantly mulling over all the horrible things I want to say to my boss, it’s yoga or guitar playing that release me from that place. I’m also incredibly lucky that my yoga teacher is a life coach and I’ve had some coaching sessions with her recently where I’ve said things from my depths that I’ve never said to anyone before; it’s been both quite daunting and a massive relief. So I guess the other takeaway is if you can find someone to spill out your mind to, then do it.
Ruminating is the enemy of mental health. And perfectionism (I’m a former perfectionist).
One trick that helped me with mulling over all the things I didn’t get done during the day was to replace it with mulling over the things that went better than they could have and except for those rare days, very rare I contend, you will think of many things that actually went better than they could have. That’s a much better mindset to be in.
The first step of course is awareness that you’re going into the spiral of ruminating and having the knowledge that you can put the brakes on it. I think that is something that I’ve only really come to appreciate in the last few years. Some days it sneaks up on you but in general I’ve got much better at spotting it and dealing with it than in the past