Hearing music that's associated with your trauma

[Sweetleaf]

All day I kept having this song get stuck in my head. Its one my abuser played a lot, like, multiple times a day. When it would start playing in my head, at various times today, my feelings felt so confused and odd and sad.

It is objectively a good song that has nothing wrong with it. Solo piano, melancholic, delicate. It's just become heavily associated with my abuser.

I was thinking to myself "it's just a song, learn it like you do the other shit that you can't get out of your head"

The line of thought was: every time I learn to play a song, it changes the whole way I perceive the song. So I went down to my room to do just that - sit there and learn it, on my synth, in hopes it would quit being "his"

I turned on my synth and amplifier, let the synth boot up and pulled up the song on YouTube, to use to learn it. I hit play. I had not heard it since the last time my abuser was playing it from his speakers.

Within 10 seconds I was crying my eyes out. I kept letting it play and just crying. It wasn't even the same recording of it, the one he always played.

I eventually started sitting there with my mouth half open, staring at the wall, it playing, tears rolling down my cheeks silently.

I snapped out of it and hit stop.

It brought me back to that time, that horrible room. So many images of that room in my mind.

I had no idea I would react like that, though I felt apprehensive and nervous going to my room. I wanted to learn the song way back then, too, I just couldn't because he wouldn't let me play very often.

Now though, I don't know what to do. I am afraid to try listening to it again, so I think I will play a bunch of other shit I know to hopefully clear it from my mind. But I feel bad for letting him hold me back from doing things, in a way.

I have many other songs from that time, that get stuck in my head, and make me feel sad or make me remember those times, or think of him.

Do any of you have strong reactions to hearing music that is associated with your trauma?

Does it fade with time?

 

[Swift]

@Sweetleaf I admire your courage! You're a braver person than I am.
Yeah, I get music reactions like whoa.
I generally try to avoid them - or put them on with my pastels in front of me and draw how they make me feel.
My car has a skip track button on the steering wheel that gets a lot of use.
As to whether they fade... mine are like grief. They get less intense or in a bad day they can make my reactions stronger.
So, I don't know, but I get it too

 

[Sweetleaf]

@Sweetleaf I admire your courage! You're a braver person than I am.

Thanks for saying that. I feel like it was more stupidity than bravery, lol. I should have known not to try that out, but I didn't really know I would react that strongly, when I heard it out loud. I didn't realize that hearing it playing in my head, and hearing it for real, would elicit different reactions. The stuff that he was into is so uncommon, that I haven't been exposed to any of it, aside from what I just did, so it was the first time I heard one of "his" songs out loud since I freed myself.

Another thing - I wrote some material, and expanded some material, during those years that I was being abused by him. I can play it, but it makes me very emotional to do so so I usually start feeling like shit and stop.

mine are like grief.

That makes sense, thank you for sharing what you had to say, it makes me feel better that I'm not the only one.

You also reminded me that I still need to set up the bluetooth in my car so I can listen to my phone's music. Lol.

 

[Freida]

Mine is football instead of music - it ran in the background on tv the entire time. To this day when I hear the announcers talking I want to just puke and run. But - it's impossible to avoid from August to February so I just try to be aware of when it is playing, try to focus on what I'm feeling, do my grounding exercises and if at all possible get out of where ever it is. But sometimes I just have to grit my teeth and wait it out.

If you find a way to make it easier let me know!!!

 

[Sweetleaf]

Mine is football instead of music - it ran in the background on tv the entire time.

Agh, that must be annoying as hell to have to deal with.

Even though it lead to much of my suffering, it is in a way good that my abuser was so against normal people, normal things, and just anything that was by any measure popular or normal. It makes it harder to run into things he was into by accident.

Some things are exceptions though:
South Park, The Office, The Twilight Zone.

I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of.

If you find a way to make it easier let me know!!!

Lol, will do.

 

[Blue Survivor]

Yes, I get it too with certain songs. I too tend to avoid those songs, although part of the 'fun' of PTSD is that one day the song will not have any effect on me all and then another day it throws me for a loop.

However the opposite also happens to me: sometimes I'll hear a song that we (my abuser and I) both played frequently together (playing the guitar hero game) and I will have GOOD memories about us laughing about how one of us would always botch it at a certain part in the game. This sickens me; this smiling, happy memory of the man who was actually a monster.

 

[Sweetleaf]

I will have GOOD memories about us laughing about how one of us would always botch it at a certain part in the game. This sickens me; this smiling, happy memory of the man who was actually a monster.

Trust me, I have the same exact sort of things happen all the time and it really f*cks with me.

Sometimes it distresses me in a way where I'm like "f*ck YOU!!!" out loud, at the thoughts of him, in fact I was just doing that like 15 minutes ago lol. It really can just piss me off sometimes, feeling that shit.

Sometimes it can send me into a panic attack, to think of those "good times" memories. I guess it just depends on which neurons the activity activates. It will happen with video games - it's hard because pretty much everything that I had, he also had - so it basically happens at some point with almost every game I own.

Other games, I exclusively played with him - never played on my own. I can't touch those. Terraria would be an example. I liked playing that one, but I just can't play it. I played it with him for almost all of my game hours. 390 hours total, spent playing that game, and almost all of that is playing co-op with him. I've tried, I just can't play it anymore.

A lot of those games are ones that I honestly didn't even like playing. I just had to play them with him or deal with the consequences of not doing his will. Torchlight 2 bored me to tears. I had to endure hundreds of hours of that boredom, playing games that he wanted me to play with him, but which I didn't want to play at all, and which bored me so damn much. It's pretty silly, comparing that to things like being sexually assaulted by him, but it's still a pretty shitty experience, spending hours not only being bored, but having to do tasks on a computer that you don't want to. Oh yeah, without f*cking up too bad either. If I f*cked up in-game hard enough, it would have real-life consequences.

Getting his character killed in Project Zomboid was always a really bad thing to do. Dying in that game is game over, your character is dead forever. It can mean hours or days worth of work gone - not that -I- ever gave a shit when my character died - it's just part of the f*cking game holy shit, it's literally the damn point, the game is made to kill your character, and will -ALWAYS- succeed by design. It is an inevitability, pretty much. Some nerd in some basement somewhere probably has a character thousands of days old but whatever.

So if he had gotten literally -any- stats increased, I was f*cked if I did something that made him die. Like, I was going to get hurt, in real life.

 

[ladee]

YES !! Not only trauma, but just bad times, when I got out of drug rehab, there was music I could not listen to for a couple of years, as it would send me to the dope house if I listened to it for very long.

Different songs that reflected, and put into words that I could not articulate, are flashback causing, emotionally triggering me to the point I don't know where I am, there or here. It's interesting , you starting this thread. Since I have moved, I rarely have music on now. I've been here for 6 months, and still have not 'adjusted'... and was thinking the other day, why don't I have music playing anymore? Not going to add this to 'gut digging' to find out why, will just put some music on and see what happens..

But music is something we all relate to, and memories attached to certain times in our lives.

 

[Sweetleaf]

Not only trauma, but just bad times,

Oh yeah, for sure.
Both bad times and good. Or, just times. There are songs that make me think of working at the university bookstore - fairly neutral memory, and pretty unremarkable, but I just get reminded of it.

I also like to listen to songs that bands I used to gig with played, or play them. It brings me back to those times. It's nice to listen to the songs the reggae band I was in played, because it just makes me think of so many fun times. That band was probably the highest paid and most-frequently-gigging band I've been in, and there were some stupidly fun gigs. I also think dance-oriented music tends to just make for funner shows.

are flashback causing, emotionally triggering me to the point I don't know where I am, there or here.

I know the feeling of being sent to places like that with music, now :(

Good luck with adding music back into your life :)

 

[KwanYingirl]

One of my abusers was not musically inclined when we met. But I am very musical, have it playing all the time or am playing my guitar. So he just got used to my music and we went to concerts. But now that he’s gone, I don’t attach him to my music. It was mine to begin with, he did steal a bunch of CDs from me but all my music is on my computer. It’s like he was so ignorant of music in general that I didn’t bother talking about it with him. He was like having a child and I don’t associate any of my music with him. It was mine and he couldn’t rob me of that.
Then there’s the grandfather from childhood who sexually abused me. He was a piano virtuoso and to this day, I avoid piano music. I even tried learning to play it, but it always triggered very painful memories. The exceptions to this are Joni Mitchell and Patty Griffin. They both play in minor keys and I can relate to it. But, yeah major trigger.

 

[honeypie058]

Yes, after all these years songs from Marvin Gaye triggers memories and I see the my rapists face. It's a shame because I used to love listening to his music.

 

[FauxLiz]

Any song from a specific album that was popular by my favorite band in high school can send me in a spiral. However, the song from that album that was playing on the radio on the nightstand when the man I thought I was in love with raped me after threatening me with gun violence sends me into a tailspin. That was thirty years ago and while I avoid the song and other songs from the band it isn't easy as you can never tell when you will walk into a story and it will come on over head.

ETA: story = store