Originally published January 9, 2024 on my Substack publication: https://amiddleagedsurvivor.substack.com/

This past year my healing took a big leap forward, and I give credit in part to music for that. Both because of something I learned in a Polyvagal/Nervous System course I took last year around this time and because I’ve recently realized how important music is to me after too many decades of letting its steady presence seep out of my life.

Always curious about different modalities that could complement my healing journey, last winter I signed up for an eight-week class by Australian nervous-system-healing guru Jessica Maguire. I had been stalking various vagus-nerve programs on Instagram for a couple of years because from what I already knew about trauma and healing, the concept of better understanding and rewiring my sensitized nervous system just made sense to me.

I finally took the leap and signed up for Jessica’s program, and I’m glad I did. I garnered a lot of knowledge that helped propel my healing forward, and I met people from all over the world on similar journeys.

In a nutshell, what I learned in the course is how to figure out what nervous-system state I am in at any given time:

• Ventral (all is good, I’m regulated, I feel safe and socially engaged);
• Sympathetic (my nervous system is very activated, maybe from a trigger, and I’m in fight or flight); or
• Dorsal (I’m shutdown and immobilized).

The nervous-system state I have found myself in more than any other during the last several years since I was sexually assaulted has been Freeze, which is a mixed state of Sympathetic and Dorsal.

When I’m like this, I have the rev of Sympathetic (meaning it feels like my body needs to do something) and the shutdown of Dorsal.

In this state, I feel stuck, like I can’t move; yet I am unsettled as if I’m supposed to be moving, doing something. I may zone out on the couch in front of the TV – though none of the shows seem interesting to me and I’m not really relaxed – or wander from task to task in my house, doing a small bit of this and that and unable to concentrate in order to finish anything.

My second most common state is Sympathetic Fight, which I think is the state a lot of Survivors think of and can identify easily.

Something happens that triggers me and brings me back energetically to when I was assaulted. It may not seem like whatever was the trigger has anything to do with my assault to an outsider, yet I feel threatened in some way – physically or emotionally – and just don’t feel safe. I feel like I need to pick a fight with someone. My heart rate accelerates and my body feels like it’s vibrating with intensity and energy. I am ready for action.

Can anyone relate?

Once we better understand the different states of our nervous system, then we can figure out what to do from there and resource ourselves back into the window of tolerance (the Ventral all-is-good state). But we need the right resources for the right state (and ones that match own individual makeups and backgrounds), or else we can stay stuck in a trigger or a shutdown for longer than we’d like.

For trauma survivors, getting stuck in these states really affects our lives, relationships and livelihoods. Being stuck in one can affect us for hours or days or weeks. Or more.

So in the course I took, I learned a shitload of different methods for resourcing the different states, far beyond traditional meditation, breathwork and exercising. There’s lots of things we can do to bring our own selves back into regulation.

My favorite go-to resource that I’ve come back to time and again the past year has been music. But in a very different way than I’ve used music in the past. And very much like how teenagers intuitively use music, a skill I had forgotten over the decades since I was young and a musician myself. (I played piano and alto saxophone and started out university as a music major.)

What I learned is that when we are in a particular nervous-system state, we need music that specifically attunes to that state.

• If we are shutdown and maybe dissociating (Dorsal), we need music that reflects what we are feeling (sad, depressed, melancholy, lonely).
• When we are in fight or flight (Sympathetic), we need music that mirrors the energy we are feeling (fast tempo, high energy, pounding base, music that psyches you up for a fight, or that responds to the angry flight state of wanting to run away after being scared or hurt: “Somebody hurt me or rejected me; or nobody gets me.”
• When we already are in a good, safe state (Ventral), feel-good music can help keep us there.

I personally had lost touch with the power of music to attune to what we are feeling, something so many of us were good at when we were teenagers. In my generation, teenagers blared hard rock and heavy metal not just to individuate but to find validation for the chaotic energy in their bodies.

(I stuck with pop music back in the 1980s, but I’m making up now for what I missed back then when I was afraid to make noise and be loud.)

My instinct over the last decades since I “grew up” had been: If you are revved, you need calming music; if you are depressed, you need high-energy music to lift you out of it.

Nope, not so much. (Well, at least not for me.)

Think of music like your best friend when you are dysregulated. If you get the music right – and you can feel it in your body when it’s right – it says to you: “I GET YOU! I understand what you’re going through.” And this really helps bring your nervous system back toward regulation in the same way a friend can help provide regulation by making you feel validated, understood, mirrored.

Now when I get triggered and am in Sympathetic Fight state, I reach for my phone and pull up my Fight playlist and blast it. And usually by the second or third song, I am regulated enough to think straight and then pull in some of my many other Sympathetic resources I’ve learned to get me across the finish line back into regulation. For me, this may be screaming into a pillow (using my voice), hurling a pillow at the floor (fighting my attacker) and then, finally, doing some specific movement exercises on my yoga mat.

During the Nervous System School course I took with Jessica Maguire, one of the assignments was to develop a music playlist for each of the nervous-system states. So I spent a few weeks gradually making one each for Sympathetic Fight, Sympathetic Flight, Ventral, Dorsal No. 1 (more mellow or sad music), and Dorsal No. 2 (gently energizing songs to get myself moving after I validate first with the sad stuff).

I use these playlists ALL OF THE TIME. And I continually add to them.

I’m including a link to a Spotify Sympathetic State Fight Music playlist to give you an idea of what you could do with your own. (Or feel free to just use this one.) The first songs are the type of music that helps me – my GenX self – when I’m in that state, but I’ve included other styles of music as well that I gleaned from other people’s lists. Everyone’s different as to what speaks to them. What resonates with my brain and body may not do a thing for you, or it may actually irritate or annoy you.

Growing up in Generation X, my nervous system Fight State attunes to the high energy of hard-rock and even heavy metal music from my youth. I don’t even like or pay attention to some of the lyrics in the songs; it’s simply the energy of the music that feels good to me. It’s the driving tempo, pounding base, variable rhythms and screaming guitars.

(I’ve been laughing for years thinking of what the music circles at our GenX assisted living centers will be like!)

Listen to your body with each type of music and state. You may begin to notice that the wrong music will grate on you if you don’t have it exactly right for the state you are in. It may make you edgy or perhaps draw you further into the dysregulated state you are in rather than making you feel satisfied or validated.

For example, Sunday night I was working on the above playlist while John was driving us home from the mountains in snowy, icy conditions. I was nervous and my body was tense because of the road conditions and heavy ski traffic – maybe I had a touch of Freeze state– and the angry, pounding music from the playlist was just making me more nervous and edgy. I had to stop working on it. It was almost making me nauseous.

As I’ve gone on this music journey this year and listened to so many old and new songs and artists, I’ve realized how much I’ve let music drift out of my life since I was a teenager and young adult. But I’ve begun to embrace it again. To experiment with it, explore it, and say Yes to it.

I sing and dance around the house more, and my Spotify playlists – of all sorts – have multiplied like rabbits.

So when a high school friend reached out to me last summer and asked if I wanted to go with her to the Duran Duran concert at Red Rocks at the last-minute, I said, “Yes!” Immediately. Then I went and looked up the “best of” Duran Duran to make sure I remembered which songs were theirs – because I’m not very good at that – never have been.

Even as a teenager. I just knew what I liked and didn’t much care to memorize who sang what. I’m also known as the “Queen of the One-Liners” in my family in that I seem to know only one line to every song, which I realize can be irritating.

… I’m working on that.

I’ve come a long way: Going to a large concert last-minute with a friend flying in just before was not something I could have done a few years ago (not even considering Covid). I struggled with social anxiety and needed time to prepare for events, and being in large crowds unnerved me – it sent me into Sympathetic because my sensitized nervous system was so hypervigilant. Crowds were uncomfortable.

Now I’ve found my social engagement again. And MUSIC.

The Duran Duran concert was epic, and I was in awe of their music all over again – and definitely with a much higher appreciation for their musicianship than I had 40 years ago. And opening for them was Chic? Come on!! So awesome! I felt like a kid again, even huddling with my friend under rain tarps as we endured a rainstorm, dancing with our butts solidly in our seats so the bench underneath us wouldn’t be soaked for the rest of the evening.

I’m so glad I said Yes to my friend and to Duran Duran. And to music. Because music is life – it’s my history and my present joy.

And music also can be: Regulation.

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I’d be interested in hearing how other people use music in their healing, and what music is on your playlists for the different states (whether you call them “states” or not). Please be sure to comment and make your own suggested adds to the Sympathetic State Fight Music playlist – or for any of the other states. I’m by no means a music expert, so I’m sure I’ve missed important songs and artists – especially for broader inclusivity.

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Wishing you love, peace and sparks of joy wherever you are on your healing journey. It is my wish with all that I do and all that I write about for you to know that you are not alone. 

Warmly,

Dianne