Put on the saddest song

[indigi]

For me, it's The Weakerthans - Hospital Vespers. Spent way too much time around dying/dead relatives in hospitals, and it always gets to me, even if I'm in the best of moods.

Crying it out works sometimes, just because at the end of it your sympathetic nervous system is stretched to its limit and your body is forced to calm down and feel at least a bit better, temporarily. Kind of like immersion therapy, but with super-sadness.

[lornrick]

For me, most of the Linkin Park hybred therory, and thousand suns. But also "Sad world" and Black country communion's "Cold", of course Evanesence is always good for a tear or two

[Eternally Learning]

Incubus's Aqueous Transmission is one of the very few things that almost consistantly makes me feel like I want to cry. I know it's about lost love, but I associate it with the death of a loved one. In that context it's simply heart-wrenching. It takes on a slightly religious context, but I'm oddly ok with that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k0-sGqxIiQ

[Michigoose]

Music for Airports by Brian Eno! It's not necessarily sad, but it's not happy either. Just tranquil and a touch hopeful. Some of you may recognize it from "This American Life" on Public Radio.

Here's a clip of the first movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9kPIp4MtX0

[Veronica]

oh definitely, keep a sad mix on standby. Whatever really hits you hard. Tranatlanticism, by Death Cab for Cutie? I melt with homesickness. Ceratin songs from the 80s, when I was in highschool and experiencing my first love, they hit the switch for me as I think of all of that time passed.

But I also keep a few songs cued up that are like "soundtrack songs", that mean something and have a place in the story I want to write. I put those on, and get walking. Or just washing a dish or two if I can't make myself get outside, and the next thing I know, I'm off into that story and things look better.

[dare i say it]

I don't mean to crap on anyone's point here, but I have a different experience when I listen to sad songs, and I'm wondering how far out there I am on this one. I have a hard time with art/entertainment that evokes sadness, especially if that sadness isn't resolved within the song or whatever. Most of my life has been a struggle to regulate strong emotions. When I hear/see something that's even a little sad, I get overwhelmed by sadness and I experience that as really unpleasant. Maybe trying so hard to regulate or contain my emotions is part of the problem. I don't know.

If anyone wants to respond to this post, but you're worried about derailing this thread from its original purpose, feel free to send me a PM.

[dystopika]

Most of my life has been a struggle to regulate strong emotions. When I hear/see something that's even a little sad, I get overwhelmed by sadness and I experience that as really unpleasant. Maybe trying so hard to regulate or contain my emotions is part of the problem. I don't know.

I feel like I've struggled to regulate strong emotions. At the same time, I can have a difficult time... releasing. Venting them.

The other week, I was having a really rough night and a friend joined me to "watch after me". I was extremely upset over something specific. At some point, we end up at a karaoke joint and this girl gets up and sings this Adele song I wasn't familiar with ("Someone Like You") -- and I just started bawling. I cried like I hadn't cried in YEARS. It was a bit embarrassing but sooo cathartic. I felt a sense of peace afterwards. I've put so much effort into caging up my emotions over the years, I can have a difficult time letting them go. Sometimes a song can be a key for me. The emotions overwhelm initially but, for me, it's this purging process.

Because of this, there are certain songs/albums that I have a difficult time listening to because they'll remind me of a specific time when I used them for assistance.

NIN's "And All That Could Have Been" reminds me of my divorce. It is sort of a devastating song for me.

[manuel_moe_g]

I cried like I hadn't cried in YEARS. It was a bit embarrassing but sooo cathartic. I felt a sense of peace afterwards.

Wow, I am envious. My ability to cry was so tightly bound with my sense of self-entitlement and feeling sorry for myself and demanding the world to give me everything I wanted without me having to put in any effort. So when I got rid of those terrible parts of myself, I kind of lost the ability to cry. I am not sure how to move to a healthier place.

[dare i say it]

I guess that's the power of any art form (if I may refer to karaoke as an art form ), to trigger an emotion in the audience.

NIN's "And All That Could Have Been" reminds me of my divorce. It is sort of a devastating song for me.

I have a similar experience when I hear songs that remind me of high school. At least for now, it's hard for me to remember that there were some good times mixed in with the awful ones when I was a teenager. Anytime I hear a song that was popular in the mid '90s, my impulse is to immediately turn it off.

For me, when I'm "triggered" by music or anything else and I end up letting my emotions out, it's an intense mix of catharsis and terror that I feel. So I can't say whether it feels good or bad--it's a lot of both.

[dystopika]

My ability to cry was so tightly bound with my sense of self-entitlement and feeling sorry for myself and demanding the world to give me everything I wanted without me having to put in any effort. So when I got rid of those terrible parts of myself, I kind of lost the ability to cry. I am not sure how to move to a healthier place.

How did you get rid of those parts...?

When I was in high school, I used to be able to make myself cry every night. In my bedroom alone, I could think about things that would push me toward crying. This forced purging. An indication of how miserable I was back then but also -- it helped me sleep. It would fill me with such a profound sense of peace.

In recent years, I've felt like I've had a harder time crying. Feeling miserably depressed and not being able to cry is a terrible feeling. Then again, certain things have helped to trigger crying in me, somehow. I remember this one weekend, I watched all the seasons of SIX FEET UNDER... and there was something about the way that actor Peter Krause cries in that show that just allowed ME to cry. I don't know what that was about. Just seeing it modeled for me assisted in getting me there. I guess everyone has their own specific triggers related to their own issues.