Healing With Music
During my time in rehab I had to come up with coping skills for each of my triggers. Coping skills to help me not use. Coping skills are essential in recovery, from what I have learned. Before I could get coping skills though I had to identify my triggers, what were the things that make me want to use? For me personally, my main trigger was my trauma, there are things in my past that still effect me today. Major one is my mother’s death. Losing her, losing the only one who has ever known who I am or who I want to me, left me broken. Or at least I thought that was it, turns out I was broken way before that. The day my father died was the day that broke something inside me, being so young, 2 years old, I didn’t realize it. My father & my mother’s death are major points in my life that I hadn’t quite dealt with, I can honestly say that now I have dealt with their deaths even though they still effect me. They effect me in a way not to make me want to use anymore, I am effected in the sense I have a deeper issue, abandonment. Its not like my parents chose to leave me right? So how do you come up with a coping skill to deal with such a loss as losing a parent? Not easily, I have a few for example I am using one of my coping skills now, writing about what I am feeling. Another coping skill I use is listening to music, music is an amazing healing tool.Music has gotten my through a lot of dark times. Whether I sit & cry listening to a sad song or I get up & dance to an upbeat song either way I am healing. Now music might not work for someone else but its doing the job for me. I have all kinds of playlists that I have created for each of my dark moments, as I call them, to play that have helped me deal. Like when I fight with my husband I have a playlist of break up songs that somehow hearing them reminds me of why I fell in love with him. Well this month I have been listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac, both my father & mother liked the band, listening to their music helps me feel close to my parents. I know I really never be over my parents death but I am learning how to feel close to them & stay connected to them so its not like they are really gone. I know they are watching over me. Music is healing my pain but its also helping me deal with the pain that can’t be healed.