I just contributed to an article on earworms.
I am an expert in Body Language and other Nonverbal Communication, I speak on healing the brain from trauma and I am a singer-songwriter
As a young person, I sang the lyric, to The Five Stairsteps Song, "Ooh Child" "Ooh ooh child things are going to get easier, ooh child things will be brighter." over and over inside my head and out loud when I was troubled by the turbulence and abuse in my home life. The song continues to play in my head, or I find myself softly singing it when I am wrestling with troubles. Both the line and the soft voices of comfort I have another earworm that acts as inspiration and comfort to me by Singer-Songwriter Eliot Bronson in his song "River Runs Dry" he sings, "I don't give up, I've never known why I'll be sailing down the river till the river runs dry." I have talked to Eliot about that song, and he revealed to me years ago that it was his Anthem song as well and it has become the Anthem song of his fans (including me) in the last 49weeks in his virtual concerts on Wednesday nights. There are many "triggers" for earworms, a place where you first heard the song, a person, and more, and for these earworms, stress is my trigger. I am a speaker and a coach, and I teach my clients to find or rediscover "earworms" of comforting, inspiring, and motivating music to help their brains go down the neural pathways to the positive emotions found in the earworms and thus create/recreate the positive physical and emotional state. For example, if I have a client that wants to feel confident as they practice and get ready for a job interview, we find the earworm song that puts them in the emotional state they want to feel and the play and sing it over and over, until finally, they are using it right before their actual interview. It's a technique that has worked very well for my clients and me for many years.
The brain is pretty amazing and when it's stressed/traumatized, the neural pathways can be damaged and music can heal and reform new pathways to healthy and productive feelings and behaviors.
For those readers who are science nerds like me, Music stimulates the hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbent, the mesolimbic dopamine system, and impacts the HPA axis. Evidence also shows that music can stimulate neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. Music can be used as a tool to stimulate these areas to activate neurogenesis and/or neuroplasticity, thereby reconditioning the brain back to healthy functioning. PSTD can destroy neural pathways in the brain and can prevent people with this damaging the pleasure centers in the brain and keep sufferers from experiencing happiness. Music stimulates the growth of neural pathways in the brain so suffers can again experience pleasure.
