Negative Effects of Music on Mental Health PDF

Negative Effects of Music on Mental Health Madison Williams Rumination may involve continuously worrying about an upcoming test, or it could be started simply by the meaning of one song. I know this because I’ve had experience with it just because I...

Negative Effects of Music on Mental Health Madison Williams Rumination may involve continuously worrying about an upcoming test, or it could be started simply by the meaning of one song. I know this because I’ve had experience with it just because I listened to a song. It all started when I was at the dinner table, trying to recall what songs I listened to when I was a 9 year old child. I remembered I liked listening to this one sped up version of a song called, “I Want You Here” by Plumb. I searched for that specific video I used to watch on YouTube, and I made the mistake of scrolling through the comments. People had said that the song was describing the feelings of a mother who had just found out she had a miscarriage, but it didn’t bother me that much, or at least it didn’t bother me at that moment. I decided to put my phone down and listen to the song for the first time in about 3 years, and even though it reminded me of when I was younger, for some reason, I started to ask myself if there was an afterlife for that child. That’s where this story began. That Friday, I had finished watching the first season of one of my favorite shows. I hadn’t thought about what I thought about the other day, but that all changed when I tried to go to sleep. When we go to sleep, some of us let ourselves think about random things, but for me, those random things weren’t the random things I liked to think about. I would usually think about an upcoming event I’m excited for, or maybe it would be one of my favorite characters from Genshin impact, but that night, I asked myself the same thing I did a few days ago. “Where did that soul go? Where do we go when it’s time for us to leave this world? Heaven?” I asked myself over and over again. I looked up at the clock in my bedroom, and it said 10:51 PM. It was 51 minutes after I had turned off the lights, 51 minutes of me staying awake, 51 minutes of me worrying about something that was completely out of my control; what my cause of death would be and if there would be an afterlife for me. It got so bad to the point where I was literally shaking under the blanket. I couldn’t stop it, I could only wait until I fell asleep. “Why am I even shaking? Why am I thinking about this? This is something that I shouldn’t be worrying about as a 12 year old, right?” I thought to myself. That was the same question I asked myself if I was supposed to have surgery the next day because I had needed multiple surgeries to the point where the number of surgeries was in the double digits, but this, I thought, was just me overreacting. I was still so young, I still had my whole life ahead of me, but that still didn’t stop me from worrying.  2 weeks later, and there I was, eating dinner with my fellow Girl Scout friends. We were at a campsite, having fun and creating memories, and even though we were creating new memories, I still thought about the same things I thought about on that one Friday night. Even though my mom was sitting right next to me, I decided to text her about the theory I had because I didn’t want anyone to worry about me or anything like that. I told her about how I thought that I was only worried about that sort of stuff because I didn’t really have anything to keep my mind off of that and about how I thought that those thoughts would stop once school started up again, but the first part wouldn’t make that much sense since I was at an event with my friends from Girl Scouts. After we ate dinner, we found the people who were in our assigned groups, and we decided that we were going to give archery a try. I only gave it a few tries because once I shot my 4 arrows at the target, I would decide to stand in silence until we were allowed to pick up our arrows, and the few seconds I stood in silence were spent thinking about what my cause of death would be. This is what rumination is; dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings. Later on in the night, we were all in our cabins, getting ready to sit by the campfire, sing, and make s’mores. I was jamming out to my own music, while my other friends were talking to each other. When I was listening to music that had some kind of a good vibe to it, I didn’t worry about anything, I just listened and enjoyed it. That’s what I liked about music. I do like music sung by choirs, but while I listened to everyone sing around the campfire, it wasn’t as good as I remembered it to be. I would usually enjoy singing with my friends, but that night, it felt like it gave me a “this is the last song you’ll hear in your life” type of vibe. I knew it shouldn’t give me that kind of feeling, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it, no matter how hard I tried. Before I knew it, it was the next day. We would finally get to go back home. I was looking forward to going home not only because I could play on my phone whenever I wanted to, but because I was going to be able to distract myself from my thoughts. That was exactly what I did when I got home. I stayed in my room and watched YouTube on my TV most of the night, but then I decided to download Genshin Impact on my phone. It had been about a year or 2 since I had played it, and to be honest, I didn’t want to stop playing it, it was only because of the low storage on my Samsung Galaxy S9 that I stopped playing it. One of the very first things I did in the game was trying to travel all the way to Fontaine since that was one of my favorite nations in Genshin Impact. There was a song called, “La Vaguelette” that came out at about the same time as version 4.2 of Genshin Impact, and I really liked that song. I liked it so much that I even made a cover of the song. I would sometimes sing along to the karaoke version of it, but there was one time where I was listening to the intro of the song and I started to feel something weird in my stomach, almost as if my body was having a negative reaction to the song. Maybe it was because there was a character in the game called Focalors who died in version 4.2 of Genshin Impact, so there was probably something behind my worries about the afterlife.  A few days later, I had an idea. I wanted to create a song about how I felt about my thoughts. It was what I usually did when I felt a negative thought or emotion towards something. I started out by using a MIDI device on BandLab to create the main chords of the song. I didn’t write any lyrics down, I just decided to let myself go in that song and describe exactly how I felt. When I was done, I named the song, “Crucabena”, the name of another deceased character in Genshin Impact, since I felt like that fit the song. Crucabena: The Explanation 1. “I wish someone was able to tell me if there was a Heaven” As stated in some of the previous paragraphs, I worried about what was after death. 2. “I wish I could go back to when my innocence hadn’t ended” basically means I want to be a young child again. 3. “I wish I could go back to normal” means that I wish I didn’t worry about what happens after death 4. “I wish I could go back to me” means the same thing as #3 5. “I wish I could go back to being free” means that I wish I didn’t spend a third of my summer worrying about the afterlife 6. “I can’t go back to when I was younger, but I wish I was never truly done” means that I want to go back to when I was younger when I can’t, and I wish I could accept that 7. “I wish I could go back to Crucabena” means I want to go back in time, with the time being before one of my dogs died, so that I can show that I actually care 8. “I never paid attention to everything” means that there’s always something I’m noy paying attention to 9. “I didn’t pay attention to anything” means that I feel like I didn’t pay attention to the gravity of the moment when one of my dogs died 10. “I knew it was a death” means that I knew that dog would never be able to return to the world of the living 11. “But I just couldn’t let it slip into my childish brain” means that I will always think of my past self as more childish than who I am in the present 12. “Slip into those childish days when it wasn’t the end of my love for Monsieur Neuvillette” means that I couldn’t let the death of my dog affect me because I felt that my love for Neuvillette, or Monsieur Neuvillette, was more important. Now, I feel like I was foolish to think that because of course it’s not more significant than my dog. I’ve lived with that dog for my whole life up until September of 2023, and Neuvillette wasn’t even released until June or July of 2023. 13. “I wish I didn’t cry each time I said something” Around the time I started having those thoughts, I would come close to crying if I tried to talk about it. 14. “I wish I didn’t feel as if I was nothing” exaggeration 15. “I wish, and I’ll wish for me” means that I won’t lose hope 16. “Why am I like this sometimes” is me asking myself why I’m childish sometimes 17. “Why do I even try to wish for my own sanity” is just me contradicting myself and saying I might lose hope 18. “I can heal and go back to normal” means that I have realized that I’m not stuck worrying and that time isn’t set in stone 19. “I can heal and go back to me” means the same thing as #18 20. “Someday I will feel somewhat free” means that I know I will feel like myself again 21. “I accept I’m not getting any younger, and maybe I’m not truly done” means that I have realized that it’ll be hard to live in the present, but I have accepted it 22. “I accept I can’t go back to Crucabena” means that I have accepted that nobody will come back from the dead 23. “At least I have Furina” When I say Furina, I mean the good things in life. This line means that at least there are still good things in life  I think that’s one thing that pushed me back into playing that game. Ever since that one random day when I decided to start playing Genshin Impact again, I’ve regained my love for Fontaine and everything else. I no longer have those worries, and (maybe) the good thing is I got an experience and a song out of it. What I didn’t know when I was making the song is that I would want to make a lot of revisions to the song. Some lines were revised into new ones, while others were just discarded. Crucabena: Discarded Lines 1. “I wish he never hated me” When I say he, I am referring to someone on the internet, and that doesn’t really fit in with the meaning of the song 2. “I wish he never lied to me” Same thing as #1 3. “I wish he never called me what Vox called Alastor” The reason I said I regained my love for Fontaine is because I didn’t love Fontaine as much as I currently do back when I was worrying about this, I liked another show (which I will not be mentioning). 4. “I wish, and I’ll wish for Clervie” Clervie is another deceased character, but I didn’t feel like saying that because of the fact that the whole song would become something else if I said that. See the next few discarded lines for more details. 5. “I wish I could actually care” While this was a good line, I only said this so that it would rhyme with whatever #6 says. 6. “I wish you’d listen to me, Peruere” Remember when I said the song was going to become something else? It would turn into me talking to Arlecchino (another Genshin character) if I didn’t revise the lines 7. “When I only loved Freminet / Freminet and Neuvillette” I had to say Freminet using the incorrect pronunciation for the line to rhyme with Neuvillette.  Mavuika: The Backstory Apparently there’s something new called Sprunki that’s popular within the generation that is known as Gen Alpha, which is one of the generations I am a part of. Despite this being one of the new things that my generation likes, I would probably say that it’s definitely not something they should be watching on YouTube. This “Sprunki” thing I am talking about is a game that’s supposed to be kind of like Incredibox, which is another sound box game, but creepier than that. This whole thing started on what would have been just another Thursday. I was eating breakfast and scrolling through my YouTube feed, until I came across one of those YouTube Lives that would show up as Shorts. I usually scrolled past the Live if it wasn’t something I was interested in, but I was curious to see what the livestreamer was playing. The person streaming wrote something on an online canvas, telling the viewers what to search for if they wanted to play around with the sounds themselves, and just like the music-loving girl I was, I went to Google and searched for it. It was kind of cool at first, so I decided to see what other “mods” they had. There was some kind of “infected” mod, and even though it had warnings at the beginning, I still wanted to play around with it and see what I could create. Little did I know, it would start to creep me out shortly after that, so I closed out of the app and continued watching other YouTube Shorts. There was no way to disable the feature that would let those live streams pop up on my Shorts feed, so if I scrolled through my feed, I would probably see something related to that. One day, I decided to try and watch that thing again, hoping to overcome the fear of it, but that just made it worse. Just like that night after watching the last episode of one of my favorite shows, I was shaking in my bed. I wasn’t able to go to sleep until 30 minutes after I started shaking.  Mavuika: The Explanation The next morning, I was looking for a video to watch, and I found a video about Mavuika. This is where the name came from. 1. “Think about the positive things in your dreams” This is what my mom told me to do when I told her about this whole thing. 2. “You can’t understand that it’s hard for me” It was hard for me to think about positive things. 3. “So please, let me explain my ways” I wanted to say that it wasn’t as easy as she thought it was. 4. “Let me tell you it’s me The blame’s on me” It’s my fault for trying to overcome the fear I have of that thing. 5. “I’m too childish for this life Too childish for this tonight With my childish fears” I felt childish. I felt like a 12 year old shouldn’t be afraid of something that younger children watch and enjoy. 6. “I don’t deserve the flame” People have said that Mavuika’s hair can literally turn into fire. 7. “I don’t deserve to say your name tonight, Mavuika” = “I don’t deserve to know someone as cool as you, Mavuika” 8. “I don’t deserve to say anything I don’t deserve to have anything I deserve nothing, Mavuika” Exaggeration 9. “Familiar with this shade of red It’s the shade of red from my nightmares” If you actually go onto the sprunki.org website and click on one of the mods, there’s probably going to be a red background 10. “The ones I fear” ones = characters from those mods 11. “I feel like no one, no one in the world would care” = “I feel like no one in the world would understand 12. “I don’t need to be held in your warm embrace” means that I don’t feel like I need to feel like my younger self again, but I like feeling like my younger self 13. “Mavuika, I don’t deserve this I don’t deserve you I deserve the [redacted] of lives I don’t deserve it I don’t deserve this I deserve the [redacted] of nights 14. Nights” means that I feel like i should (and will) have a nightmare on the night that this song is talking about 15. “Mavuika (x32)”  In Your Nightmares Tonight: The Explanation 1. “I’ve tried to overcome that fear for you” means that I have tried to listen and watch it 2. “But I don’t really know what to do” means that I don’t know what to do to overcome that fear I have when I watch it 3. “Maybe you can tell me to think about Raiden Ei” This song was written right after I finished the Inazuma Archon Quest 4. “Or maybe think about Fontaine” Fontaine is my favorite Genshin Impact nation, so that’s the thing I want to dream about 5. “You say that Sprunki’s funky, and it’s not that scary when You get used to it” The kids in the live chat don’t act like they’re being traumatized, so they either don’t know what it’s like to be traumatized by it or they’re not showing that they actually do know 6. “But you don’t know that when I’m shaking in my bed, thinking of Neuvillette 7. And Wriothesley, but I can’t get it out of my head” I was trying to think of Neuvillette and Wriothesley to calm my brain down on that one specific night  Focalors…?: The Explanation There is no background information because the background information has already been explained; Version 4.2 of Genshin Impact. (See paragraph 6 on page 2) 1. “Why do I care more if it’s you?” This song is sung as if I am directly talking to Focalors. I’m basically asking Focalors why I care more about her (and Fontaine) more than anything else in the moment. 2. “Why do I care more if it’s not true?” I’m asking Focalors why I care more for Furina, who isn’t actually the Hydro Archon. 3. “Why do I care more about an Archon?” = asking Focalors why I care more about her (again). 4. “Why do I care more if you die?” This is kind of like some of the lines in Crucabena; I cried when watching Focalors’ death cutscene, but I didn’t cry when my actual dog died. 5. “Why do I care more if Furina lied?” Again, I’m asking Focalors why I care more about Furina. 6. “Why do I care enough to write a song?” I’m asking Focalors why I wrote this song. 7. “Focalors? I can’t take this anymore” I’m telling Focalors that I can’t not feel sad at the mention of Fontaine’s prophecy 8. “Isn’t it so lovely? Why is this a part of the prophecy?” I’m asking Focalors why it had to be the way it was 9. “How does this finale end? It ends in pain and tears that have been penned “ 10. Why do I feel like I’m the mistake? 11. The mistake who only knows how to love Fontaine 12. It’s your nation, but why am I so loyal? 13. It was a dog’s death, why wasn’t it awful? 14. I feel so selfish, I feel so cold 15. How come it’s only you I know? 16.