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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To get emotional to the point of crying my eyes out when hearing music, especially singing?

34 replies

CrySensitive · 21/01/2023 17:47

I used to play the piano to quite a high level but stopped playing when I was 18. I'd just had enough of it I suppose.

Now 20 years on, with 3 school age kids, I still haven't been back to play but I get very emotional hearing expressive music and have a sudden urge of crying.

Is it just me or can someone relate?

I hate crying in front of people especially kids, and can't face hearing music. Do I need to go and see a therapist?

OP posts:
AuroraForever · 21/01/2023 18:24

Yes!! It’s called ‘frisson’. Can be a piece of music, singing, scene in a film or book etc. i

Loics · 21/01/2023 18:28

BigChesterDraws · 21/01/2023 17:51

Have you been to the Sistine chapel recently?

Ooh I was too late, that was my first thought!

gaggiagirl · 21/01/2023 18:33

I can't watch/hear the songs in Encanto without my eyes watering. The last song in particular has me properly sobbing. I can't listen to it in the car while driving anymore because I'm blinded by tears. I think your reaction is perfectly normal.

fourplusfour · 21/01/2023 18:37

mrsfeatherbottom · 21/01/2023 18:07

When I watch videos of singing flash mobs on social media, I always cry.

I thought I was the only one that does this. My kids think I'm weird.

Tubbyinthehottub · 21/01/2023 18:47

Life theatre performances usually make me feel emotional. I don't know why, I'm not really a person who cries a lot, I don't cry at films etc. It's weird.

CrySensitive · 21/01/2023 19:43

Tubbyinthehottub · 21/01/2023 18:47

Life theatre performances usually make me feel emotional. I don't know why, I'm not really a person who cries a lot, I don't cry at films etc. It's weird.

Yes, I get emotional too. It's like I'm so happy when I can tell that they're really enjoying themselves singing and acting!

OP posts:
KickHimInTheCrotch · 21/01/2023 19:49

This is really hard to comprehend for someone who literally never cries. But embrace it, it's part of who you are.

clutchingatpearls · 21/01/2023 19:50

Oh, music is very special. Iain McGilchrist wrote this about the relationship between the right brain hemisphere and music:

Music, being grounded in the body, communicative of emotion, implicit, is a natural expression of the nature of the right hemisphere… Given that intonation of the voice and the emotional aspects of experience are its special concern, it is to be expected that music would be a largely (though not exclusively) right hemisphere phenomenon...

Musical phrases act like metaphors, emanating from, and enormously expanding the meaning of, movement in and of the body: rising, falling, pulsing, breathing. Many features of music, including obviously syncopations, but also melodic appoggiaturas and enharmonic changes, set up patterns of expectation which are ultimately either confirmed or disappointed; and this process leads to physiological reactions such as alterations in breathing, or changes in heart rate, in blood pressure, and even in temperature, as well as bringing us out in a sweat, bringing tears to our eyes, or making our hair stand on end…

It has been said that music, like poetry, is intrinsically sad, and a survey of music from many parts of the world would bear that out - not, of course, that there is no joyful music, but that even such music often appears to be joy torn from the teeth of sadness, a sort of holiday of the minor key. It is what we would expect in view of the emotional timbre of the right hemisphere; and there is a stronger affinity between the right hemisphere and the minor key, as well as between the left hemisphere in the major key…

The Master and His Emissary

soupmaker · 21/01/2023 20:00

Totally normal. I used to do a job where I would regularly go to orchestral concerts. I cried more often than not. I've also cried at gigs. Film scores can get me to me too. Massed pipe bands are a trigger as are, bizarrely, trumpet fanfares. DH just rolls his eyes at me.

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