How music and weather impacts our mental health

Dear Bloggers,

Many people notice their mood shift with the weather. A sunny morning might bring a sense of ease, while a grey, wet afternoon can feel heavier than usual.

These changes are more than just passing feelings. A growing body of research shows that weather can meaningfully affect mental health, especially for people already living with anxiety, depression or unresolved grief.

In my country, where conditions can swing from intense sunny weather to flooding rainshowers and heavy windgusts, understanding how the climate interacts with emotional wellbeing is important. Recognising your own patterns is the first step toward managing the way you respond to different weather conditions and preparing for the times when your mood feels more vulnerable.

 

Weather and mood: What’s the connection?

Most of us respond to the weather on some level, but for some, those shifts go deeper. Whether it’s increased anxiety in the heat or lower mood on gloomy days, understanding your emotional patterns is key to managing your wellbeing.

 

Sunlight and mood support

Exposure to sunlight increases the brain’s production of serotonin, a chemical that helps regulate mood. On clear, sunny days, people often feel more alert and motivated.

Rain, cloud cover, and seasonal changes

When skies are grey and rain lingers, some people experience a dip in energy or motivation. These shifts may feel more intense for those with existing mental health conditions or anyone going through a period of grief or emotional exhaustion.

People respond to weather in different ways depending on their mental health history, current stress levels, and even memories associated with certain conditions.

A thunderstorm might feel calming to one person and unsettling to another.

Music’s Impact On Our Mental Health 

Music is a great part of our lives. Personally, I can’t even imagine a life without music because it brings me such joy and helps me communicate with myself in a totally different way. Let’s take a deeper look at how music positively impacts our mental health.

Let me start with the most known benefit of music: stress reduction. Research has shown that music has a positive impact on our autonomic nervous system, helping us manage stress and respond more constructively when in moments of stress. We know that there will be stressors present in our lives pretty much all the time. So, one thing we can do is try to understand these stressful situations so that we can learn to live with them rather than trying to eliminate them entirely. And this is where music can play a very important role. Listening to music can help us organize our thoughts and approach our problems with a balanced perspective. I find music very valuable because it’s often widely-accessible, making it easier to experience almost anywhere. 

So many of us have had that moment when we put on our headphones and get lost in the music, alone with ourselves in a moment of reverie. We can begin to understand the music when this is a more dance-centered event, let’s say, or one wherein the music is meant to convey a vibe rather than be the focus. Going to a concert of our favorite singer and singing the same song together with thousands of people can be a very powerful feeling, right? Music can help us feel part of a community. 

 

Music impacts almost every part of our lives even including our quality of sleep. One study shows that a group of students who listened to classical music for 45 minutes before going to bed had better sleep quality compared to the group who didn’t listen to music.

And the next question is popping up in my brain: How do different types of music can impact our mood? Several studies claim that each type of music can potentially trigger different emotions. Calming melodies, for example, can have a soothing effect that works to lower blood pressure and slow the heart rate as we listen. On the other hand, “Grunge“ music (a sub-category which is a combination of punk and heavy metal) can sometimes trigger feelings of hostility, sadness, and tension. And, as we’ve seen, classical music can work to calm us down and fill us with a sense of peace. It’s thought that the structure of the music, the sounds and melodies, can have an impact on our mind and body. Because calming or classical types of music can reduce anxiety, they can also help us balance our mood. How does music impact you? Take a moment to reflect on your own experiences to see what bubbles to the surface. 

Most of the time, the type of music we gravitate toward is related to our current mood. Music can be a fantastic tool through which to process and express our emotions. Maybe you’ve experienced a moment in which you can’t put into words how you’re feeling, that words are just not enough. In such moments, music saves us. Remember the times you’ve said: “That’s exactly how I feel!” while listening to a song? Perhaps that song expresses how you’re feeling or reflects what you’ve been through. By listening to such songs, we remember that there are other people navigating similar feelings and we don’t feel so alone. In fact, this further demonstrates that music is more than just melodies. Music can help us feel better through creative expression and communication.  

 

Now, let’s consider a different emotion through music: Happy songs... People often prefer listening to joyful and exciting music when they feel good because this increases their enjoyment. For example, imagine that you’re going on a vacation with your friends. You’ve finished all your work and you deserve that holiday. What’s the first thing that you turn to when you get in the car to head out on that much needed vacation? Of course, music! Because sometimes those melodies describe our mood better than we can. The good thing is, wherever we are, we can experience unity across time and space through music. 

We may feel moments of happiness and sadness from time to time, but there may also be periods where certain feelings stay with us for a long time. For example, in cases of anxiety and depression experts think that music therapy can be an important tool to help express and process feelings. Among the techniques used in music therapy there are activities like lyric analysis, improvising, listening to music, and writing a song.

There are some special songs that just make us feel joyful. Do you recall such a song? A song that brightens your day, or one in which you get lost in the rhythm or the lyrics and you can’t help but think “How did they make such a beautiful song?” 

Why do such songs make us feel more peaceful? Perhaps the most significant factor is that they trigger the reward center of our brain called the dopamine system, making you feel happy or excited. Your partner’s smell, the bright colors of a flower, getting a good night’s sleep, exercising, listening to music, or any situation that you associate with pleasure can all be examples of stimuli that activate the reward center of the brain. 

In fact, while listening to a song, our brain starts to work in such a way that it can predict the next pattern in the melody. According to one theory, one of the reasons why we like listening to music is this desire or impulse to predict the next musical pattern. Our brain wants to predict future events based on the past and by attempting to do so, we reduce our perception of uncertainty and increase our feeling of being in control. Therefore, if we notice that we can guess the next musical pattern, this can create a rewarding feeling or a sense of security.

 

So, where does music stand in your life? Which emotions make you feel like listening to music? Do your feelings and the types of music you listen to match? Or, are they different? Which types of music trigger which emotions for you? Do certain people and environments encourage you to listen to music? How does your body respond while listening to your favorite song? What does it tell you about you? You’ll have a chance to know yourself better while searching for the answers to these questions, I’m sure. 

And we shall overcome as we done before {Nothing but Thieves song.}

The Old Sailor,