Songs in Therapy: Youth
Songs in Therapy: Youth
What Once Felt Like Home
The Ritual
Every Tuesday he arrived fifteen minutes early.
The road itself was unremarkable. A quiet residential street that ran parallel to the main road, lined with mature trees and high hedges that concealed most of the houses behind them. During the summer months, the leaves seemed to absorb the noise of the traffic nearby, creating a strange sense of isolation despite the village continuing only a few hundred yards away.
He parked in the same place every week.
The engine remained running. Cool air drifted from the vents whilst he sat staring through the windscreen. Occasionally another car would pass. A dog walker might appear briefly before disappearing around the corner. Most of the time there was nothing to distract him.
That was probably for the best.
There were other songs.
Songs capable of stirring regret, longing, loneliness and loss. He listened to some of those too. Certain tracks seemed to carry entire relationships within them. Others carried people whose absence remained strangely alive. Some held memories so vivid that they felt less like recollections and more like places he could revisit whenever he chose.
But they were only ever preparation.
One song always came last.
By the time he pressed play, there was rarely any uncertainty about what would happen next. The ritual had been repeated too many times for that. He knew the lyrics. He knew precisely where certain lines would land. He knew which parts would tighten something inside his chest and which would leave him struggling to breathe evenly.
Most people spend their lives trying to avoid pain.
He appeared to be doing the opposite.
Looking back, it is tempting to ask why. Why would somebody deliberately choose a song that left them emotionally devastated moments before a counselling session? Why would they repeatedly return to something that intensified their sadness rather than relieved it?
At the time, however, the questions felt far less important than the experience itself.
The song understood something.
Or at least that was how it felt.
It seemed capable of reaching places that ordinary conversation could not reach. Feelings that remained inaccessible throughout the rest of the week appeared almost immediately whenever the opening notes began. Regret surfaced first. Then longing. Then something more difficult to describe.
By the time the song finished, he was no longer the same man who had parked the car fifteen minutes earlier.
That was the point.
Only then would he open the door and walk towards the garden gate.
The Search
The song did not create the sadness.
It arrived long after the sadness had already taken hold.
By the time he first heard it, he was living a life that, from the outside, appeared perfectly ordinary. He had been with the same partner for almost fifteen years. They owned a home together. They had routines, shared responsibilities and a history stretching back further than he sometimes cared to think about.
Most people would probably have described the relationship as stable.
He would have struggled to describe it at all.
The truth was that he had spent years searching for something he could never quite name. At different times he believed he had found it. In relationships. In sex. In excitement. In the possibility of becoming somebody new. Each discovery arrived carrying the promise of transformation. Each promised to quiet the restlessness that seemed to follow him everywhere.
None of them lasted.
Several years earlier he had become involved with a woman who seemed to understand him in ways that felt almost impossible to explain. Their relationship existed largely in secret. They lied to partners, stole weekends together and created memories that, years later, still felt more like scenes from a film than events that had actually happened. For a while he became convinced that he had finally found the missing piece.
Yet even then something remained unsettled.
Looking back, that was perhaps the most difficult part to understand.
It would have been easier if the woman had been the answer. Easier if losing her explained everything that followed. Easier if his sadness could be traced back to a single moment or a single decision.
Life rarely offers such simple explanations.
The affair ended. The relationship at home continued. Other relationships followed, though none carried quite the same intensity. The years passed. The restlessness remained.
The Tablets
Eventually, even the search became exhausting.
There had been other attempts to find relief before counselling entered his life. Years earlier, medication had been prescribed to help manage the anxiety that seemed to shadow almost every part of his day. What began as a temporary measure gradually became something more permanent. Months became years. Prescriptions were renewed. Life continued.
On the surface, many things improved.
He worked. Maintained relationships. Paid bills. Made plans. From a distance there was little to suggest that anything was seriously wrong.
Yet the restlessness remained.
It appeared in quiet moments. During long drives. Whilst lying awake at night. In the periods immediately after excitement faded and ordinary life resumed. Whatever he was searching for seemed to retreat the moment he believed he was getting closer to it.
Eventually he stopped taking the medication.
The decision felt important at the time. Almost symbolic. As though removing the tablets might somehow force him to confront whatever had been hiding beneath them all those years.
Instead, things became worse.
The anxiety returned with an intensity he had not expected. Old questions resurfaced. So did the familiar feeling that he was living a life that somehow belonged to somebody else.
Returning to the GP felt like admitting defeat.
It was during one of those appointments that counselling was subtly spoken of.
The Cast of Selves
By the time counselling was suggested, he had already spent years trying to understand himself. The explanations changed depending on the chapter of his life he happened to be living through. At different times he convinced himself that the problem was anxiety, depression, the affairs, the medication or the endless dissatisfaction that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
More than anything, he was searching for a story that made sense of himself.
The role he occupied within that story rarely remained stable for long. Some days he saw himself as a good man struggling against circumstances beyond his control. Other days he became the villain of his own narrative; selfish, destructive and responsible for far more pain than he cared to admit. He could move from hero to betrayer, from rescuer to the person needing rescue, sometimes within the space of a single afternoon.
At one point he became convinced he had finally discovered the answer. Late at night he found himself reading about personality disorders, comparing lists of traits against his own behaviour and recognising uncomfortable parts of himself in what he found. The certainty that accompanied these discoveries brought a strange kind of relief. If he could finally identify what was wrong, perhaps he could also understand why he seemed unable to find peace.
Several weeks later he found himself sitting opposite a therapist in a small room at the end of a garden.
Looking back, it is difficult to know exactly what he expected from those sessions. Understanding certainly played a part. So did the hope of being seen. Yet there were other fantasies present too, some of which would only become visible years later. Like many of the relationships that had preceded therapy, this new relationship arrived carrying possibilities far beyond the reality of what it actually was.
Perhaps that was inevitable.
By then he no longer experienced himself as a single, consistent person. Instead, he carried a cast of different selves. The hero. The villain. The rescuer. The abandoned lover. The unfaithful lover. The narcissist. The wounded man. Depending on the day, any one of them might step forward and claim to be the truth.
The therapist knew none of this.
How could she?
She only met the man who walked through the garden gate.
The Silhouette
Which version of him sat in the chair each week?
The answer, perhaps, is all of them.
One week he arrived convinced he had ruined his life. Another week he spoke as though he had finally understood it. Sometimes he described himself as a man trapped by circumstance. At other times he became the architect of his own suffering, cataloguing mistakes and betrayals with a level of scrutiny that bordered on self-punishment.
The shifts could happen quickly.
A memory would surface and suddenly he was grieving. A different thought would appear and he became analytical, almost detached from the feelings that had seemed overwhelming only moments earlier. Occasionally he spoke about himself with compassion. More often he judged himself harshly.
What remained surprisingly consistent was his certainty that an answer existed somewhere. The answer might be a diagnosis. It might be a relationship. It might be a forgotten memory. It might be hidden somewhere within the affairs, the depression or the endless dissatisfaction that had followed him throughout adulthood. Whatever form it took, he remained convinced that if he could find it, everything else would finally make sense.
The therapist rarely appeared interested in providing such answers.
At first, this felt frustrating.
He arrived carrying questions and wanted explanations. Instead, the therapist often seemed more interested in the questions themselves.
Why did that memory matter? Why had that particular moment stayed with him? What was he feeling? Why did he believe that about himself? The questions sometimes felt repetitive.
Years later, he would begin to understand why.
Revealing the Cast
The longer he remained in therapy, the more difficult it became to decide which version of himself was telling the truth.
There was the man who believed he had finally found the love of his life and had been too frightened to follow it. He could describe that relationship in extraordinary detail. The stolen weekends. The conversations that seemed to last for hours. The feeling of being understood without needing to explain himself. In those moments, the affair became a tragedy. A story of missed opportunities and roads not taken.
Then there was another version.
This man looked at the same events and saw something entirely different. He saw dishonesty. Selfishness. A trail of damaged relationships. He questioned whether the woman had ever been the answer to anything at all. Perhaps she had simply become the latest vessel into which he had poured his hopes. Another attempt to escape himself. Both stories felt convincing.
Neither felt complete.
At other times he became preoccupied with the possibility that there was something fundamentally wrong with him. He examined his behaviour relentlessly, searching for evidence. The affairs. The fantasies. The need for admiration. The endless search for excitement. Each seemed to support the conclusion he had already reached. For a while he became convinced he had solved the mystery. The certainty brought relief.
It also brought despair.
If the diagnosis was correct, then perhaps the restlessness finally made sense. Yet if it was correct, what did that say about the life he had lived and the people he had hurt along the way?
Then there was the rescuer.
The man who seemed to appear whenever somebody was struggling. The man who wanted to help. To heal. To understand. To become indispensable. Looking back, he could see traces of this version of himself almost everywhere. In relationships. In friendships. Even in therapy.
Part of him wanted to be saved. Another part wanted to be the one doing the saving. The difficulty was that each version felt real whilst he inhabited it. Occasionally these different selves found their way into the therapy itself.
Looking back, he can see how easily the therapist became woven into the same search that had shaped so many of his relationships. Not because he was attracted to her in any straightforward sense, but because she too became associated with possibility. Understanding. Rescue. Transformation.
At the time he would never have described it that way. He simply experienced a growing sense that something important was happening between them. The feeling itself seemed significant, regardless of whether it reflected reality. Years later he would come to recognise that this was another familiar pattern. The hope that another person might finally provide the answer he had been searching for all along.
The lover.
The betrayer.
The rescuer.
The narcissist.
The wounded man.
Each stepped forward claiming to possess the answer. Each promised that if he listened closely enough, the confusion would finally disappear.
None of them stayed for very long.
Before the Garden Gate
For all the different versions of himself that appeared in therapy, one thing remained remarkably consistent.
The song.
It was there before every session. Before the questions. Before the tears. Before the therapist opened the garden gate and welcomed him inside. What strikes him now is not that he listened to it.
It is that he never mentioned it.
Over the course of those eight sessions he spoke about relationships, anxiety, medication and the growing suspicion that he was somehow responsible for much of his own suffering. He spoke about loss. About confusion. About the feeling that he had somehow become lost inside his own life.
Yet the song remained outside the room.
Looking back, this seems strange.
The ritual was not a minor detail. It sat at the centre of every session. The therapy began in the car long before he ever reached the chair. By the time he walked through the garden gate he had already spent fifteen minutes dismantling himself. He knew exactly what he was doing. The tears were not accidental.
Neither was the devastation.
The song had become a way of reaching something that felt otherwise inaccessible. Anger. Grief. Longing. Regret. Feelings that often remained hidden beneath distraction, fantasy and endless searching appeared almost immediately whenever the music began.
At the time, this felt necessary.
He believed he needed to reach the bottom before therapy could begin. The suffering was not something to avoid. It was something to descend into. Almost as though the pain itself contained an important truth that could only be discovered by experiencing it fully. Part of him feared that if he arrived feeling calm, there would be nothing left to talk about. Part of him feared that without the sadness he might discover there had never been anything there at all.
So each week he returned to the same song. Each week he sat with the same memories. Each week he reopened the same wounds.
Then, when the song finally ended, he stepped out of the car and walked towards the garden gate.
Open Wounds
Years later, he began to wonder whether the song had served another purpose. Certainly, it helped him access feelings that often remained hidden throughout the rest of the week. The sadness was real. So was the longing. The grief, regret and loneliness all existed long before the music began. Yet that explanation never felt entirely complete.
The song did not simply help him remember the pain. Looking back, it seemed to help him return to it. Every week he revisited the same memories, the same questions and the same losses. The woman from the affair remained there, but so did younger versions of himself. The opportunities he believed he had missed. The people he believed he had hurt. The people he believed had hurt him. Although the details changed over time, the emotional destination rarely did.
As the years passed, he found himself wondering whether he had been doing something similar to a person who continually picks at a scab. The wound begins to heal. A protective layer forms. Then, just as the healing process begins, it is disturbed once again. The injury remains open, not because it cannot heal, but because the process is repeatedly interrupted.
Part of him suspected that this was exactly what he had been doing. Not because he enjoyed suffering. The pain was often overwhelming. There were periods when it left him exhausted, hopeless and convinced that he would never find a way out of it. Yet the suffering seemed to possess a strange significance. It felt meaningful, as though it contained something that must not be lost.
What if he stopped listening to the song? What if he stopped revisiting the memories? What if he stopped searching for answers within the same familiar stories? He was never entirely certain what would happen. Part of him feared that the wound might heal. More unsettling still was the possibility that, if it healed, something important might disappear with it.
The sadness had become intertwined with memories of love, longing, hope and loss. It connected him not only to people who were no longer present but also to versions of himself that no longer existed. To let go of the suffering sometimes felt dangerously close to letting go of them as well.
Perhaps that was why the ritual persisted for so long. The song offered no solutions. It changed nothing. The affair remained over. The questions remained unanswered. The search continued. Yet week after week he returned to the same place, as though some part of him still believed that what he was looking for might eventually be found there.
Looking back now, he is no longer convinced that the wound refused to heal. Perhaps some part of him believed that if the pain disappeared, the people and places attached to it might disappear too. For a long time, he mistook holding on to the pain for holding on to them.
The Scar
The song still exists. So do the memories.
Even now, years later, he can listen to it and find himself thinking about many of the same people and places that once left him devastated. The woman from the affair occasionally returns to his thoughts. Sometimes he wonders what became of her. Whether she found happiness. Whether she found peace. There are moments when he catches himself hoping that life eventually became kinder to her than it had been before they met.
The memories remain surprisingly vivid.
Certain moments still arrive with remarkable clarity. A particular conversation. A holiday. A look exchanged across a table. Fragments of a life that once felt impossibly important. The song can still lead him back towards those places if he allows it.
Yet something fundamental has changed.
The sadness remains accessible, but it no longer demands obedience. He no longer feels compelled to follow it wherever it leads. The tears that once seemed inevitable rarely arrive now. In their place there is something else. Reflection. Curiosity. Compassion. Occasionally even gratitude.
For a long time he believed that the song contained the pain. Looking back, he sees things differently. The song was never really about the woman, the affair or even the sadness itself. It had simply become attached to experiences that carried enormous emotional significance. The music opened a door, but the things waiting on the other side already belonged to him.
Perhaps that is why he can listen differently now.
The lyrics that once felt like a personal confession have become something broader. He finds himself hearing other people’s suffering within them as well as his own. Other people’s losses. Other people’s longing. The song has become less about revisiting a private wound and more about recognising something shared within the human experience.
The memories still carry emotion.
The scar remains.
But a scar is not the same thing as an open wound.
It does not bleed when touched. It simply reminds us that something happened there.
Sometimes he still thinks about the people who shaped that period of his life. The woman. The relationships that followed. The different versions of himself that seemed so convincing at the time. He suspects he always will. The difference is that he no longer needs to suffer in order to remember them.
The song can still open the same door from time to time.
What once felt like a home now feels more like a place he used to visit.
Psychodynamic Reflection
What first interested me about this story was the song itself. The ritual seemed unusual enough to invite questions. Yet over time it became clear that the music was merely the doorway into something much larger.
The deeper question is why somebody might find themselves returning to the same emotional experience over and over again, particularly when that experience causes such profound distress.
Sigmund Freud explored this phenomenon through what he called repetition compulsion. Freud observed that people often seem drawn towards repeating painful emotional experiences rather than moving away from them. We revisit familiar feelings, relationships and patterns, sometimes without fully understanding why. From the outside, this can appear irrational. Why would somebody voluntarily return to something that hurts? Yet psychologically, repetition often serves a purpose. It may represent an unconscious attempt to master, understand or finally resolve something that remains unfinished.
Seen through this lens, the ritual described in this story begins to look rather different. The protagonist was not simply listening to a song. He was repeatedly returning to an emotional landscape that contained love, loss, regret, longing and unanswered questions. Each week he travelled back to the same psychological place as though some part of him believed the answer might eventually be found there.
Yet repetition alone does not fully explain what was happening.
Donald Winnicott wrote about the importance of creating a space where emotional experience can be safely held and explored. What struck me whilst reflecting on this story was that the protagonist seemed to be attempting something similar long before he entered the therapy room. Sitting alone in his car, listening to the same song, he was creating a private ritual through which difficult feelings could emerge. The problem was that he remained alone with them. The music could open the door to grief, but it could not help him understand what lay beyond it.
This may help explain why the ritual persisted for so long. The feelings themselves were real. They demanded attention. Yet emotional experience and emotional understanding are not the same thing.
Carl Jung believed that aspects of ourselves often emerge indirectly through symbols rather than direct understanding. Certain images, stories, relationships or pieces of music can seem to carry an emotional significance that feels disproportionate to what they objectively are. Looking back, the song appears to function in precisely this way. It became attached to experiences that the protagonist could feel long before he could fully understand them. The music seemed to contain meaning that exceeded the song itself, drawing him repeatedly towards questions he was not yet capable of answering.
What therapy eventually offered was not an answer but a relationship in which those experiences could gradually be thought about rather than endlessly repeated.
It is important not to romanticise the role of those eight sessions. Looking back, they appear significant, but significance and transformation are not always the same thing. The protagonist did not leave therapy with a new understanding of himself. If anything, the questions seemed to multiply. More relationships followed. More losses. More confusion. There would be further periods of emotional turmoil, the ending of a long-term relationship and years of additional therapeutic work before many of these patterns became clearer.
This is often how psychological change occurs. We imagine dramatic breakthroughs and sudden revelations, yet meaningful understanding tends to emerge slowly. A conversation that seems insignificant at the time may acquire meaning years later. An experience that initially appears unsuccessful may quietly influence everything that follows. The journey towards understanding ourselves is rarely linear and seldom complete.
Perhaps the most significant shift in the story occurs towards the end. The song remains. The memories remain. The emotions remain. Yet the ritual loses its necessity. The protagonist no longer needs to dismantle himself before listening. He no longer needs to reopen the wound in order to feel connected to the people and experiences attached to it.
In psychodynamic terms, this reflects a movement from repetition towards integration.
At the beginning of the story, different parts of the protagonist seem to exist separately. The lover. The betrayer. The rescuer. The narcissist. The wounded man. Each appears to compete for ownership of the truth. By the end, none of these identities disappear. Instead, they become aspects of a more complete and coherent self.
Ready for the Next Step?
The protagonist in this story did not find a single answer that explained everything. In many ways, the questions became more complex before they became clearer. Yet something changed when he stopped searching for certainty and became curious about understanding himself more deeply.
Many people arrive in therapy carrying experiences that they have thought about repeatedly but never fully understood. They may find themselves returning to the same relationships, the same emotional patterns or the same questions without knowing why. Others arrive with a feeling that something important is missing, even when life appears relatively stable from the outside.
Psychodynamic therapy is less concerned with providing quick answers and more interested in exploring the deeper patterns that shape our emotional lives. Together, we look at recurring themes, relationships, memories and experiences, paying attention to how the past continues to influence the present. Often, what initially appears confusing begins to make greater sense when viewed within the wider context of a person’s history and emotional world.
Therapy is not about erasing painful memories or pretending difficult experiences never happened. Rather, it offers an opportunity to understand them differently. Over time, experiences that once felt overwhelming can become easier to hold, reflect upon and integrate into a more complete understanding of ourselves.
Perhaps the most important step is not finding the answer. Perhaps it is becoming curious enough to ask the question.
If any part of this story resonated with you, and you would like to explore your own experiences in a safe, confidential and non-judgemental space, I offer a free 30-minute video-call assessment with no obligation to continue.
Sometimes the next step begins with nothing more than a conversation.
For readers who are curious, the song that inspired this story was:
Youth — Daughter
https://youtu.be/6I1p_sXflQQ?list=RD6I1p_sXflQQ
Further Reading
Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: The Hogarth Press.
