https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6489303/
“Improvisational music therapy is suitable for basically all client groups without the need for specific musical training, and can be successfully applied even when one’s ability for verbal expression is limited [13, 14]. Any adult with normally developed cognitive skills and abstract thinking is able to connect symbolic and experience-based mental contents to their musical expression in clinical improvisations. They are also able to verbalise, in other words to further process, their music-based experiences and to interpret these experiences in the light of their current life situation [15].”
“The special potential of music to facilitate the processing of complex negative emotions is supported by music psychology research. Music listening has been shown to induce complex emotional experiences [22, 23], and to support elaborate self-regulatory processing of sometimes difficult, personal emotional states in everyday life [24]. Furthermore, music is often characterised—somewhat paradoxically—by pleasurable experiences of difficult emotions, such as sadness [25]. It has been argued that the enjoyment of sadness in music is explained by the capacity of music to allow simultaneous absorption, yet dissociation, from the affective content [26, 27]. Music characteristically allows access to various degrees of emotional nuances and intensities with simultaneous self-reflection, detachment, and elaborative awareness of these emotional nuances [28], supporting both experience and conceptual awareness of feelings [29]. Overall, the findings support the idea that music holds special potential for the self-reflective processing of complex, difficult, and even painful emotions.”