I've always pictured listening to "sad music" as a sort of equivalent to double-clutching a truck or stepping onto a moving walkway. The music has to be well-sy

I've always pictured listening to "sad music" as a sort of equivalent to double-clutching a truck or stepping onto a moving walkway. The music has to be well-synced emotionally or it'll just clash instead of applying useful pressure. There's also an aspect of externalizing the negative feelings to deal with them better. When it's deep, well-founded sadness that probably looks like catharsis, but it even works for 'pointless' sadness over sleep deprivation or an already-resolved problem. Anchoring those feelings to music essentially helps me play a trick on my monkey brain. "Sad for no reason" is hard to shake directly, so it can be easier to transition through "I'm sad and there's sad music, that must be the cause, clearly happy music will make me un-sad!"