The urge to avoid music that brings up trauma from the past is powerful, but it may be better to ‘actively engage’
W
hen Bonnie hears the opening bars of the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, she is transported back to 1997. But it isn’t a joyful memory that comes to mind; it is the painful recollection of driving home from school and seeing the sheriff changing a lock on her house.
Then a teenager, Bonnie and her family were about to be evicted. And the Verve’s song was everywhere.
“It was a big hit at the time, and it just seemed to be playing all the time, in takeaway shops and shopping centres, on the radio in the car. I just couldn’t get away from this song,” she says.
