Listen to music

While taking time to Rest, it sometimes helps to listen to sad/depressing/melancholy/dark music. It may help with Acknowledgment and introspection as well.

What music has helped you rest postbreakup, reflect, and feel the pain in doses small enough to work through without becoming incapacitated?

• Altered Images: "See Those Eyes" (listen to the lyrics: "you don't care about, you don't care about, that she'll forget about, she'll forget about {you}")
• Coldplay: "Parachutes"
• Elvis Costello
• +0 Tantek - IMHO Elvis Costello is ok not great for postbreakup, at least the Spike album. Does anyone have a specific Elvis Costello album/song recommendation?
• The Cure
• Depeche Mode, both in general, and in particular the entire "Black Celebration" and "Violator" albums, as well as the song "Blasphemous Rumours"
• Meshell D-Neochello's "Bitter"
• Nick Drake
• Garbage, in particular "Stupid Girl", and "Cup of Coffee" from the album "beautifulgarbage"
• David Gray: "White Ladders" album, "This Years Love" in particular.
• Incubus "I Miss You"
• Bob Mould
• Neutral Milk Hotel
• Nine Inch Nails
• Radiohead: "Kid A" album, "How to Disappear Completely" in particular only if you really want to be incapacitated for a while. Also, from "The Bends", listen to "Street Spirit (Fade Out)."
• Lou Reed, "Perfect Day" from the Trainspotting soundtrack.
• Damien Rice, "O" album, in particular "Volcano" (you give me miles and miles of mountains and I'll ask for the sea)
• Elliot Smith
• Stars, e.g. albums "Set Yourself on Fire", "In Our Bedroom After the War"
• Taproot
• The Smiths
• They Might Be Giants: "They'll Need a Crane"
• 80s music in general - where even the love songs tend to be bittersweet. happy-bouncy-sounding but ultimately sad and melancholy.
• OMD
• New Order
• Jazz standards - some say they do the trick when hurting or swooning.

• music from the period of the relationship, aka the love themes, can be cathartic. As in, relisten as many times as you can until the effect has been numbed somewhat.

For some it is far too easy to suppress all the pain and hurt from a breakup in order to just deal with day to day things, whether work or other things, and after a while it becomes hard to conjure up that suppressed pain and hurt in order to reflect and process it (see Acknowledgment). Often sad music can help by acting as a trigger or key for accessing those suppressed feelings when you have put aside the time to go through them.