Mindful Listening: Bringing Music into Your Anxiety Experience

By Monty Daniel

Let’s admit it, anxiety is a prevalent issue. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety affects “40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.” With such a huge number of people struggling, this begs the question: besides traditional therapy, how can they combat this issue?

My answer is music. With having an anxiety disorder myself, I’ve found that having easy access to music is incredibly helpful when experiencing extreme bouts of anxiety, such as panic attacks. 

Everyone has differing perspectives as to what will help them, so, sometimes, it’s difficult to figure out what to listen to that will help when you’re in an anxiety-producing moment. Based on my personal experience, I suggest creating playlists based on moods and feelings, named in very simple ways so that your brain does not have too much to process when it’s already in the midst of over-analyzing (due to anxiety). For example, I have playlists simply named “Sad” and “Growth.” While these may not be the most creative and original titles, they get the point across to my anxious mind. Whatever you are feeling at the moment, in the simplest terms, should be the title of your playlist. If you are searching for something in that moment, you can name it that as well. 

Try to balance the playlists between different emotions as to not overwhelm yourself with too much music from one headspace. The songs you select should feel comfortable to you, like a hoodie you shroud yourself in to feel better when you’re sad. Look for music that you feel suits you best. 

While many will encourage you to not listen to sad music when you’re already anxious/empty/tired, I’m going to go directly against that notion. Do what you need to do to feel okay. For me, happy/upbeat music makes me feel more anxious, so at the beginning of a panic attack or extreme bout of anxiety, I listen to music that I can relate to (that being the exact opposite sort of material). In moments of anxiety, I want someone to tell me how they have been through this, too; the last thing I tend to want is someone preaching about how happy they are when I am clearly struggling. 

As emo as this may sound, music about anxiety, depression, trauma and anything else of the sort is imperative in my personal story of growth. So, if you think this could also be helpful to you, go ahead and listen to the music that makes you feel too much, the music that makes you cry, the music that you relate to. It may be able to help!

I would also suggest listening to your heart—literally. Check how fast your heart is beating, then match that pace to a piece of music. From there, you can go through a progression of slowing your heart rate down (throughout listening to slower-paced tunes) until you get to a manageable point. Since it may be difficult to do this in the moment, I would suggest making either one playlist or multiple playlists with tempos that start faster, and slow down as they progress to mimic the aforementioned process. I would also consider the volume of the music as you progress. To match the tempo of the music, the amplitude of the music should also decrease. Whether you do this manually as you listen or find music that has lower volumes is completely up to you. I would advise creating playlists that allow you to do both in case you want to be in full control of the volume or if you feel as though you cannot physically control the volume. 

While I can give suggestions all day, the most important thing is to simply go forth and create the playlists. I’m keeping this short and sweet, so, go on, open up your music streaming service of choice, and get cranking on some anxiety playlists today.