Music and Anxiety

I listen to and create music for many reasons, but recently I realized that I often play music to relieve my anxiety. Sometimes, even, to prevent anxiety.

When I'm on my own, I prefer loud, jarring, dark music. I love to play the themes of movie villains on the piano. I like to sing eerie songs. I write stories to the tune of horror movie soundtracks. The emotions and the darkness help me to process my feelings of fear and anger, and I don't usually stop playing until those feelings are completed and tucked into a memory file.

A personal favorite to play loud and hard.

But I have the most anxiety right as I am falling asleep. I don't want to be processing emotions late at night; I want to make sure they are all put away. I want to tuck them into bed at night so they don't rage and bother me. So I listen to gentle, cheerful music. Disney songs. Religious music. Mindy Gledhill. You know, bedtime songs.

I love love love singing about poetry.

My iPod is ready to switch from one extreme to the other: I built in a playlist called Light Heart and another called Dark Heart. It's all about the anxiety.

Actually, this whole light heart/dark heart thing describes my storytelling pretty accurately, too. Maybe it's not all about anxiety. ;)