Classic Rock Summer Songs & Anxiety as a Habit

Can anxiety be a habit? I discuss the loop of Trigger >> Behavior >> Reward. Plus some classic rock summer jams, a bit on avoidance and tidbits from the book “Unwinding Anxiety” by neuroscientist Judson Brewer.

Songs in this episode:
Blister In The Sun by Violent Femmes,
Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie,
Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts

keywords: Anxiety, Worry, Rumination, Anxious, Mental health, Positive mindset, Anxiety relief, Music for mental health, Trauma recovery, Breaking mental patterns, Mindfulness strategies, Coping with social anxiety, Self-doubt solutions, Emotional well-being.

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Transcript

Thank you for joining me. I’m Danielle. If you’re new to Positively Chill, if this is your first episode, each week I pick a few songs with impactful music lyrics and discuss their relationship to mental health challenges. I hope it helps you discover some new music you wouldn’t normally listen to, gain some insights on mental health challenges and maybe soak up some good vibes.

I hope everyone is having a good week. Hope everyone is staying cool. It’s hot out there. I now know what hell feels like. I was driving through a rural area a few days ago on my way to one of the national parks for a little getaway, and I stopped in this little town to get groceries and my car temp said 120 degrees. I have never, ever been in such hot temperatures. I was in Vegas once in the summer and that wasn’t even over 100. Insane. I felt like I was actually melting. So I’ve been trying to stay hydrated, which is very hard for me given my coffee consumption. I think all the coffee just negates the water I drink. I realized last week that… I had bought a new cold brew from Target, one that I had never tried, and I was drinking it for a few weeks before I realized last week that it was concentrated. I was supposed to add water - 50 mix and 50 water - which I was not. I was just drinking straight concentrated coffee and then wondering why I was jittery and feeling like Hulk Hogan and the Hawaiian Punch Guy about to bust through a wall. Wait, that wasn’t the Hawaiian Punch guy that goes through the wall. Fruit Punch? What is it? I cannot remember, I am doubting myself. Ah! Not Sunny D. There was no Sunny D guy. It was “soda, purple stuff, Sunny D.” That was the commercial. Anyway, my brain is overstimulated from caffeine and also cannot remember who that guy was smashing through the wall in the 90s commercial. It will come to me. Probably not any time soon. Probably in about 8 days when I am trying to fall asleep. Classic. 

Anyway, let’s get on with it, shall we? This week’s theme is Classic Rock Summer Songs. First song is “Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes in honor of global warming and the 120 degree temp I survived. To be fair, I went from the AC in my car to the AC in the store and back, so “survive” is a strong word. I feel for people who have jobs that require them to be outdoors. The true survivors. Anyway, this is the first song on the first Violent Femmes album, and there isn’t specific lyrics that I pulled out, but when I was listening to the lyrics I kept thinking “what is this song even about?” I couldn’t understand. So I fired up trusty ol’ Google and found an interview with frontman and songwriter, Gordon Gano, who said this, “I don’t think there’s a whole lot to understand with the lyrics.” I appreciate that honesty. Sometimes musicians are so into talking about their craft and their authenticity and the art that we can forget that sometimes you just gotta rhyme to make the song work. That’s it. Not that deep. Anyway, I don’t have much to say about this song, but I just felt like the title 

Next song is “Under Pressure” by Queen with David Bowie. This is totally unrelated to the song but it’s about David Bowie so I will just throw it in now. When I was little, I loved the movie Labyrinth, which if you’re not familiar, it’s a Jim Henson movie with David Bowie. And if you haven’t seen it, you may be wondering how Jim Henson and David Bowie go together. Yea, it’s like an acid trip. An acid trip for kids in the early 80s, or whenever that movie came out. David Bowie plays Jareth, the Goblin King, who kidnaps a baby, for seemingly no reason. It was never clear why he was kidnapping babies, besides shits and giggles. Anyway, I recently watched it as an adult and am surprised I didn’t have more nightmares as a child. That movie - although cute, it’s odd - but anyway, that movie and the movie Return to Oz. The 80s was a wild time for children’s movies. If you haven’t seen Return to Oz, is the same story as The Wizard of Oz, but instead of flying monkeys they have these weird men that have rollers skates on their feet and hands and ride around on all fours, chasing Dorothy and her crew. And the wicked witch has a bunch of heads - women’s heads - stored in these glass cases in her castle. Also seemingly for no reason. She would take the heads out and detach her own head to put on other women’s heads? Something like that. I am sure if I rewatched it as an adult I would understand why but honestly I’m too afraid. I just remember it being traumatic as a child and was like “why are my parents letting me watch this?” Anyway, the 80s was like the wild west for kids movies. So to get back to the song, the lyrics I like are: “That's the terror of knowing what this world is about. Watchin' some good friends screamin', "Let me out." Pray tomorrow gets me higher. Pressure on people, people on streets.”

It’s the song about the evergreen intense strain and pressures of life. Lately it feels like a constant battering of stresses - whether that’s from war, politics, pandemics. The list goes on and on. And it’s no wonder why mental health issues are on the rise. Studies have shown a significant rise in anxiety disorders. For instance, the World Health Organization reported a 25% increase in anxiety and depression globally in the first year of the pandemic, which of course makes sense. 

I have been reading a book called “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal your Mind” by Judson Brewer who is a Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist. The interesting thing about this book is that the author reframes anxiety as a habit. We all know what anxiety can feel like in the body - feeling of clenching, of contraction. Sometimes it feels like heat, this restless quality of our experience. But that feeling of worry can also be a mental behavior. The way that habits form, including anxiety, is that there is a trigger, then a behavior and then a reward. In the context of anxiety, what’s the trigger? A thought or emotion. What’s the behavior? Worrying. What's the reward? Avoidance or overthinking or overplanning. And we get stuck in that loop.

Reward-based learning is built into us as humans. Our ancient ancestors needed it when they would go out and find food. If we found food or hunted an animal successfully in one spot, then we had to remember that location, and vice versa, meaning we had to learn and remember where the danger was. But our brain cannot differentiate between real danger - like an alligator when you’re hunting - with modern danger - a late-night text from your ex. So reward-based learning can exacerbate anxiety through a cycle of reinforcement. Here's how it works: When we engage in behaviors or thought patterns that temporarily reduce anxiety (like seeking reassurance or engaging in avoidance), our brain starts to associate these behaviors with a sense of relief. This creates a cycle where the brain learns to rely on these behaviors to manage anxiety. However, this cycle can lead to increased anxiety over time because the behaviors are often only temporarily effective and may not address the root causes of anxiety. The brain then becomes trapped in a loop of seeking immediate rewards or relief, which perpetuates and intensifies the anxiety. This feedback loop due to prolonged anxiety can cause persistent activation of the stress response, leading to chronic high levels of noradrenaline, which can exacerbate feelings of anxiety and nervousness.

When we are anxious, our default mode network is activated and the frontal cortex goes offline. The frontal cortex is responsible for long-term planning and decision making - like foresight - so when it’s offline due to anxiety, we aren’t making our best decisions. We’ve all felt this. When we are in a high-stress moment, we sometimes make the stupid decisions or mistakes because our front cortex is like “bye, babe.”

So to go back to the idea of anxiety as a habit, I recently read a quote from Samuel Jackson, an English writer, that I thought was so spot-on. “The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” So how do break this habit? The author suggests mapping out the trigger, behavior and reward. It looks like this. First, identify the trigger: what starts the habit. It can be something you see or a place you visit, or just a thought, emotion, or physical sensation. Next identify the behavior, or the habit itself. It could be a physical behavior like biting your nails or too much time on social media. It can also be a mental behavior like worrying or self-judgement. Next, identify the result, which is how you feel after the behavior. In the short term, this might feel good, but in the long term, not as much. Identifying, recognizing and understanding this habit loop will help with your mindfulness and awareness. I am excited to try these concepts and report back to y’all.

I know that we talk about avoidance in a bad way, and it be clear, it’s is but it’s a self-protection mechanism. It’s not about being lazy or something, it’s about trying to protect yourself from the pain or struggle. We only feel the pain of losing something or someone if we care for it/them. We only get upset or frustrated or depressed if things don’t work out when we care deeply about those things and are invested. If you don’t get the new job, get the date with the person you want, get the house you put a bid in on, that’s when we get upset and feel pain. We manage our own distress and pain for the future by staying distant in the present. When we are avoidant, we need to figure out where that happens - at the top of the funnel, mid-funnel or bottom of the funnel. Meaning, if it’s top of the funnel, a lot of our interactions cause us to be avoidant. Or is the bottom of the funnel where only deep relationships cause us to be avoidant? 

That cliche expression - it’s better to love and lost than to never love at all - is true, even not in romantic love, but just in anything. Generally, we don’t regret things that we put a lot of time, energy or effort into, even if we fail because we have given our all. Or, I should say, maybe we regret those things than the things we half-ass.

Sometimes there is a self-fulfilling prophecy with avoidance. We are trying to avoid the thing that we know will cause us pain and then it happens anyway, and we say to ourselves “see, told you so. Told you this was going to happen.” Maybe that thing wouldn’t have happened if you did not avoid it - put off that tough conversation, XYZ. Maybe it would have. There’s really no way to know. But paradoxically, the more love, effort, time, investment we put into things and the less avoiding we do, generally, those outcomes are more positive than the ones we avoided. Even if the outcomes aren’t better, we will likely regret them less knowing that we did our best. 

Last song is Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts. For me, this song has always just been a feel-good classic about enjoying some simple pleasures in life with the ones you love in the summer. And, like the song says, “Lets me know everything's all right.” But then I was researching the song and Seals & Crofts for this episode and read this interesting quote. In 1975, Seals said in an interview that "Summer Breeze" was "A very simple song about a man coming home from work and hearing the dog barking and things like that, and to a lot of people the song's about looking for security. Our meaning goes further than that, for a prison can be the prison of self and a person can become insecure and paranoid if he doesn't have a direction in his personal life." When I read that, I thought, “damn, how’d get there from those lyrics?” I have said it before and will say it again, it’s what I love about music. That everyone has their own interpretation of lyrics and the meaning can hit in different ways depending on what you’re experiencing in your life. 

Having purpose and direction - or lack there of - is a tough thing to nail down. That’s a whole separate episode in and of itself. But just one thing on this… Fully claiming what we can do will make us accept what we can’t do. Understand and recognize our limitations, not to beat ourselves up or feel bad about them, but because we should not waste time reaching for things that will never be within our grasp. Spinning your wheels will eat up valuable time and take you away from the present. Spending time on what you “ought to be doing” - what others have told you need to do, what society has told you you need to to do - will consume time and brain power. Let go of what you “ought to do.” Personally, I have a ton of regret spending time on things I felt like I ought to do, was told that it has something is done or just saw it around me in society. Had I given more thought to what I wanted, what I felt like my direction should be, things would definitely be different now. Not saying better or worse, but certainly different.

Like in the previous episodes, I’d like to end with an affirmation. If it feels good to repeat the affirmation aloud - if that’s part of your journey - then do so, otherwise please just listen. The affirmation will be at the end.

Believe in HOPE (hold on, pain ends). No matter how challenging things may seem, remember that difficult times are temporary. Pain and struggles are a part of life, but they do not define your journey. Hold on to the belief that brighter days are ahead. Your resilience and strength will see you through the toughest moments. Every challenge you face is an opportunity for growth and transformation. Trust in the process and have faith in your ability to overcome. Keep going, knowing that the pain will end, and you will emerge stronger and more resilient. Let hope be your guiding light, reminding you that after every storm, the sun will shine again. You have the power to endure, to heal, and to thrive. 

The affirmation is: I have the power to endure, to heal, and to thrive.

That’s it. That’s the episode. If you liked this episode or any episode, please subscribe, rate and/or review. Please and thank you. If you’d like to connect with me, send me a note on IG at @positively_chill. I’d love to hear from you.

Remember, be kind to yourself. Show yourself the same grace you show the people you love. And remember, you can do hard things. And, of course, please stay chill.