How music helps combat anxiety through rhythm | AD

Humans are rhythmic creatures: everything we do comes from the pulse. Your heartbeat is a rhythm you can’t live without and today we’re going to discuss how tempo and rhythm can help you control your body in ways you might not have under your control otherwise.

Specifically, we’re going to discuss how tempo – in song and life – can adjust your psychology. It sounds complicated, but these are techniques and methods you can use all on your own to improve your mental and physical health.

If those sound like worthwhile uses of your time, read on…

The tempo of music is the pulse, the rhythm, the beat of it. It’s the predominating beats and the time between them, and how many of them you’re going to get in a minute. This is an interesting measure because it tells you how much is going on, in some ways.

It’s often a measure of the pace, which is an important piece of music. You don’t need to know how to write a symphony to understand the basics: tempo is one of the key aspects on how a song or piece of music affects how you feel.

It’s not just that, however. The song and it’s tempo will affect your mood andyour body/brain. It carries some effects that you might never have noticed, but that science has begun to unravel.

For example, music and it’s tempo/mood can affect your mood subconsciously, as well as having direct physical effects. You might be familiar with usingsome of these techniques when you’re studying or working hard, but how much deliberate thought did you give to them?

If you’ve ever gotten fired up in the gym to a specific song, it’s totally plausible that you’re experiencing the tempo of the song. This is something we see all the time with runners, for example, where pace is important for better running cadence – equally in rowing and cycling.

In these cases, what happens is that the tempo of the music adjusts your mental and physical state.

When you run to music, you’re tactically using it to increase your mental arousal/anxiety. This is because doing challenging things is often about increasing mental arousal and using the response, which boosts short-term performance.

On the other hand, too much of this anxiety/mental arousal can cause you to get flustered or lose focus. It also contributes to stress if over-used and can rapidly damage things like your mood, sleep quality, or mental health.

You want to increase short-term mental arousal/anxiety, but ensure that your overall levels are well managed. Fortunately, music can go both ways: it can promote relaxation and combat anxiety as much as it can elevate them.

While up-tempo music is known to increase mental arousal, the opposite is true: lower tempo, relaxing music can improve relaxation. This has the opposite effects: better rest, the ability to lower heart rate and anxiety, and overall improvements to ‘winding down’. These are the benefits that are key to recovery.

The stress you expose your body to is not fundamentally different from the kind your mind experiences. They’re combined to determine how stressed you are at both a physiological and psychological level.

Sure, those long work hours might not wear down your muscles, but your physical and mental health take a hit. As a result, the changes you experience to your mental arousal are tied closely to your body and brain.

For example, excessive chronic stress is a risk factor for common problems like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and mood disorders like depression. These are all significant changes that you want to avoid.

Equally, excessive stress has real knock-on issues. One you’ll notice rapidly is poor quality sleep, as well as even being restless and waking up in the night. Similarly, you’ll experience way more fatigue if you’re constantly struggling to relax, as well as poor recovery from exercise, and low mental performance.

Basically, if you’re chronically stressed you’re going to be chronically sub-optimal. It’s a health risk, and it’s a risk factor for mood disorders, physical disorders, and mental decline. If you’re not certain yet, it’s really worth avoiding and fighting!

The role of music is to aid in active relaxation. It’s exactly what it sounds like: taking time to deliberately relax. This doesn’t mean laying on the sofa watching a tv series – it means actively taking some steps to change your habits to relax effectively.

Common examples of yoga and meditation aren’t for everyone, but they work. Equally, reading a good book while listening to low-tempo, ambient music is a good practice. You could also stretch to music, if you’re trying to improve your health, fitness, and performance.

The best place to look is for tempos that are at – or below – 80 beats per minute. BPM, the unit we use to measure song tempo, is a good indicator. If you also pay attention to the mood of the piece – ideally something relaxing and sedate – you can build a great playlist for relaxing.

This is one of the reasons why low-tempo, smooth jazz is really popular. Equally, it’s 21st-century successor LoFi music is really popular for promoting a relaxed, focused environment. You can go for this kind of vibe in most genres if you know the BPM and the overall vibe of the songs!

In this way, you can start taking control of these subconscious and physical processes yourself. Just like you might use them to amp yourself up, you can go the other way and wind down with calming sounds and environments.

You should especially consider the things you expose yourself to in the hour or two before sleep. Too many loud noises, high-tempo songs, or screens all contribute to high pre-sleep anxiety and thus poor sleep quality. Define this as relaxation time and you’ll notice better performance in everything the next day!

Equally, the combination of tempo and relaxation are great for the mind. Studies tell us that a steady tempo is great for memory, which is also bolstered by better relaxation/sleep quality.

This makes proper tempo and it’s effects on the body/mind. This kind of small change and mindful use of music, tempo, and relaxation all add up to better recovery and performance. You can improve almost every aspect of your life by controlling your anxiety and balancing it with relaxation.

Tempo is one tool to this end, and it’s one you can start being mindful of and implementing right now!

There are few things that have as much effect on your health as the balance between stress and relaxation. It’s one of the conditions of modern life that we’re stressed all the time and struggle to find balance.

This is harmful to your health at every level – physical and mental. Something as simple as knowing what tempos are for, and how you can use them to help you relax effectively, can be a significant bonus in the long term.

Take control of yourself, your body, and how you feel on a day to day basis. It’s a small step away and you can make significant changes to your entire existence. You can find song BPMs online and you can look up the ones you already know to get a better idea of what you’re looking for!

Letting go

One of my worst traits. My biggest trigger. My hardest challenge.

Letting go is always hard no matter who you are or what you have been through. There may be many reasons why you have to let go; because they move on without you, life is taking its natural course, toxicity or because it's what you have to do to stay alive even if letting go is the last thing you want to do.

I've had to let go of many things in my life or should I say people. Material things don't hold that much importance.

As a child I let go of friends and family; not that I wanted to of course. At that age you just see it is as part of life; a grieving process and something that cannot be helped. As I grew older not everything followed a natural course and at one point I lost the family unit that every child feels safe in. It was from then when letting go became really hard and torturous. We all internalise things in different ways and it left me feeling as if I could die when I let go and in some respects it still does today.

Ever since that point I've lost many people. I've lost teachers who gave me life lessons I will always carry with me and family and pets that understood me like no-one else could. But even though they may not be present they are still with me in the decisions I make. Everyone is a lesson.

Recently I've been faced with so much loss that I had almost let go of myself. A lot of the time, I still feel this way. The people I hold so close to my heart had to leave or are in the process of doing so and it's heart-wrenching and hell-like. I find myself spending a lot of time in my bed with what feels like a bullet wound in my chest. My eyes burn with the lack of sleep and nightmares and trying to work efficiently is tough. I don't talk about my loss in perhaps the way I should because most of the time I don't even understand the feelings myself and sometimes I wonder if I ever will. People always say that there comes time where you become numb or can look back at past events and not feel like it's debilitating. One day I hope I can be like that.

Sometimes loss is our choice  and sometimes it isn't, but regardless the pain can be the same. You shouldn't need to speak openly for people to realise how deep the pain of loss is. It can create torturous pain which can present itself to the world in uncharasmastic ways; you can look selfish or as if you don't care, when the exact opposite can be true. Remember that assumptions in times of loss can be so dangerous and you should always ask someone to find out the truth; always let them share their story of loss because sometimes we can get things wrong and we can be angry and nasty because of their reactive actions. Loss is not a simple process and sometimes an apology when we get things wrong is all they need because you never know how close to the edge they are. Loss can be a truly difficult time.

One day I want to be able to look back with joy, with the happiness of the good memories and not feel death where there is no grief. I don't want to keep feeling like I've got weights in my shoes and having thoughts go round in my head forever until I've lost my sanity. I don't want to be in denial and then feel anger and not being able to act how I want because of the pain I feel. I don't want to worry about what my future is going to be like without them and how I will cope. But I know that one day I will be able to look forward to the next day and have restful sleep. I will have fondness in my heart and love and as long as I know the feelings that I have are true, even though I cannot act on them, does not give me anything to be ashamed of. Those feelings can never be taken away from me no matter what actions are in the present.

...and one day, the loss will not longer feel like you've lost yourself and leave you wanting to lose your life. It will leave you with the will to breathe.

Why the answers are not at the bottom of the bottle

It's become part of normal life that you have a beer after work or a glass of wine after a hard day and it's never really questioned. After all it can help you to relax. Drinking socially and out and about can be a good part of relaxation too and having fun, as long as all of this is done in moderation. It's also become very normal to drown your sorrows in drink and become a bit of a 'Bridget Jones' or have a wild night out after you've experienced something stressful or upsetting. I know that I have and so have many of my friends and sometimes it's just what you need. But again, in moderation. What it's not going to do, is change the situation or help you find any answers. This will only numb the pain for while and that's if you don't react negatively react to alcohol...

I would be lying if I said that I've never had a drink when I've been upset or down, or had it to just feel a little bit less. Last year I found myself getting into a bit of a habit that when I was stressed or sad, I would have something to drink, which never really made me feel much better. Rather, it made me feel more out of control or would just knock me out to sleep only to wake up in the morning to realise I still felt the same. I knew at the time that it wasn't the answer and I did quickly snap out of it and went back to drinking only socially or having a drink, very rarely, to relax. But as with anything along a journey of healing and recovery, it is never smooth and there are moments when your bad habits can come creeping back in and that's not a bad thing, it's just human nature. The other night, I found myself doing a bit of a Bridget Jones and watching Stranger things whilst having a bottle of wine that I had left over from a meal. I don't think I was really concentrating on what I was drinking or really cared, because it was nice not to have to feel for a while. It all soon came crashing down to earth when I was very sick afterwards then lost a night's sleep. It's not the best idea I've ever had, but for that short while, everything felt okay. Reality hit me not too long after and showed me that the answers to my problems are not going to be at the bottom of a bottle. By drinking, I'm not suddenly going to come up with the best idea or solution and never feel pain again and my life isn't going to drastically change just from a drink.

I promptly snapped myself out of it. I realised that my body was physically telling me that it didn't like what I was doing alongside recognising that nothing changes from having one to many drinks. But what does change things, is actually acting and facing issues head on. I made the decision to throw all of my alcohol in my flat away that day. That way I have to deal with my issues head on, not numb myself and definitely not get stuck into an addictive pattern which I know I could do.

I am still more than happy to drink socially, or have a drink after a hard day but being excessive? No. As much as sometimes it sounds like a nice break, it's definitely not the answer and isn't productive in any way. It's an endless cycle. Problems need to be faced whether we like it or not and the only way of getting through them, is to actually get through them. I think we can forget that we are in control of our own lives and it's how we deal with it that matters, because drowning your sorrows? Well, they don't actually drown.