The Most Relaxing Song In The World, According To Research
Science says you can cut your anxiety in half by listening to this song.
Supamotionstock.com/ Shutterstock People with anxiety handle how they grapple with the disorder in different ways.
Some ignore it, others use medication, and others seek out talk therapy.
I have tried all three of those and found that a combination of the second two is the most helpful.
That said, if you're a person with an anxiety disorder, you're not just going to magically one day be healed.
I manage my anxiety well, but I still get panic attacks and I still have anxious days. That just comes with the territory.
That's why, when I read that researchers have literally created a song that will reduce anxiety by 67% in everyone who listened to it, I basically went running for my headphones.
Researchers at MindLab in the UK teamed up with Marconi Union to try and create a song that was designed to soothe and reduce stress.
The musicians teamed up with sound therapists to create music that could lower the heart rate, blood pressure, and actual cortisol (the hormone that causes stress) levels of the people listening to it.
The end result is an 8-minute track called Weightless that the neuroscientists in charge of the program say is so effective that you SHOULD NOT listen to it while you drive.
As a person with a generalized anxiety disorder, I know how easy it is to feel isolated, desperate, and afraid.
If a song like this can take away some of that hurt, why not try it?
One thing I've discovered as I've begun to write more about anxiety and talk more about it on social media is that anxiety is more common than you might think, especially among people in Generation Y.
Why is this anxiety so common among me and my peers?
The answer is actually kind of surprising.
Researcher and writer Rachel Dove reported that more than half of all female university students report feeling anxiety, and in researching why, she found:
“The rise of technology, overly-protective parenting, and “exam-factory” schooling are among the reasons psychologists suggest for our generational angst. Another, brought up on multiple occasions by my peers and by psychologists I spoke to, is the luxury (as ungrateful as it sounds) of too much choice.”
It might sound silly, but it makes a lot of sense.
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Life can be a lot easier when you don't have any choices to make.
Being given a multitude of options can be, well, deeply overwhelming.
Combine that with the pressures of "success", whatever that means, and the fear of missing out on anything fun, perpetuated by social media and you've got a perfect firestorm for anxiety.
You need to find the treatment that works best for you.
It doesn't matter if that treatment is a song, a pill, a long walk, or talking to your therapist for an hour or two every week.
Do what you need to do to feel as awesome as possible, because you ARE awesome, and just because your brain goes a little haywire sometimes doesn't make you worth less as a person or less cool to know.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is an editor, freelance writer, former Senior Staff Writer for YourTango, and the former Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek. Her bylines have appeared in Fatherly, Gizmodo, Yahoo Life, Jezebel, Apartment Therapy, Bustle, Cosmopolitan, SheKnows, and many others.