Let Music Be Your Jumper Cables

So if you, like me, have a host of mental health issues, you already know what “rock bottom” means. For some background, my brain is riddled with clinical depression, anxiety, major panic disorder, as well as autism (Asperger’s), and ADD. Nightmares are a nightly occurrence and I get regular panic attacks. I am a mess of unbalanced mental chemistry. I also work multiple jobs and am in the process of returning to school (which, let’s be honest, is almost more stressful than actually being IN school). I’m certain most of you have something similar going on in your own lives.

Quarantine has hit hard for people like us (I assume you relate, seeing as how you’re reading this), and this past week I and my partner have been cooped up in the house after he had to get tested for a potential Covid exposure at work. Prior to this, I had been doing fairly well at my job, recently started an Etsy shop, and had the chance to refinance my car loan to take a small load off my financial burdens. Our lock-in, however, was a major step backward.

The first day I took what I considered a well-deserved rest. I stayed in my jammies, ate a bunch of Thanksgiving leftovers, did some embroidery, and took a nap. An easy, restful day. The next day, I slept way in. I spent most of it watching YouTube videos and pacing around my craft room from project to project, not really accomplishing anything. Took another nap. The next day, rinse and repeat. That evening I was feeling pretty suicidal. I scratched at my arm for a bit with a Xacto knife (Disclaimer: Don’t do that. I shouldn’t do it either. I’m working on it) and then texted with a crisis counselor for a while.

The fourth day, after a round of nightmares that kept me up till about 2 am, I woke to my lovely partner nudging me with a mug of coffee. I took a sip, set it aside, and then slept until 4 pm. I felt like hot, smelly garbage when I woke up. My cats were both asleep on my legs, an indicator that I hadn’t moved in several hours. My coffee was definitely cold. I felt stiff, and gross, and had a headache, and I probably would have kept sleeping if I hadn’t needed to pee. For me, this was an instance of “rock bottom.”

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and gave myself a small pep talk. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day feeling like this, and I had fallen so deep out of my routine it was going to take some strategizing to get back on track. So how did I get out of my slump? How did I face the house that hadn’t been cleaned in nearly a week? The multiple piles of cat barf from my sensitive-stomached longhair disaster-muffin? Pants? What did I eat after having only popcorn and leftover green bean casserole for several days?

I have a little mantra to help keep me from getting overwhelmed by a long to-do list. “Just Three Things.” If I accomplish three tasks per day, I can go to bed feeling satisfied and accomplished, feeling like I didn’t waste my day. It’s a mantra that’s helped combat some deep self-hatred and depressive slumps over the years, and that was the first segment of my strategy. What are three things I can accomplish today?

Next, I decided to put on some upbeat music. This is key. This is the whole reason I’m writing this article. There are a few things I think everyone, especially neurodivergent folx, should have in their arsenal to combat mental health issues. Some people think of self-care as a plan of attack. I believe it’s more of a defense strategy. Self-care is putting up a shield and then doing whatever maintenance is necessary to keep that shield in place. The first thing I think everyone should have is a Rock Bottom Self-Care Kit, which I will detail in my next article. The second thing I think everyone needs-- and this is important for this particular situation-- is several music playlists, each for different scenarios. Label them as you will; for my emo ass, I use labels such as Venting, Lift Me from the Fog, Chill TF Out, Music I Could Show My Dad, etc. In this case I put on a playlist simply called Happy Shit.

Happy Shit is a playlist I made up of songs with particular feels to them. Faster tempos, heavy bass, songs that are catchy and that everybody knows. Dance songs, 80s bops, ladies’ power anthems, comedy music. The reason for these types of songs is that they are mindless. They are hypnotic in their simplicity. Knowing the lyrics means you can focus as much or as little on them as you need. Additionally, they’re earworms. There’s a reason these same types of songs are used at wedding parties. Everyone from your drunk bestie to your weak-ankled grandma can’t help but dance to them. Therefore, you too shall dance. Dance and dance and dance. According to a study by Frontiers in Psychology, detailed in an article on the US National Library of Medicine website, titled Effects of Dance Movement Therapy and Dance on Health-Related Psychological Outcomes: “This study contributes initial findings that DMT and dance interventions have persistent long-term effects. These encouraging results are limited by methodological shortcomings of the primary studies.”

Right… What does that even mean? It means that not a lot of research has been done on dance as a therapy, but what has been found supports a thing or two we already know. Dance is exercise. Club-style dancing is more specifically cardio. Exercise has been proven over and over to support mental health by increasing endorphin output. Dancing, whether you’re good at it or not, will feel good to do. Shaking your hips and bouncing to Cool Patrol by NSP will most definitely get your heart pumping and increase blood flow to your brain. Dance is a secret weapon to tackling your day’s tasks with very little warmup or focus required.

With the help of my playlist, I breezed through a stack of dirty dishes, my bedroom floor, three piles of cat barf/hairballs, and my whole bathroom, dancing the whole time. By 10 pm, I felt energized and accomplished. I made some ham n mac n cheese and some tea and ate a whole meal, then sat and relaxed with some crafting and more YouTube. My plan had been to stay up all night and all of the next day to try and reset my sleep schedule, which was very much out of whack, but I actually wound up falling asleep about 2 am and waking up about 9.

I want to stress that you should never feel bad for spending most of your day in bed due to depression. It’s a hard fight that the majority of adults will deal with at some point or another. But it’s important to keep getting up, eating, drinking water, taking your medicine, cleaning up, and practicing basic self-care. You are important, and you have many people rooting for you to move forward. I hope you give my advice today a try; in fact, I hope I’ve just given you a new secret weapon to get you through your day. You can follow me for more rock-bottom self-care advice in the future.