How Selena Gomez And Julia Michaels Captured My Mental-Health Struggle In A Song

By Anna Sejuelas


Mental health bops, especially those by females, have become easier to find and groove to in the last year along with 1/2. Take Ariana Grande’s Billboard hit “Breathin’” off her album Sweetener, which chronicles her struggle with the side effects of PTSD; Olivia O’Brien’s “Empty”, which navigates depression and self-medication; and Florence and the Machine’s “Hunger”, which originated as a poem about Welch’s experience with a consuming food disorder at age 17.


A new one, Julia Michaels’s and Selena Gomez’s “Anxiety,” isn't only a girl-power anthem, nevertheless a trustworthy look into what it’s like to survive with anxiety on a day-to-day basis, from how it affects relationships — friendships or romantic — to overthinking every little thing. For me, someone who’s suffered from anxiety and depression, it communicates solidarity as well as a recognition that I’m also allowed to feel, even as soon as it means intense emotions often kept from societal acknowledgement.


I started seeing a therapist for depression any time As soon as I was 16, learning coping skills first through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which focuses on identifying unhealthy patterns in one’s mannerisms, and then through dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), which demands accepting mannerisms that one can’t change and creating positive alternatives through mindfulness. Therapy isn't for each person, yet I find it works for me.


Gomez, likewise, has been open about her struggle with anxiety and depression and her advocacy for going to therapy: “DBT has totally changed my life,” she told Vogue in 2017. “I wish more people would talk about therapy.” She’s quick to point out the pressure girls in the industry have on them to keep up appearances, to not show weakness and why it holds them back from being truthful about what they feel. “We ladies, we’re taught to be almost also resilient, to be strong and sexy and cool and laid-back; the girl who’s down,” she mentioned. “We also need to feel allowed to fall apart.”


Michaels, meanwhile, has long been outspoken about her battle with anxiety and why she also advantages from therapy, writing in an open letter to Glamour last month, “My first couple sessions, all I did was cry and panic. I didn’t realize how much emotional duress I was holding indoor my body... I learned that the more toxicity I surrounded myself with, the more toxic my mind became. The more therapy I did, the more the panic became far less and far less. I learned that for each thing to have anxiety about, I had an association to link it to.”


With the help of several therapists over the years, I’ve developed methods to use as soon as I’m feeling anxious so I can ground myself and stop the chaos in my mind, even if it’s for several minutes. Yet whenever my anxiety is at its worst and I don’t even give those coping skills a thought, my anxiety looks like disregarded text messages from companions and hook-ups asking to hang out and outstanding emails in my inbox. In the initial verse of “Anxiety,” Michaels shows she understands the feelings, singing, “Make all these plans with companions and hope they call and cancel / Then overthink about the things I’m missing / Right now I’m wishing I was with ‘em.” Cancelling plans might seem like a good idea in the moment, yet then I just be lying awake at night, sweating, my mind racing: Why did I cancel? Do they hate me? I’m such a bad friend.


When I disregard my companions because I’m anxious about conflict, it’s my anxiety swarming my mind with assumptions that isolating myself will somehow make the scenario fix itself or vanish altogether: Is it even worth it attempt to explain? Will it sound like I’m making excuses? This very pattern of overthinking motivated Michaels to write “Anxiety,” as she mentioned in an interview with Beats 1 Radio. “I sort of wanna talk about these categorize kind of things that I deal with on a day-to-day basis,” she mentioned. “Not just anxiety, nevertheless the fear of missing out and group kind of wanting to do things although never actually having the ability to go through with anything that you hope to do. It’s just a way into the mind of someone that has anxiety and has these struggles for someone that doesn’t understand it.”


On “Anxiety,” Michaels and Gomez both sing about how they were told that they could “take something to repair it” and that they “wish it was that simple.” I’ve been on three different types of anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications since I was 18 and have had both positive and negative experiences. If I noticed the correct antidepressant and the correct dosage, I felt more in control of my emotions, as though I may get by means of the day without being set off by something as tiny as forgetting my locker blend or getting off at the incorrect stop on the subway. Yet as soon as my depression is at its absolute worst, it looks like two-months’ worth of Prozac still sitting in unopened bottles in my kitchen cabinet. It’s the realization that, right after ignoring her calls and voicemails for a month, I should call my psychiatrist and set up an appointment.


“Feel like I’m routinely apologizing for feeling,” Michaels sings in the song’s pre-chorus. That’s exactly what anxiety does: requires we apologize categorize in attempt to protect ourselves. Yet this openness in talking about mental health and raising awareness creates a bond between people, including Michaels and Gomez. “You’re never alone in case you feel this way,” Gomez wrote in a poignant Instagram post prior to its release. For me, “Anxiety” is a declaration of just that: Michaels and Gomez are allowed to feel every emotion, no matter how messy or intense — and thus are all of us.


If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, head to halfofus.Com for ways to get help.