Anxiety is what you feel when you are tense, afraid or worried. It can be experienced through both your thoughts and feelings, as well as physical sensations. While anxiety can be a natural human response, sometimes symptoms can be acute enough to qualify as a generalized anxiety disorder. This may include constant worrying that is accompanied by difficulty concentrating or an ongoing sense of dread.

Many are already aware of music’s ability to impact their mood, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it has been found to calm the body and mind in a number of different ways.

So, how does music reduce anxiety? Here are a number of ways in which using music to relieve stress and anxiety can be effective.

Cortisol Reduction

The body responds to stressful situations by releasing hormones like cortisol. While this is helpful in the short-term and in the face of physical threats (such as jumping out the way of a moving car), cortisol can also be released chronically in response to mental stressors such as a break up or losing your job. In these cases, excess cortisol is not only unhelpful, it also increases your anxiety levels and can lead to physical issues such as a compromised immune system and excess inflammation.

So, does music reduce anxiety through cortisol reduction? The short answer is yes. Listening to music has been shown to decrease cortisol production, which can help reduce the body’s fight-or-flight stress responses and subsequently minimize feelings of stress.

Increase in Dopamine

Music can help boost the feel-good chemicals in your brain. Listening to or making music activates the reward center of your brain, releasing dopamine: a neurotransmitter associated with reward and motivation. When pleasure responses such as these are increased, feelings of stress and anxiety conversely diminish.

Calming of the Nervous System

If you are wondering how music can reduce anxiety, some of its power can be found in its rhythm. The tempo of music you listen to can affect your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Quicker musical beats can be energizing, while slower music, with a BPM of 60 to 80, can moderate your physiological responses to have a more calming effect.

Non-Verbal Release

Individuals sometimes need to express emotions or compressed energy. This is particularly needed when experiencing an extended fight-or-flight state, which may produce symptoms such as tense muscles, sweating and a quickened heart rate. How does music reduce anxiety in this regard? Creating, listening to or moving to music can help expel stored stress from the mind and body when language isn’t enough.

Rooting You in the Present

Rumination – worrying about the same events in your past or future over and over – is a key player in stress and anxiety. These thoughts can make you feel as if you lack control, as the mind tends to feel calmer in situations where some level of control is possible. Using music to relieve stress and anxiety helps pull the mind out of its overthinking state. Listening, dancing or clapping to music brings the body into the present, which in itself can help reduce stress, as well as allowing you to have agency over your body.

Form of Distraction

Does music help reduce anxiety simply by serving as a distraction? Well, listening to and interpreting music is a complex process in the human brain, and it also triggers a pleasure response. For these reasons, it serves as an absorbing activity, allowing the brain to focus on music signals and naturally exclude other thoughts, including sensations of stress and anxiety. A musical distraction is more calming than others because of its finite nature: a song has a beginning and an end, whereas other activities such as scrolling through social media are endless and therefore still stress-provoking.

Bolsters Creativity

When you’re anxious, your nervous system shifts into its reactive fight-or-flight mode, and out of its creative gear. Engaging with music helps shift the body back into its default rest-and-digest mode, which allows for more feelings of relaxation as well as focused and creative thought.

While music can be a powerful tool for shifting and regulating emotional states, it is only one of many ways to address stress and tension.

If you are relying on music to relieve your stress and anxiety, consider activities such as exercising, reducing substance use, medication and different modes of therapy, which can also help you address your symptoms.