🎵 Music Regulation

Standard focus advice — timers, alarms, scheduled breaks — assumes that the nervous system can be switched between states on command. It cannot, at least not reliably, and especially not when alexithymia means the internal signal that you need a break may never arrive clearly.

The conventional failure mode looks like this: enter deep focus on high-stakes material, hyperfocus deepens, internal distress signals do not register, session continues past the point of safety, system crashes. The crash is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of exit infrastructure.

The music system solves the exit problem. It also solves the entry problem, the transition problem, the rumination problem, and the identity-under-institutional-pressure problem. These are not separate systems. They are the same system operating in different modes.

The most important design principle in this system is one that most music regulation advice completely misses: the transition is the mechanism, not the tempo.

Standard focus playlists maintain a consistent tempo to sustain a single state. This works for entry. It provides no exit. The session deepens until something external interrupts it — an alarm, a person, a crash.

My playlists are built as runways. Not a single track type sustained indefinitely, but a deliberate arc that phases the nervous system through states gradually and predictably. The structure looks like this:

The circuit break tracks (Tim Minchin, Disney, absurdist comedy songs) interrupt the spiral or the hyperfocus. They work through emotional incongruence — delight outcompetes threat state. The processor slows. A blink. A smile. And then, for the first time in however long, it becomes possible to notice the body.

The energy discharge tracks (high-energy, upbeat, danceable) give the stored nervous system arousal somewhere to go. Arm aerobics at the desk. Hips moving. Stimming ramping up. The physical energy leaves the body as kinetic output rather than staying locked in as tension.

The focus waves are the actual working sections — sustained, high-altitude processing.

The silence at the end is the final instruction. The playlist is not set to repeat. When it ends, silence arrives. Because of the alexithymia delay, this may not register immediately — work often continues for another 20 to 30 minutes. That is fine. The silence is patient. It will eventually get through. And when it does, it triggers a minimum self-care floor: get up, go to the toilet, drink something, assess what level of food preparation is realistic right now.

A repeating playlist generates no prompt. Ever. The old failure mode. The silence is the design.

The three-song minimum for circuit break and discharge phases accounts for the alexithymia delay directly.

One song may not be enough. I have focused straight through Funky Town. I have focused straight through Paolo Nuttini. The signal simply did not land on the first pass — the hyperfocus or threat state was still dominant.

The second song begins to create friction with the current state. By the third, the contrast is undeniable. The landing is forced.

The same logic applies to the discharge phase. The anxious energy may not be felt on the first upbeat track. The dance response escalates across three songs as the body gradually detects and releases the stored charge. The system does not require me to notice the state change. It keeps providing the signal until the body responds.

The circuit-break tracks — the absurd ones, the Disney ones, the comedy ones — were not discovered recently. They were being used for decades, across MP3 players, mixed tapes, and ripped CDs, long before any formal understanding of AuDHD or nervous system regulation existed.

And they were repeatedly removed.

The pattern: the songs would be edited out of playlists to reduce social embarrassment. Then, over time, the deep focus sessions would become harder to exit. The crashes would return. The songs would be quietly added back in. Then removed again. Then added back.

This cycle repeated across decades. The system kept being dismantled by social stigma and rebuilt by necessity.

If that pattern is familiar — if you have "embarrassing" songs that you keep removing and then quietly adding back because something stops working without them — it is worth considering that those songs may have been doing exactly this. A self-developed music regulation system, built intuitively through trial and error, before any framework existed to name it.

Keep the songs in. The regulation system that works in private also works in public. The cost of removing it is higher than the cost of someone raising an eyebrow at a Disney track.

Be yourselves. The quirks are functional.

You do not need to replicate this system exactly. The principles are transferable. The specific tracks are personal.

Step 1: Identify your five-minute obsession tracks.

What songs do you always skip to? What songs do you turn up? What songs make you move without deciding to? These are your candidates for the energy discharge phase.

Step 2: Identify your grounding tracks.

What songs feel like coming home? What songs make you feel most like yourself? These are your identity anchors and your landing tracks.

Step 3: Find your circuit breakers.

What songs make you smile involuntarily? What songs are slightly ridiculous and you know every word? These are your circuit breakers. Do not edit them out.

Step 4: Build the arc, not the shuffle.

Arrange the tracks deliberately. Focus waves first. Circuit break in the middle. Energy discharge after. Landing tracks at the end. Do not set it to repeat.

Step 5: Note the silence.

When the playlist ends, notice what happens. If you keep working for 20 minutes and then suddenly realise the music stopped, that is the alexithymia delay. The system is working. The silence got through eventually.

Step 6: Adjust over time.

The playlist is not fixed. It is maintained. Tracks that no longer land get replaced. New tracks that work get added. The arc gets tweaked as your state changes. This is not instability. It is calibration.