My playlists do not repeat, I used SMBC Inspired or Authentically AuDHD when processing distressing or triggering material.

Alexithymia does not simply mean difficulty naming emotions. It means the pipeline between somatic state and conscious awareness is delayed, scrambled, or absent. The internal experience of "I am anxious and under load" may never arrive as a legible message. What arrives instead — if anything — is a vague, unlocated discomfort, or nothing at all until the system crashes.

The conventional mindfulness instruction — "check in with how you're feeling" — structurally does not work when the interoceptive pipeline is unreliable. You cannot check in with a signal that isn't transmitting clearly.

Ree's system bypasses this entirely. The music does not ask the nervous system to report its state. It changes the state directly, and the state change produces the awareness. The body's posture — elbows tucked in, right shoulder hunched like a gargoyle wing — was already broadcasting distress. The problem was not that the signal wasn't there. The problem was that the receiver was offline, suppressed by hyperfocus on PTSD-adjacent content.

The song switched the receiver back on.

The existing Distributed Capability Architecture framework documents the music regulation system formally. This session adds a new and precise concept: the playlist as runway.

"All of my playlists have an occasional silly song because they are runways. The playlists act as runways between states. Uniquely AuDHD, SMBC Inspired and others deliberately shift in tempo and tone to help me regulate by phasing my neural state gently and predictably."

This is a fundamentally different model from any standard productivity or focus music framework. The comparison is instructive:

The 3-song minimum for circuit break and discharge phases is a calibrated design decision, not an arbitrary preference. It accounts for the alexithymia delay:

One song may not be enough. Funky Town and Paolo Nuttini have both been focused through in deep sessions — the signal simply didn't land on the first pass.

The first song in a circuit-break sequence may not register as a state change at all. The hyperfocus or threat state is still dominant. The second song begins to create friction with the current state. By the third, the contrast is undeniable and the landing is forced. The same logic applies to the energy discharge phase: the anxious energy may not be felt on the first upbeat track. The dance response — hips jiggling, stimming ramping up — escalates across the three songs as the body gradually detects and releases the stored charge.

This is the alexithymia delay built into the playlist architecture itself. The system does not require Ree to notice the state change. It keeps providing the signal until the body responds.

The physical response to the discharge phase is not fixed — it scales with the amount of stored energy:

• • Low residual energy: gentle jiggling, shoulder movement.

  • Moderate energy: hips moving, arm aerobics.

  • High energy: full stimming in Katsumi (wheelchair dancing) — the preferred outlet when space permits, as at hospital.

In the current home environment, space constrains the stim response to a more contained form. This is a noted friction point — the system works, but at reduced output capacity. In an environment with more room, the discharge would be fuller and faster. This is worth noting as a future environmental design consideration.