High/Low or Hiding in Plain Sight?
Is my cultural consumption a curated coping mechanism? My therapist might have warned me about this...
Hey Thinkers + Feelers, quick question, do you do therapy? 🤪 I know that’s not a quick, nor simple, question. In recent years I have found therapy simultaneously eye-opening and emotionally exhausting. My GP recently went full ‘real talk’ on me, saying my reliance on sleep is an act of escapist dissociation. I scoffed in disbelief, only to unpack it in therapy a week later and… well… let’s just say I ended up chomping on a gigantic slice of humble pie. Naturally, this spurred a comprehensive cognitive analysis of my world, which led me to a startling thought… is my insatiable appetite for high/low culture also a coping mechanism? Say it isn’t so…
That’s why I’ve curated ‘The Less I Know The Better’ by Tame Impala for this reading experience. Kevin Parker's psychedelic indie vibes create a deceptively upbeat sound that masks stories of denial and avoidance (sound familiar?). Sometimes we prefer not to look at our own actions too closely, even when our therapist instructs us to do so. This exploration started as more journal entry than essay, until I pondered, if I am having this evolving realisation, then others might be on the same wave length, too. No? Whoops, as you were. Yes? Hit play and let’s rise this realisation wave together.
My phone is a gallery of escape hatches.
17 carefully curated Spotify playlists, dozens of podcast subscriptions, Netflix queues stretching into infinity, Instagram algorithms that know me better than some of my friends.
With the tap of my finger, I'm elsewhere: immersed in Hollywood true crime investigations, floating on lo-fi beats, or disappearing into another episode of a sitcom I've already watched 11 times. I am starting to think that this isn't mere entertainment anymore, it's my armour against the deafening silence of my own thoughts. Yikes.
The modern millennial's mind isn't just busy; it's strategically overscheduled. We've mastered the art of constant consumption - podcasts that make us feel intellectually robust, music that precisely calibrates our emotions, TV shows we binge not only for pleasure but for escape. We swap recommendations like survival tools: 'This playlist got me through my breakup,' or 'This podcast will help you understand your anxiety,' as if the right audio track might finally make sense of our fractured lives.
Headphones On. World Off.
My headphones activate my forcefield, every carefully selected song is another brick in the wall between myself and whatever I'm avoiding. The algorithm serves up the sonic antidote to most of my unwelcome feelings. Have I mastered the art of aesthetic escapism? Am I curating these playlists like emotional bomb shelters? Maybe I've learned to hide in plain sight this way, physically present while my consciousness slips away into my constructed sound universe where overthinking is a feature, not a defect.
My headphones aren't only an accessory, they're architecture, building rooms within rooms where I can exist, escape, evaporate, dissociate.
Scene #47: Me, standing in the supermarket aisle, staring at the dairy-free yoghurt section like it holds the answers to my ever-expanding career crisis. I've been here for 12 minutes, spiralling over whether I was too rude in an email this morning. AirPods in, I resume listening to Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain, nodding along as if Emma's existential musings are a balm for my own. I decide on the almond yoghurt. Immediately regretted it.
Curating My Way to Relevance
I know this is a humble brag. Throughout my life multiple people have described me as 'cultured', ‘cosmopolitan’ even.
Often, I would beam with pride in reply, basking in the validation of my cultural capital. What folks don't know is that my encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure indie bands and niche podcasts isn't solely the result of genuine curiosity, but rather, a coyly crafted persona I've likely been constructing since university. If I can quote statistics about gender inequality while also naming every member of BlackPink, maybe no one will notice that beneath the surface I am a particularly sensitive soufflé, and that part of my five-year plan is 'continue to exist and hopefully figure it out eventually.'
Scene: Me, presenting at an industry conference and instead of saying 'CX' (as in 'Customer Experience') it sounds more like I say 'sex' in the sentence 'sex best practice'. Smirks and snickers abound. After what feels like 3 hours of presenting (in actual fact it was only 13 mins), I plug in my headphones and queue up How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, because nothing soothes my bruised ego like hearing accomplished people describe their worst career moments. I hyperfixate on whether I should've spoken slower, smiled more, or never spoken at all.
Im the girl who listens to everything, actually. Maybe not entirely because I'm naturally eclectic, but because I've internalised the universal millennial commandment:
‘Thou Shalt Have Diverse Taste, And Thou Shalt Broadcast It Constantly, Lest Someone Suspect You Are Not Sufficiently Interesting.'
The algorithm feeds me just enough sad girl folk songs to feel seen, just enough global beats to feel worldly, and just enough nostalgic bangers to feel connected to my youth. I consume it all with fervour, a cultural omnivore with an insatiable appetite and the attention span of a particularly caffeinated gnat who's just discovered TikTok.
AirPod Voices in My Head Are More Comforting Than My Own
'Have you listened to the latest episode of [insert intellectual-sounding podcast]?' is my version of an interesting personality.
And you had better believe I've got the whole range covered: investigative journalism that makes me feel righteously angry, comedy shows that make me feel like I'm hanging out with friends who are significantly funnier than my actual friends, interview series that make me feel like I'm improving myself while I'm actually just folding laundry and thinking about my coffee tomorrow morning.
I listen while cooking, while showering, while falling asleep. I listen while walking to the shop to buy milk. God forbid I spend four minutes alone with my thoughts. Who knows what existential dread might creep in between my apartment and Coles? Being alone with my thoughts in my 30s means confronting the fact that I still don't know the best way to do my tax, that my singledom may as well be a flashing neon sign plastered to my forehead, that my biological clock is less 'ticking' and more 'blaring alarm with strobe lights'.
Scene: Me, lying awake at 3 AM, brain spinning with climate anxiety, relationship failures, and the sudden realisation that I have no idea how to actually clean the inside of an oven. Me, frantically reaching for my phone to replay the 'Sleep Cove' podcast where an old man with a suspiciously soft, smooth and oddly sensual voice describes walking through a lavender field in Provence. But first, some memes.
Emotional Regulation via Remote Control
There's a special kind of comfort in fictional worlds with perfectly scripted endings. You know, the kind where problems resolve in twenty-three minutes. The kind where people's apartments are inexplicably spacious despite their barista salaries. The kind that asks nothing of you except to keep watching.
Scene: Me, curled into the same depression dent I've been forming in my couch for the past week, starting my 7th consecutive rewatch of The Office. My brain keeps reminding me sharply like a push notification I cannot mute 'Mum's Deathiversary Tomorrow'. The characters move through their office day with delightfully manageable problems - none of which include watching your mum's body wither away at 54 while cancer ravaged her from the inside out.
I know every line, every joke, every plot twist. The familiarity is the point. There are no surprises here, no unexpected emotional ambushes. Just the same safe, predictable escape route I've travelled six times before. I press 'Next Episode' as Stan asks if I'm still watching. I am. It's all I've been doing since the anniversary date started approaching three weeks ago.
The relationship between millennial women and our comfort shows is less entertainment and more emotional regulation. We use The Office like others might use Valium. We deploy Gilmore Girls as a security blanket when the world feels too sharp. We know these fictional people better than we know our neighbours. Their problems are contained, their triumphs predictable, their worlds permanently paused in an era before climate collapse, pandemic anxiety and depression became our daily reality.
When the Wi-Fi Dies, So Do I (On The Inside)
As it turns out, when left alone with my thoughts, I'm forced to confront some uncomfortable truths: I'm not as happy in my job as I pretend to be. My houseplants are dying because I keep forgetting they exist. I don't feel valued by some of my friends. And despite all my feminist podcasts, I still spend an alarming amount of time in self-loathing.
Scene: Me, sitting on my couch, staring at a wall after my phone dies from an extended video therapy session. My brain is raw from unpacking childhood wounds, self-sabotage, and why I refuse to let people help me. Processing. Existing. Dissociating slightly. I open YouTube and put on 10 Hours of Rain Sounds because words are too much. My apartment fills with soft white noise.
If I ever actually had the This Is Us crying montage moment with the perfect sad song playing, I guarantee it wouldn't be beautiful. I'd be snot-faced, eating cold beans straight from the tin because I've forgotten how to process emotions without Brené Brown explaining them to me. These revelations aren't exactly groundbreaking. They're mostly the mundane anxieties of a thirty-something woman muddling through life. But they're mine. And facing them without the buffer of a perfectly timed Mitski song or distracting banter of my favourite podcast hosts feels uncomfortably raw.
Posting About Self-Care While Secretly Self-Destructing
The millennial woman's relationship with her body is a battlefield disguised as a wellness journey.
We consume content about body positivity while hate-following fitness influencers. We listen to podcasts about intuitive eating while calculating if we've earned dessert. We're trapped in bodies that have been commodified since puberty, expected to perform impossible contradictions: be thin but not too thin, strong but still feminine, natural but flawless.
Scene: Me, curled up in bed, wearing the same pjs I've been living in for three days, because PMDD has fully taken the wheel and decided that everything is too much. I open Spotify and put on Sad Girl Autumn to be with my girls Lana, Phoebe, Mitski, and a sprinkle of Joni for dramatic effect. I stare at the ceiling, letting Motion Sickness wash over me, because sometimes, the only way out is through (and under the doona).
Our collective trauma expresses itself through our diagnoses - anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, chronic fatigue, autoimmune conditions. We read about the 'millennial burnout generation' while in the waiting room for yet another specialist appointment we can barely afford. We joke about our medication routines on Instagram. We listen to wellness podcasts while knowing we'll never have the time or energy for the 17-step self-care routine they're advocating.
We're the generation caught between traditional expectations and progressive aspirations. We were told we could have it all, then entered adulthood during the financial crisis. We pursued degrees that left us in debt, entered a housing market that locked us out, and are now expected to find fulfilment in careers that demand everything while offering increasingly little security in return.
Weaponising Taste As Personality
The irony isn't lost on me that my carefully constructed identity as a culturally aware, intellectually curious millennial woman is partially built on the foundation of self-avoidance.
I've weaponised culture as a shield against my own thoughts with the precision of Villanelle from Killing Eve planning an assassination, except the target is my own self-awareness. So when I recommend that obscure neo-jazz album or quote stats from a documentary about climate change, I'm not just sharing something I enjoyed, I'm asserting my value. Look how interesting I am! Look how informed! Please ignore the behind-the-scenes emotional processing skills of a particularly repressed Victorian gentleman or that I'm one minor inconvenience away from a complete breakdown.
Scene: Me, at a dinner party, talking about a New Yorker article I didn't actually finish reading, mentally calculating how many glasses of wine I can have before I accidentally reveal that I spent last weekend watching 14 hours of Real Housewives of New York while eating cereal straight from the box.
The Sound of Silence (But Make It Instagrammable)
Now, I'm not about to delete Spotify or unsubscribe from all my podcasts. That's bananas. In a world where the climate is collapsing, democracy is under threat, and society makes us feel unworthy, sometimes you do need some Lana del Rey to help you dissociate properly.
But I'm trying to be more honest with myself about why I'm pressing play. Is it because I want to expand my horizons, or because I'm afraid of the vast, echoing silence of my own mind? Am I cultivating taste or avoiding introspection with the determination of a Fleabag character avoiding emotional growth?
To be confirmed.
Me, reading the news about another environmental disaster, political setback, or attack on reproductive rights. Immediately switching to a comforting podcast about obscure historical facts or fictional murders, because at least those problems were solved or happened in the past.
Coping in the Age of Content Overload
In a world that's designed to make us feel inadequate - too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet, too ambitious, not ambitious enough - perhaps our podcast subscriptions and meticulously curated playlists aren't just avoidance tactics.
They're survival mechanisms. When your ADHD has finally been diagnosed after decades of feeling like your brain has been running at 150kms/h, maybe that constant audio stimulation is what keeps your brain functioning. When you're navigating a workplace where you're expected to be assertive but not bossy, confident but not arrogant, maybe that feminist podcast is less about avoiding your thoughts and more about arming yourself with the language to describe your experiences.
Maybe the most radical act for a woman isn't curating the perfect playlist or keeping up with every important cultural conversation. Maybe it's simply surviving in a world that seems increasingly designed to break us. And if that means listening to my Sad Girl Spotify playlist while I do my taxes, or falling asleep to a podcast about serial killers to distract from my own existential dread, then so be it. I'm not going to pretend I'm evolving beyond my coping mechanisms when the world isn't evolving beyond the systems that make them necessary.
Scene: Me, attempting to meditate. Lasting approximately 47 seconds before remembering I need to renew my passport, text my friend back from three days ago, check if that mole has always been there, and Google whether it's normal to sometimes forget how to swallow when you think about swallowing too much.
But also, while I'm here, have you heard the new Lady Gaga album? Not only is MAYHEM a total banger from end to end, it’s a very effective way to avoid thinking about my biological clock, my untapped potential, my perennial singledom or that I still really don't know how to properly fold a fitted sheet for 43 minutes and 49 seconds. And in this economy, that's about as much peace as I can afford.
P.S. Here are my podcast recommendations:
The High Low with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes, How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, Big Small Talk, Call Her Daddy, The Spill, BBC Desert Island Discs, BBC Lives Less Ordinary, BBC Sounds Stalked, The Journal (Wall Street Journal), The Daily Aus: The Good News Podcast, BBC Woman’s Hour, The Psychology Of Your 20s, ABC This Working Mind, ABC Conversations, Popcast, Science VS, Pop Pantheon, What Now With Trevor Noah, Stuff You Should Know, Tetragrammatron, Sleep Cove, The Mindfulness Movement… What would you add to the list?
P.S. A good brew transforms more late-night thoughts into tomorrow's essays. If my thinking, feeling and writing has sparked something in you, help keep my brain buzzing and shout me a little coffee over here: buymeacoffee.com/shesthinking