Even when I go out with friends I wear headphones – that doesn’t make me rude

“Are you wearing an AirPod?” my friend Eleanor* asked in disbelief. “Are you here with me or not?”

I was on vacation with her and we were about to board a ferry.

Although we had spoken at length about a wide variety of topics in the three weeks we had already spent together, it was only natural that there would be a silence.

I prefer to fill the silence with music.

That didn’t mean I was rude or keeping Eleanor away, as she seemed to think. I could hear her well with my free ear.

But listening to music is my way of coping with my anxiety and intrusive thoughts – something I’ve always struggled with.

This time I was concerned about the unusual amount of freckles on my arms. I couldn’t remember if they had always been there.

“What Does a Melanoma Look Like?” my mind raced desperately.

I couldn’t shake the intense feeling of panic. It was like a gradual attack of fear; I was fixated on something going wrong.

I first learned about my anxiety in my early 20s when my doctor suggested I might have hypochondria. I went to my GP every month and swore I was sick, even though I thought I had contracted an STI after every sexual encounter.

I worried about everything on my skin, obsessed with vanity (like thinking my front teeth had moved) and couldn’t stop focusing on the tiniest of issues.

Of course, I was mostly wrong, and everything was fine.

I started limiting checkups to every three months to improve and learned to confide in my best friends to keep myself in check.

Anxiety was exhausting because I lost my ability to enjoy the present for no other reason than the fact that my mind couldn’t stop worrying too much about problems that never existed.

I’ve always been the type of person who wouldn’t walk down the street without listening to music, and around 2016 I realized that I feel most mentally calm when I walk.

I started listening to more and more music and used an Airpod and Spotify playlist to navigate those days as I felt anxiety rising to the surface.

Instead of letting paranoid thoughts snowball to the point where I’d have to take them out on friends, I’ve done my best to address them with one of my many playlists, depending on the occasion.

Music had a way of shifting my mind from the proverbial monsters under the bed to the present moment, perhaps for the same reason it helps you focus on a workout.

No mental disorder could distract the genius from Incubus or James Blunt.

I didn’t fully understand my anxiety at the time, just what worked to dispel the extreme moments of anxiety where my mind raced over worse scenarios. Still, I kept calling friends to reassure me — to ask them if I had gained weight or if they thought my boss might be mad at me for some imagined disdain.

It wasn’t until a friend confronted me about acting like a narcissist because I just couldn’t stop talking about my speculative issues that I realized I should always have music on hand.

I decided to throw in an Airpod when I was out with friends and I felt like my anxiety would bubble up and interrupt our conversation.

Listening to music at a minimum volume boosted my ability to enjoy outings and I don’t think it gets in the way of things like a restaurant or cafe playing music that doesn’t interfere with laughter and conversation.

I had told Eleanor about my anxiety before and she said she understood, but she didn’t seem to understand how my only pair of headphones helped me. Instead, she thought it was rude.

Other friends have felt the same as Eleanor, claiming that my airpod was rude, as I did when I went abroad again with my friend Olivia* and her boyfriend.

They commented on how weird it was for me to tune in with music, but I was fine with it because we were in an Uber and I was in the front.

We went hiking on the same trip, and I mistakenly assumed that outdoor exercise was fair game for music.

Honestly, I didn’t know what the problem was; The Airpod didn’t make me any less present.

Somehow I can understand where my friends come from. They think my music has taken us to different levels of consciousness; It’s true, a great song can take you to another feeling, another memory.

But I do my best to choose music that will just get me through the situation rather than take away from our time together, and I always have a listening ear to keep my foot on the ground.

I don’t pretend to understand the science of why music helps calm my anxiety, I just know it works for me. I’ve been a fan since I got an iPod. I escape my body and mind without escaping life – or depending on drugs.

I did therapy – I took medicine. But for me, this one ear of soothing sounds works best for managing my symptoms.

I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else how to deal with mental health issues – that’s up to you and your doctor.

After being seen as disrespectful for my actions, I’ve learned to tell friends that I prefer to keep my AirPods in the front.

“Music helps me stay present, but don’t worry, I can hear you,” I explain. And I can – one ear may be for music, but the other is listening.

You don’t have to explain your mental health to everyone, but close friends and family are a good place to start.

My friend Ashley recently invited me to a gig. During our walk it started to pour. She saw my airpod. “Do you mind if I turn on some music too?”

Of course I said it was no problem.

I liked having an ear for the outside world, so I left mine as it is. While sprinting in the moonlight and dodging the heavy rain, we ended up in the same music video, but with different soundtracks. When we arrived she took off both headphones to focus on checking in.

I kept another one inside.