Fighting Anxiety with Audiobooks and Pancakes the Cat

I have anxiety. 

If that’s not a way to start a blog, I’m not sure what is. But it’s true. I have anxiety. It’s something I’ve been to therapy for, and something I mostly have under control. But left to its own devices, my mind will pontificate on all sorts of terrible things and run amok, which is less than ideal.

(This image only makes sense if you’re familiar with Pixar’s Inside Out 2. Hello, Anxiety!)

I’ve known reading is good for your mental health and can reduce anxiety, but what surprised me recently was how much audiobooks help.

This could have been because I’ve never been a huge fan of audiobooks or podcasts, or anything that requires active listening, because I cannot actively listen when I’m doing most other things. I know people who can listen to audiobooks as they work. That’s not me. I’d be hitting back constantly, or halfway through the book I’d be wondering what in the world was even happening with the plot, having tuned out as characters were introduced, or murdered, or sent back through time in space.

But recently, I decided to give audiobooks a go while driving. That’s always seemed ridiculous here in Cookeville, where my average commute is roughly six minutes. I figured that short of a glimpse into a story would drive me mad. A coworker of mine insisted she still enjoyed it, so I decided to try, listening to The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett.  From the very first chapter, where we first meet an agent of death, Pancakes the cat, I was hooked. 

(That orange cat may look innocent, but he has a secret. He’s a killer.)

(The Road to Tender Hearts is a dark comedy, full of quirky characters, roving plot twists, found family, a cross-country road trip, and some content warnings you can look up on Storygraph. It also stars Pancakes the cat, my favorite character amidst a wholly loveable cast.) I listened to that, and then Maggie Smith’s writing advice in Dear Writer, and another quirky dark comedy, I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney.  It was only during that third book that I realized what was happening. My brain, focused both on the road ahead of me and the book I was listening to, didn’t have the capacity to wander into the infinite possibilities of way things in my life could go wrong. I wasn’t having to fight my anxiety in the car, because I wasn’t having any. 

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Now, I’m a huge advocate for therapy, and I don’t think books or audiobooks should replace that entirely. But I now have another tool in my arsenal for when my mind wants to fire intrusive thoughts my way. I’ll send Pancakes the cat back to fight them off. 

If you’d like to try out audiobooks as a way to combat anxiety or even just entertain you during your six-minute Cookeville commutes, you can do so while also supporting Plenty using Libro.fm  where you can buy audiobooks or start a monthly subscription, gaining two extra credits by using the code SWITCH. 

And if you have any really good audiobooks you’d like to recommend, drop them in the comments!