Julien Baker is one of my favorite artists, so when she hit the podcast circuit last year I tried listening to as many as possible. In this conversation with Dr. Mike she had some amazing quotes on perfectionistic OCD and depression, using running as a counter to panic attacks, and how she used music at an early age to feel.

• "I loved like masochistically sad songs. I remember I would just fiend for them."

She specifically called out Panic at The Disco's first album, "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance, and Gary Jules rendition of "Mad World" for the Gears of War ad.

• "I was just sprinting up and down the stairs... doing these suicide squats on the stairs physically exercising trying to do anything to push out that feeling because I wasn't able to sit with it. I had absolutely no tolerance for anxiety. All marathon runners should be having a panic attack with this extreme stress."

• "When you are a perfectionist you are hypersensitive to when you fail. When you have an obsession that doesn't feed this compulsion, it makes it worse."

• "Recovery is a non-linear journey. There's probably never going to be this moment where I'm healthy now, I'm stable now, it's a disappearing horizon."

• "I tried to personify my anxiety as something that I could overcome and have this triumphant narrative about"

https://consequence.net/2021/01/going-there-julien-baker/