*Please note: The text has been edited for clarity and readability. While slightly shortened, it preserves the core message of the conversation. You can listen to the full, unedited version in the podcast on Soundcloud here:
Welcome back to Tuning In, a series by Zabam. I’m Lara Tanger, a therapist trained in ACT and Mindfulness-Based therapies. In this series, we explore the stories of people within the electronic music scene, focusing not just on what they do, but on who they are and what drives them.
At Zabam, we’re passionate about fostering creativity, growth, and connection. Tuning In provides a space for honest conversations about what truly matters and how connecting with these insights can guide our journeys.
For the second episode of Tuning In, I’m excited to meet Mariiin. She is originally from Southern Italy and is now based in London. She is a DJ and music producer, but also works in architecture and construction. Music and design are her two worlds. Let’s tune in with her story.
In our conversation, Mariiin shares with us how she is combining these two different worlds, the challenges that come with it and the insights and self-awareness she has gained throughout her journey.
Lara: In our introduction call, you mentioned how these two different worlds allow you to explore different sides of yourself.
Mariiin: I really like the idea of being versatile and combining the ‘normal’ routine with something more extravagant. Especially when I was doing my PhD, I was dealing with people that have a totally different lifestyle than I have. That was pretty interesting for me.
“Actually my mom used to make a lot of fun about me, about this fact that I can switch into a totally different version of myself.”
Combining these two sides of me can be challenging and sometimes overwhelming. It definitely has a toll on my mental and physical health sometimes. But I am learning to manage it – I think – in a good way now.
Lara: How do you find that balance?
Mariiin: It’s trial and error. Especially in the last years, I started to take more care of myself. I’m trying to have a healthy lifestyle to balance out the weekends with gigs, sleepless nights and fun. I try to recognise when things start to be a bit too much and try to act according to that.
I think that I have a pretty good self-awareness, but this developed because I had to. There was a point in my life when things started to become a bit too much for me. When I just moved to London, I was working two jobs, playing gigs, having a busy social life, and then a close friend passed away. It all piled up. I didn’t have the time to process. So at one point, it just exploded.
From that moment, I understood: if I want to keep doing what I do, I have to compromise. I have to understand that my well-being is the priority. And when I take care of myself, I can do whatever I want in my life, even the most challenging things.
The biggest lesson from this experience is that if you don’t take time to process every change in your life, – even the smallest ones – you’re going to pay back with the highest price. It's so important to take a moment and say, “Okay, I'm going through something new in my life. What can I do for myself here to feel grounded, more secure, safe, and connected?”
Lara: I think it is really valuable that we talk about this; the importance of taking a break and our relationship with rest.
Mariiin: You might think “I should never take a break because I’m supposed to be productive, I don’t want to be lazy”. Maybe it is also the way we grew up; it’s in our culture. The thing is: I didn’t take a break by choice. I was forced to as I was feeling shit and my friend passed away. Afterwards I realised that I should have done this before by myself. Maybe then I would have never reached that peak situation.
Lara: What did you experience during that peak situation?
Mariiin: I started to feel disconnected from myself, my body and my mind. My mind was basically just racing for 24/7 and I didn’t feel good. I think it was the typical feeling of anxiety. I also got one of my first panic attacks. It was like the energy was flowing in my body and mind and I couldn’t channel it in the right way. I didn’t know how to deal with it.
The first time it happened I wanted to go to the hospital. I thought I had a heart attack. Then I called some friends, who already experienced this. I took a cold shower. Luckily, it didn’t happen again as I took action to understand why I was having panic attacks and understood that I needed to change something.
I have always been a very high energy person. Anxiety and excitement are closely related in my life. Excitement is a good thing, because it makes me productive. However, it turned into something negative for me. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t live my life. All the bad feelings and racing thoughts I had was basically my body telling me: “you have to stop now”.
Lara: The moment you took a break, what did that look like?
Mariiin: From the outside, I didn’t take a break. I was still going to work every day and I was going to my gigs. Taking a break was more about taking care of myself. The first thing I did wasgetting therapy, which turns out to be the most useful thing I have done in my life. I still go to therapy now.
I started with one therapist. I didn’t feel the connection with this person and my symptoms were getting worse. So I changed to another one.
I still remember the first day I got the session with my therapist. I was in Italy, and I did it in my mom's car because I didn't want to let my mom know. I kept it a secret for a while because I was pretty sure that they couldn't understand really well. At the beginning, it was a shock for them.
I also started meditating and reading books to understand myself better. I wanted to understand what anxiety is. I was like “Okay, you’re my enemy now. I want to get to know you, so we can work together”.
I also reduced my consumption of alcohol. I realised I often drank to alleviate my anxiety. Even in parties where I had fun – I used alcohol as a medication. Besides that, getting more healthy was an important step. I started to go out for walks. I’m quite lazy but my boyfriend is a big fan of walks so he was happy I started to join him. I started to take holidays to relax and connect with nature. I explored all these things I had never done in my life, and it started to work.
Lara: How did you learn to understand yourself and your bodies needs better?
Mariiin: I had to put some effort into it. I think you also need someone who helps you to understand yourself better. Someone who can help you see how you think and why. For me it was useful to become aware of the challenging aspects of my personality. It gave me a new perspective of who I am.
I realised that one source of anxiety is the high expectations I always have from myself. I’m always really hard on myself and not always realistic. I often question myself: “Is this the right way? Could I do better?”.
Especially in the music industry, failure is - at least for me - a taboo. I feel like I should never fail as I’m a professional. However, I think this idea is wrong and not helpful.
Failure is, everywhere in our life. We should fail and make mistakes and not do it perfect when you do it for the first time. Failure is also about understanding, learning, getting better. When you learn something new, you learn through failure.
Perfectionism can be positive as it gives me the drive to push myself. However, there is a balance between pushing and pushing too hard. It’s a really fine line. You have to understand your limits.
I think it's good to worry about performing at your best because it means that you care a lot. But it’s also important to understand that sometimes things are out of your control and that’s okay. I’m learning that it’s okay if the outcome is not always perfect. This is still hard for me. From a really rational level, I can understand it, but I still need to own it inside my body.
I think it’s going to be life changing once I welcome failure in a good way. I’m sure this will improve my overall performance, because then I will be free from any constraint.
Lara: What helps you in the moments you’re being hard on yourself?
Mariiin: I try to rationalise. I try to step out and take a moment to talk to myself in a more kind way, like a supportive friend would do. I also try to do breathing exercises, to slow myself down a bit.
Lara: This reminds of something: In our first call you mentioned how your career in music teaches you to let go of control sometimes, which is opposite to the scientific field you also work in.
Mariiin: Control is a bit of an obsession for me. It's really hard for me to let things go. During my PhD, everything had to be calculated. You have to think about all the factors and conditions than can affect the outcome. So the out-of-control factors are really minimum.
With music and creativity, it's different. I'm happy to apply a scientific approach to my creative side.. However, it’s also about going with the flow, and facing the things that arrived in your path that maybe you didn’t expect. This part of myself is still quite skeptical. I can feel that there is still some resistance in my body when I have to deal with unexpected situations. It’s a process. I still have some work to do to make feel them more welcome, but I'm definitely more open right now.
Lara: What has helped you in that process?
Mariiin: I think therapy and meditation.
Lara: In both therapy and meditation, we create room for self-reflection and taking distance from our thoughts instead of identifying with or automatically acting on them.
Mariiin: Yeah, it's challenging and not fun sometimes. Especially for an anxious and really fast mind. It’s challenging as you are just sitting on the couch and so much is happening [in your mind]. Sometimes you just don't understand what's going on.
But that’s fine. Maybe we can just let feelings flow in our body. It's good to understand the reason of certain behaviors or certain thoughts. But our mind and body work in a perfect way. I learned that I don’t have to understand everything.
Lara: It's also about learning to surrender and trusting your body.
Mariiin: I'm starting to trust my body more right now. I had a challenging situation a few weeks ago that made me feel anxious. I was expecting that would lead to a panic attack. But this didn’t happen. Yes, I was agitated and nervous, but it didn’t build up. I told my therapist about this and reflected on it: ‘Maybe I’m not as anxious as I think I am. I was able to deal with a stressful situation in a good way”
I used to think: I cannot rely on my body. Now I realise that I can trust myself more, I’m more resilient than I thought I was. This was a huge discovery for me.
Lara: That must have been so impactful. I try to connect the dots with what you told me before; Compared to earlier in your life, you are taking better care of yourself and allowing your body to rest more. So it’s working both ways: you can trust your body and your body can also trust you.
Mariiin: True. It’s like creating a really good environment in which the body and mind are connected and can start to love and trust each other more.
Lara: That also connects back to when you said that negative emotions don’t exist.
Mariiin: They teach us that some emotions are negative. When for example anxiety rises, we make it worse because we think it's negative. “So f*ck, I'm feeling anxious. This is bad. It has to go away. You have to leave my body”. The more we do that, the more it stays with us. It’s a vicious cycle.
This is why I try to pay a bit more attention every time I say negative during this conversation. Of course, there are negative experiences in our lives. But we tend to say negative many, many times. Maybe the events are just challenging, complex, and difficult. But the emotions are not negative.
Lara: Emotions tell us something. If we really look into the function of that anxiety, it's actually trying us to protect us. It’s informing us about a potential threat. If we always run away from that feeling, we might never discover what the body is trying to tell us and how we should take care of ourselves.
Mariiin: This is why I started reading books: I had to learn this. I had no idea about why anxiety works this way. Now I know that there is nothing wrong with me. I'm not crazy. As the first thing I thought when anxiety rises, was “I'm going crazy now. Why am I feeling this way?” Then I realized, no – I’m being protected from something. Maybe from all the things I didn’t have processed. I realized my body was functioning.
So the thing that I would like to share here is to always take your time, even when you don't think you need it, because at some point you're going to pay a higher price if you don’t do this. It's important to just sometimes, stay a day with yourself, and let the emotions flow
Lara: In preparation for our conversation, I asked you to write down three words that reflect your values – the things that are most important to you and guide your actions.
Mariiin: Yes. They definitely resonate with what I told you so far. One of my values is curiosity. I think I already talked enough about how curious I am about things that happen in my life. Personal, creative … Curiosity covers every part of my life.
The second value is persistence, which again connects with what I shared earlier. Persistence is definitely one of the biggest compasses in my life.
The third value is connection. Connection is deeply related to music. It feels like I can create a bridge between myself and other people through music. It’s also related to empathy, another important value to me. Through music I can channel empathy. It makes me feel more connected. When I play music, I really seek the connection with people. That fuels my performance.
I think a good performance depends also on the degree of connection you can get with the people around you. We have to be in a certain mindset to welcome this connection with the people. But it’s the other way around, too. People have to be in a mindset to create this. It’s receiving and giving. You have to open yourself in that moment.
Lara: How do you find this connection with the crowd?
Mariiin: It's in the moment. This is weird for me to say because I’m a big planner. But this is the magic. Here I can just be in the moment and this connection just manifests. There is nothing that I prepared before.
Before, when my anxiety levels were high and I had to play, I sometimes felt like I wanted to stay at home. However, even when I arrived anxious to the gig, the moment I started playing something shifted. When I start playing, I can take a break from my thoughts as I have to focus completely on my set.
Lara: It sounds like a form of mindfulness or flow state, allowing you to completely immerse in one activity.
Mariiin: Yes, it's definitely giving me this space in my mind, where I can only focus on one thing. Although I’m in a better place now, my mind is still going fast all of the time. However, everything related to music, production, digging, playing – allows me to just focus on just one thing. This is pretty exceptional as there are no other activities that have this effect on me. So music is something that I love, but it is also good for my mind, it’s therapeutic.
Music is a form of mindfulness for myself. From this mindful state I can connect with others. When this happens, it’s pure magic.
Lara: Thank you for sharing your message.
Mariiin: I’m happy to share my experience. I know that it’s not always easy to share these things, but I think sharing is crucial as I think many people can relate. Sometimes we don’t know how to deal with this or sometimes we don’t have the resources to learn about this. I think that it can be beneficial for our society if we talk more about emotions.
.jpg)
