My friend’s younger sister got her autism diagnosis last year at 19 and watching her try to explain it to people was brutal. She kept saying she finally had language for what her brain was doing but that didn’t make living with it any easier. The intrusive thoughts didn’t stop. The overwhelm didn’t magically disappear. She just had a name for it now and a whole new set of battles to fight. That’s the energy Louisa Rowley brings to Anxious Soul—four tracks that sound like someone finally got tired of pretending everything was manageable.
This 25-year-old London artist is documenting her nervous breakdown, autism diagnosis, and every failed attempt at healing with zero filter. She’s been writing since 18 to manage her anxiety. The autism diagnosis came at 24 along with all the messy reality of trying to heal when your brain won’t cooperate. Vintage blues and soul—think Stephe Sanchez meeting Bonnie Raitt—with lyrics that read like therapy journal entries. Raw doesn’t even cover it.
Two of these tracks—A Peaceful Retirement and To Be Me—came out last year as these intimate guitar ballads with producer Richard Marc. Heavy, introspective stuff. Then Rowley drops STOP! and Move On with this completely different vibe—bright, funky, pulling from 60s soul. Her darkest lyrics suddenly have this groove underneath them. She’s literally experimenting in real time, trying to find what sound can hold this much truth and still let her function.
STOP! opens with this heavy bass line that refuses to quit. Rowley comes in with “Can’t stop focusing on things that make me stressed / Those intrusive thoughts are putting me to the test,” and there’s no easing into it. She’s already mid-spiral, already trying to command her brain into submission with “So I tell myself, we ain’t doing this today / I just gotta stop.” That “we ain’t doing this today”—that’s what managing anxiety looks like. Every morning you’re deciding whether your brain gets to win or if you’re going to fight it.
She’s been saying this chorus to herself for years: “Stop focusing on things you can’t control / Stop reacting to every possible / Being so hard on yourself / And assuming the very worst / Or it will get harder.” Every single line is a coping mechanism, the kind of shit therapists write on whiteboards. Rowley’s delivery makes it obvious these affirmations don’t actually work. They’re just what you tell yourself to get through the next hour without spiraling. She emphasizes “or it will get harder” like she’s threatening herself into compliance. Logic doesn’t touch anxiety once your brain’s already decided everything’s going to shit, but what else are you going to do? Just let it win?
Then she drops “Constant arguments between me, myself and I / More infighting than the Tories on the right,” and that’s the reality nobody talks about. Your brain splits into factions that argue with each other. “Once I start to think, it gets harder to stop”—that’s the trap. Thinking becomes the problem. “I’m just out here trying to live my life / You’re the last one who should be giving me strife / I just can’t stop.” She’s yelling at her own brain to fuck off and leave her alone. I used to think being unhinged made other girls interesting now I know it was just loneliness wearing fishnets. Rowley’s documenting that same chaos—the kind that looks edgy from the outside but feels like drowning on the inside.
The production never lets up because that’s the whole point. There’s no breakdown, no moment of peace. Just this relentless push that mirrors what anxiety actually feels like when you’re in it. Rowley’s trying to keep herself busy enough that the thoughts can’t catch up, which is the most honest coping mechanism there is. Stay moving. Stay distracted. Don’t stop or the thoughts will drown you.
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To Be Me strips everything back—just Rowley’s voice and Richard Marc’s guitar creating this confessional space. She opens with “You don’t know how it feels / To be the emotional one / To get attached, empathetic at times / Often to works of fiction.” That last line is so specific it hurts. She gets attached to fictional characters. Not because it’s cute or quirky—because when you feel everything too hard, sometimes made-up people are safer than real ones.
The verses build into this desperate wish: “I wish I could just walk away / And separate myself / From the constant beat, the sweating palms / It’s my own personal hell.” She’s not romanticizing sensitivity here. She’s documenting what it costs. The physical symptoms she’s listing? Sweating palms, racing heart? That’s her daily reality. “I’m the emotional one / I just get so overwhelmed / Wish I felt nothing at all / Instead of everything at once.” She’s saying what most people won’t admit out loud – you get rewarded for keeping your shit together. For not crying at work. For acting like feelings don’t mess with your ability to function. If you can’t do that you’re just trying to make it through the day in a body that refuses to turn off.
The second verse goes darker: “You don’t know how it feels / To be afraid of your own mind / Your paranoid, no trust, can’t be alone with your thoughts / Gotta fight, just to feel well.” That fear of being alone with your thoughts is what breaks people. You can’t escape your own brain. You’re stuck with it 24/7 and when it turns against you there’s nowhere to hide. “Got this constant fear / And a hatred for myself / It overpowers me, can’t take control of myself / No matter how much I meditate.”
That last line fucking guts me. She’s tried. She’s done the meditation apps, the breathing exercises, all the shit that’s supposed to help and it’s not enough. The self-hatred is stronger. Half the girls I knew growing up thought meditation was the answer like ten minutes of deep breathing could fix years of being told their emotions were too much, their sensitivity was a weakness, their reactions were overdramatic. Rowley’s saying what nobody wants to admit: sometimes the coping mechanisms don’t work. Sometimes you just have to survive feeling everything until you don’t.
A Peaceful Retirement is the most quietly devastating track on this EP because Rowley’s 25 and already exhausted by the idea of living. She starts with “Barely out of the crib, / A young feeling twenty-two, / But I feel so much older / With all of the feelings I’m going through.” That gap between her actual age and how worn out she feels is the whole tragedy. Twenty-two should feel young.
“The days feel too long / And the nights too short, / I’m lost, I’m falling now / More than ever before.” Time hits different when you’re depressed. Days stretch out endlessly because you’re just trying to get through them and nights disappear because sleep is the only escape. Then she delivers the chorus and everything breaks open: “Now I won’t wish for death, / Just a peaceful retirement will do, / Free of the struggles of youth.”
That distinction—”I won’t wish for death”—is so fucking important because it’s the line everyone with mental health issues has to walk. You don’t want to die. You just want to stop struggling. Those are different things but they get confused all the time. She’s clarifying. She’s not suicidal. She just wants peace. “I don’t have many dreams / That I will see through— / Just a peaceful retirement in a house by the sea will do. / I may not have high hopes, / But it’s what gets me through.”
Her dreams aren’t about career success or achievement or any of the shit you’re supposed to want in your twenties. She just wants to exist without it being this constant battle. A house by the sea. That’s it. Every girl I knew growing up was terrified of something—silence, mirrors, honesty, or all of the above. Rowley’s terror is the endless stretch of years ahead when you’re already this exhausted. She’s just honest enough to admit she’d take the quiet life over the struggle.
The bridge goes even darker: “I’m scared to be alone in the dark / With only my intrusive thoughts— / They make the life ahead / Seem so achingly long.” Being afraid of your own thoughts traps you. The darkness? It’s inside her head, not outside. There’s no escaping your own brain. “For every twinge of fear / There’s desire for something else, / I’m lost, I’m falling now / More than ever before.” “I’m lost, I’m falling” keeps coming back because she hasn’t found the exit yet. Same spot, no answers, still broken.
Richard Marc’s guitar work here is gorgeous but restrained. It gives Rowley space to just exist in her exhaustion. There’s no big crescendo just this sustained melancholy that sounds like someone who’s too tired to fight anymore.
Move On shifts the energy completely. The funk-blues production comes in bright and determined, and Rowley sounds fed up with her own patterns. “I’m often my own worst enemy / I’m the judge, defendant and jury / I feel like I’m drowning in self-pity / With an unhealthy dose of insecurity.” She’s calling herself out. The self-awareness is brutal. She knows she’s stuck in this cycle. She knows she’s the one keeping herself there.
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“I’m tortured by my mind’s games / Doesn’t seem to stop for a single day / Time to find my happy place / And that’s where I’ll stay.” Trying to find a mental space that doesn’t hurt—that’s why therapy exists. You’re trying to carve out one corner of your brain that isn’t sabotaging you. The chorus hits:: “It’s time to move on / I’ve been feeling shit for long enough / And I’ve had enough of my anxious thoughts / Time to shed my old skin off / It’s time for something different.”
The thing about hitting your breaking point with your own bullshit is that it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly fixed it means you’re tired enough to try something new. Rowley’s not claiming she’s healed or better. She’s just done being stuck. The second verse gets more specific: “I can’t keep going through the same / Used up emotions every single day / A cycle that I can’t seem to break / So I end up back in the same old place.” That recognition of the pattern is step one. Actually breaking it? That’s the hard part.
“I’ve got some unhealthy habits / That are really hard to quit / Thought patterns that are damaging / Forced to keep medicating.” She’s naming everything—the habits, the thought patterns, the medication. This is what managing mental health actually looks like. Not some inspirational journey, just the daily grind of trying to function while your brain fights you. The bright production creates this weird tension where she’s listing all her damage but the music sounds hopeful. Looking back, half their confidence was caffeine and delusion, and both were cheaper than admitting their brain was tired. Rowley’s done with the performance. She’s too exhausted to pretend anymore.
The way this track ends the EP feels intentional. Rowley’s not offering a resolution. She’s offering one moment of “fuck it, I’m trying something different.” When you’re drowning, that counts as hope.
The songwriting process involved multiple people wrestling with how to translate mental health chaos into something listenable. That funk-soul production on STOP! and Move On was a risk—taking lyrics about spiraling and self-hatred and putting groove underneath them. It could’ve felt dismissive. Instead it creates this tension where the music refuses to let you wallow even when the words are drowning.
This EP documents the unglamorous middle part of mental health that nobody wants to talk about. The daily exhaustion of managing intrusive thoughts. The loneliness of feeling everything too intensely. The desperate hope that maybe this attempt at change will stick even though the last twenty didn’t. Rowley’s not packaging this with a recovery narrative or an inspirational arc. She’s just showing the work—the mantras that barely help, the coping mechanisms that fail, the exhaustion of being your own worst enemy.
My friend’s sister still has hard days. Most days, actually. She joined some online communities for late-diagnosed autistic women and that helps when she can handle the social energy it requires. She’s learning to set boundaries around her sensory limits, which her family mostly respects now. Sensory limits are your body saying it can’t pretend anymore. She’s figuring out how to live in a brain that doesn’t work like everyone else’s while people expect her to act like it does. The diagnosis gave her language but it didn’t fix anything. Every morning she’s negotiating with her own brain just to function.
Anxious Soul captures something specific: understanding your struggles doesn’t fix them. It just gives you words to explain why everything feels impossible when everyone else makes it look easy. Rowley offers solidarity. She’s saying “this is what’s inside my head” and hoping that matters. For people living this reality, it does. If you need to hear someone else admit they’re barely holding it together, this EP does that. Sometimes honesty matters more than solutions.
