“It’s super hard to have two songs in your head at once because they use the same kind of cognitive resources,” she said. The trick is picking a song that itself won’t induce an earworm.

Chronic pain can result from nervous-system overload that creates physical symptoms in response to repressed emotions, therapist Nicole Sachs says.

Notice the story you’re telling yourself inside your head and how you’re creating the link between your experiences: the this-happened-because-of-this threadline.