“To The Otherside” is the 9th track released by Passion Pit from Tremendous Sea of Love and it is the 8th track on the album. It was posted on YouTube on March 3rd, 2017 by the Wishart Group, an organization founded by Michael Angelakos (Passion Pit). The song describes a daily battle that one with anxiety faces.

On Facebook, Michael made a post on the day of the release of the song titled “To The Otherside”. It consists of a story of a breakdown he experienced and what he learned about the relationship between trauma, pain, and sadness and being an artist, saying that “just because you are an artist does not mean you have to suffer”. He ends the post emphasizing how important it is to “get to the other side”, or to overcome the suffering and begin to focus on healing, but that whatever you are feeling does not make you less of a person.
These are some excerpts:

I didn’t really understand the point of the comments sections after awhile, at this particular juncture, because at this time it was nothing but the most vile, angry, hateful responses to what was, to me, an attempt in earnest to make really beautiful music… I really did think that people would begin to see that it was a character, that it stood for something internal, that it was quite literally the sound of my pain and self-hatred. I believed they would, at least with a few objective listens, begin to understand me.
This is not how it works, obviously. But when you’re being told by so many people that what you’re doing is good, is going to succeed, is going to connect, especially when it already very clearly has, you begin thinking maybe there’s something wrong with you, maybe there’s something you can change, maybe there’s more you can hide, maybe you can really fight to make people understand if they don’t.
This is also not how it works. Or maybe how it worked.
So in this tent, I had entered the lion’s den. It was the culmination of all of my childhood pain, but actualized on such an absurdly profound level, in that I was playing a show for a bunch of people I was absolutely certain did not like me, were not looking to be impressed but looking to watch me fail, and were, in fact, the comment section. They were my nightmare. And I was going to perform for them. Smiling.
And then I had, what I later learned, a literal breakdown. In front of the audience. That was not the art. But it was perceived as the art. It was perceived as insane, as melodramatic, as a cry for help. It was beyond a cry for help – that cry had been ignored, had been dismissed, had been mistaken for the antics of a “snowflake.”

… And most artists go through this every day. And most artists think this is the price. And most audiences believe the same thing.
But we are not snowflakes. I am a really strong person. It took me awhile to realize this, but I am.

… And sometimes, just for a moment, say ten years from the moment that you decide to put your music on myspace for no good reason, you realize that the trauma is not the authenticator.
You realize that just because you are an artist does not mean you have to suffer. The trauma is not the validation. The trauma is not the litmus test. Life is hard enough, and that’s why it’s so interesting to convey in any other way then the way we do by default.