How to Manage Your Feelings of Anxiety
- Jun 12
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 22
An AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness™ Perspective
Principal Consultant and Creator, AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness™
We're experiencing information overload—infused with daily doses of streaming conflict and adversity delivered through our digital devices. Additionally, text messaging, email, mobile apps, social media, video games, and video conferencing are replacing authentic face-to-face interaction.
This increase in technology and decrease in human presence is associated with an alarming increase in mental health problems. Anxiety disorders, which compromise people's ability to function, have become the most common mental illness in the United States.
Anxiety is the mind and body's response to perceived challenges and change—fueled by energy and conflict. We can dissipate the energy associated with conflict and use it in healthy, goal-directed ways. This is why so many people discover that walking, exercising, gardening, cooking, watching sports, listening to music, reading, writing, and countless other creative and productive outlets reduce their feelings of anxiety.
Technology is advancing faster than we’re able to adapt to it. As a result, millions of people are struggling to manage their overwhelming feelings while attempting to function in their personal and professional lives. Ironically, the very technology contributing to this problem, specifically artificial intelligence, can also help address it.
AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness refers to the ethical and responsible interface between the cognitive abilities of artificial intelligence and the depth, uniqueness, and complexity of human emotion.
AI can provide accessible, practical information and evidence-based techniques, strategies, and tools. For example, breathing, mindfulness, and grounding techniques can be helpful for someone awake at 2:00 a.m. struggling with anxiety. AI can mitigate conflict by providing suggestions on how to handle a particular matter.
However, we must be careful not to confuse accessibility with healing. AI can’t provide the human connection, moral commitment, and healing presence of another person.
AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness affirms a fundamental truth: authentic, face-to-face human presence remains irreplaceable—and essential—for emotional wellness.
As I've repeatedly written, AI can’t
• Look at you with eyes filled with compassion.
• Hold your hand as your eyes pool with tears.
• Embrace you while you’re crying.
• Convey warmth through presence—without saying a word.
• Sit beside you and softly say, “I’m here for you.”
Human presence is essential for managing anxiety disorders that are compromising people's ability to function. While chatbots and other AI platforms can provide valuable information, they can’t replicate the experience of feeling understood, emotionally connected, and genuinely cared for by another human being.
AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness is a powerful force that combines the accessibility and capabilities of AI with the irreplaceable need for human presence—the most powerful mechanism to manage feelings of anxiety and foster emotional wellness.
Technology informs. Humanity empowers.