How to Manage Your Feelings of Anxiety
Updated: Oct 28
An AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness™ Perspective
Principal Consultant and Creator, AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness™
Beyond the day-to-day challenges in our personal lives, 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 can compromise our ability to function, have become the most common mental illness in the United States.
I often say that anxiety is our mind’s and body’s response to perceived challenges and change—fueled by energy and conflict. We can dissipate the energy associated with conflict and channel it into healthy, adaptive, goal-directed activities. 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 feelings of anxiety.
I’m choosing to manage current challenges and change in my life, in part, through sublimation—by writing to you.
Ironically, the very technology often contributing to our shared feelings of anxiety, specifically artificial intelligence, can also help to 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 written before, 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. 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.
For specific strategies that may help you now, take a look at the article 10 Things You Can Do to Achieve Emotional Wellness and other relevant information in the National Center's Library.
Finally, having the benefit of working closely with a mental health professional and potentially taking anxiolytic medication can be very helpful. PsychologyToday.com provides a great database for identifying professionals in your area.
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.
The National Center for Emotional Wellness is here for you.
For a deeper understanding of emotional wellness, including evidence-based strategies and the power of sublimation, read What Is Emotional Wellness?
Technology informs. Humanity empowers.
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