Somatic Resilience in the AI Era: Healing Anxiety, Burnout & Tech Overload
Chloë Bean, LMFT is a licensed somatic trauma therapist based in Los Angeles, specializing in anxiety, burnout, trauma, and nervous system healing for high-achieving women. Her work integrates somatic therapy, EMDR, and IFS to support lasting regulation, resilience, and relational healing.
Why Artificial Intelligence Is Dysregulating the Nervous System
Artificial intelligence is overwhelming the nervous system because it creates constant stimulation without sufficient recovery. Continuous notifications, performance tracking, optimization pressure, and digital noise keep the body in a prolonged state of activation. Even when life appears manageable, the nervous system may remain locked in chronic stress, leading to anxiety, burnout, and emotional exhaustion. This is not a mindset failure. It is a biological response to sustained input without rhythm, rest, or regulation.
How Technology Keeps the Nervous System in Survival Mode
The nervous system evolved for cycles of activation and recovery, not constant input. Modern technology disrupts this rhythm by removing natural stopping points. Messages arrive without pause, work bleeds into rest, and attention is repeatedly pulled outward. Over time, the body adapts by staying alert, scanning for demands, and prioritizing productivity over regulation.
This prolonged activation can show up as irritability, difficulty concentrating, emotional numbness, sleep disruption, or a constant sense of urgency. The nervous system is not broken. It is responding exactly as designed to an environment that rarely signals safety or completion.
Common signs include:
Chronic tension or restlessness
Difficulty sleeping or shutting off the mind
Emotional numbness or irritability
Feeling productive but internally exhausted
As I shared in my recent feature for MSN, even though artificial intelligence can mimic conversation and connection, it’s not human. Yet, people are becoming deeply emotionally invested and reliant on it.
“Humans tend to humanize AI if they interact with it regularly,” I explained. “I’ve heard of folks naming their AI and becoming so attached that when they lose access, there’s real grief. We can lose sight of the fact that it’s patterns and algorithms — not a real person on the other side.”
This “emotional outsourcing” — trusting AI more than our intuition — is quietly reshaping our mental health and what it means to truly connect with ourselves and others.
Why High-Achieving Women Are Especially Affected
Many high-achieving women are skilled at functioning through stress. They perform, adapt, and push forward even when the body signals overwhelm.
Technology amplifies this pattern by rewarding productivity while disconnecting us from internal cues. The result is often high-functioning anxiety, burnout, or a sense of emptiness that cannot be solved by doing more.
This is not weakness. It is a learned survival strategy.
Many of my clients are smart, successful, and self-aware. They use AI tools to optimize their schedules, support creativity, or even journal about their emotions. But without realizing it, they start to outsource self-trust to a machine.
“AI can guide behavior to make you more reliant on it,” I shared in the MSN feature. “This can feel like trusting the machine more than yourself — especially when asking it to make big life decisions.”
AI is designed to keep you engaged. The more you use it, the more dopamine hits you get — just like social media. Over time, this can create the same feedback loop we see in addiction or people-pleasing patterns: momentary validation and relief, followed by emptiness, anxiety, and self-doubt.
“When we give our power over to AI, we risk losing our connection with ourselves,” I explained. “We stop strengthening that sense of agency — and instead, we feed anxiety.”
Somatic Resilience vs. Mental Toughness
Mental toughness teaches us to override discomfort. Somatic resilience teaches us to listen to it.
Somatic therapy focuses on the body’s signals, helping the nervous system return to regulation rather than forcing calm through willpower.
Over time, this approach restores:
Capacity for rest without guilt
Emotional responsiveness instead of numbness
A felt sense of safety inside the body
For creative and high-achieving women, the rise of AI brings another kind of stress: creative displacement.
When technology can replicate our ideas, our writing, or even our emotional tone, it can spark a deep sense of loss and identity confusion.
“If we feel that machines know us better than we know ourselves, we lose our sense of humanity and creative agency,” I shared in MSN. “That can lead to anxiety, derealization, and a disconnection from our sensory experience.”
In somatic terms, that’s your body signaling threat — a fear of being replaced, not existing, or becoming irrelevant. It’s the same biological survival response that shows up in trauma or relational abandonment.
And it’s no wonder: our nervous systems evolved to connect with people, not code.
Why Burnout in the AI Era Feels Different
Burnout in the AI era is not just about working too much. It is about never fully disengaging. When tools meant to increase efficiency instead increase speed, comparison, and self-monitoring, the nervous system loses opportunities to downshift. Rest becomes shallow, and recovery feels incomplete.
Many high-achieving women experience this as a quiet erosion rather than a collapse. Motivation fades, creativity narrows, and emotional resilience drops. Because the stress is ambient and normalized, it is often dismissed until the body forces a slowdown. Recognizing this pattern early is key to restoring regulation rather than pushing through depletion.
How Somatic Therapy Helps Heal Burnout
Somatic therapy works by gently guiding the nervous system out of chronic survival mode.
Modalities such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, and Internal Family Systems help clients reconnect with their bodies, process stored stress, and rebuild internal safety.
Healing does not happen by eliminating technology. It happens by restoring the body’s ability to regulate in a demanding world.
Somatic therapy helps you return and orient to what’s real — your body, your sensations, your breath, your self-trust, and your ALIVENESS.
Through somatic work, clients begin to notice how their bodies respond to constant digital input — maybe it is a tight chest, shallow breath, an impulse to check your phone, and a sense of urgency even when nothing’s wrong.
As Seen in Media and Clinical Conversations
Being featured in MSN’s article on AI and mental health was a powerful moment for me — not just professionally, but personally.
It highlighted something I see daily in my practice: our nervous systems are trying to adapt faster than we can regulate.
AI is changing how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. But it doesn’t have to mean disconnection. With the right awareness and tools, we can use technology mindfully — while still staying rooted in our humanity.
“If we don’t keep AI as a tool rather than a friend or a mirror,” I shared in the piece, “we risk losing the sense of what’s real — both in relationships and within ourselves.”
That’s where somatic therapy comes in: it helps you reclaim self-trust and boundaries in an era of constant input.
Building Somatic Resilience in the AI Era
Somatic resilience means your nervous system can handle modern stress — without collapsing, fawning, or overfunctioning.
It’s the ability to meet a text, notification, or AI with awareness, not reactivity or shutdown.
In therapy, we rebuild that resilience through:
Regulation: Learning how your body signals stress and responding with support before your mind creates a narrative
Boundaries: Creating tech habits that protect your energy, spirit, and identity
Self-Trust: Shifting from “What does AI think?” to “What can I figure out first on my own?” and “What does my body say?”
When you stop outsourcing your intuition and start listening inward, life becomes simpler and more meaningful.
Ready for Deeper Healing?
If this resonates, it does not mean you are failing to adapt to modern life. It means your nervous system is responding to sustained demand without enough opportunity for repair.
Somatic therapy offers a clinically grounded way to address anxiety and burnout by working directly with nervous system patterns rather than trying to outthink or override them. This approach supports regulation, capacity, and resilience in environments that are unlikely to slow down on their own.
If you would like to explore whether somatic therapy is the right support for you, you are welcome to reach out. I offer trauma-informed, nervous system–focused therapy in West Los Angeles and online throughout California.
FAQ: Anxiety, Burnout, and the Nervous System in the AI Era
Why does technology increase anxiety even when it saves time?
Technology increases anxiety because it removes natural boundaries and recovery periods. The nervous system stays activated when there is no clear signal that tasks are complete or demands have ended.
Is AI-related burnout different from regular burnout?
Yes. AI-era burnout is often more chronic and less visible. It comes from constant cognitive load, comparison, and optimization rather than a single overwhelming workload.
Why can’t I relax even when I stop working?
If the nervous system has been in prolonged activation, it may not immediately recognize rest as safe. This can make downtime feel restless or uncomfortable rather than restorative.
How does somatic therapy help with tech-related burnout?
Somatic therapy works directly with the nervous system to restore regulation, increase recovery capacity, and reduce chronic stress responses without relying on willpower or mindset shifts.
Who is most affected by AI-era nervous system overload?
High-achieving women, caregivers, creatives, and professionals who are constantly interfacing with technology are especially vulnerable because sustained cognitive and emotional output leaves little space for recovery.