Your Brain in the Age of AI:

How to Stay Mentally Healthy as Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Our World

 

I've been sitting with the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) for way too long now - this question of how AI, and our current digital world more broadly, is affecting our brains. The pace of AI development is unlike anything we’ve encountered in our lifetimes. It is true that with rapid technological advancements, there often comes psychological stress. But add to that advancement the existential uncertainty about where AI is heading (and taking us!), and we have a unique problem that deserves serious attention.

To properly explore this, I’ve divided this post into three parts. In part 1, I look at the psychological risks associated with AI and its growing influence on our lives. In part 2, I discuss practical, evidence-based strategies we can start to use right now to protect our brains. In part 3, I explore how we might prepare ourselves psychologically for a possible not-so-distant future in which AI dominates many/most aspects of our daily life. I’m not going there to be alarmist, but I think to not prepare ourselves for that contingency would be similarly unhelpful.

 

- The Psychological Risks of AI -

 

There is no question that AI can be highly beneficial to humans and can even improve quality of life. Some experts even believe we may currently be living in the “golden age” of AI, where the balance of risks and benefits is most heavily tilted toward its beneficial. With that said, as AI systems are becoming more powerful and sophisticated, the potential and actual risks to society and our civilization at large are growing – as are the risks to human health and functioning. So, what are those risks?

1. Our brains are overloaded and our attention is scattered

Current AI systems are extraordinarily good at consuming and producing content faster, and in greater volume than any human ever could. Our information feeds are carefully curated by sophisticated algorithms programmed by machine learning. AI-generated articles, movie and music recommendations, targeted advertising, automated social media content — all of it competes relentlessly for our attention. And most of the time, it succeeds in doing that with overwhelming effectiveness. Moreover, AI systems don’t need to sleep or eat, rest, or take breaks or vacations. Our biological nervous systems, anchored in and hamstrung by the physics of our bodies, are simply not built for this problem.

We know from decades of cognitive research that constant high demand on our attentional system depletes our capacity to think clearly, regulate our emotions, and make good decisions. When the volume of information becomes unmanageable, many people move into a state of chronic overwhelm — a kind of mental background noise that makes it harder to focus, rest, or feel settled. You might recognize this in yourself as a vaguely anxious, scattered feeling at the end of a day spent interacting with screens. In sum, these digital platforms, powered by AI, are exhausting and agitating your brain, and scattering your attention. And without changing how, and how much, you interact with technology, it’s only going to get worse.

2. The algorithms are manipulating our moods and beliefs

Something that doesn't always make it into “polite”, public conversation is that AI-powered platforms (e.g., TikTok, Meta, Instragram, digital news feeds) are specifically designed to trap your attention by activating your emotions. Outrage, fear, disgust, contempt, moral indignation - these are highly effective at keeping people engaged with the platform, and engagement is what generates money. The result is that many people are being systematically exposed to emotionally provocative content as a matter of business strategy, not psychological wellbeing. As one expert put it, if an account on the platform is “free”, then you are the product.

The downstream effects of these attentional traps on the human brain are measurable. Elevated rates of anxiety, polarized (i.e., “all or nothing”, “black or white”) thinking, reduced nuance in moral reasoning - these are among the well-documented consequences of heavy algorithm-driven content consumption. This isn't conspiracy theory and this isn’t a “bug” in these systems; it's an intentional, programmed feature of digital platforms optimized for compulsive psychological and behavioural engagement – that is, “addiction” – rather than wellbeing.

3. Jobs are insecure and the future is uncertain

Economic anxiety and financial duress are among the most potent drivers of psychological distress. The prospect of job displacement/replacement by AI agents being widely deployed across a number of sectors is generating a lot of concerns for many. Whole categories of work - writing, coding, data analysis, customer service, graphic design, ridesharing, transport, legal research - are currently being partially or fully automated. As AI is being integrated with more adept and capable robotics, the risk of mass unemployment in many sectors increases even further. This reality creates a legitimate concern and uncertainty about whether one’s skills will remain valuable, and what one’s professional future looks like.

What's important to understand here, from a psychological perspective, is that the uncertainty itself, for most people, is more distressing than is actual bad news. Humans are actually fairly good at adapting to difficult realities once they know what those realities are. It's the cumulative burden of not-knowing that tends to wear people down. When the ground beneath us keeps shifting, and does so more and more rapidly, it becomes very difficult to feel focused, “grounded”, safe, and motivated to invest in the future.

4. Meaning, value, and human purpose are eroding

For many people, work is not just a source of income, it is a significant source of identity, purpose, and contribution to surrounding society. When AI begins doing this work for us – answering our phone calls, writing our emails, doing our critical thinking, teaching our courses, creating art, problem-solving, “caring” for others - it raises profound questions about what is left for humans to do that actually meaningful. The power of AI agents is a double-edged sword. If that power is applied to AI taking over the most painful, meaningless tasks in order to free up humanity enjoy their lives, this has great utilitarian benefits. But what would a meaningful human life look like, and what would our civilization become, if our most purposeful activities and behaviours are stripped from us?

This isn't just a philosophical rabbit hole; actively (that is, through intentional choices and behaviour) pursuing a life of meaning, purpose, and value is empirically associated with psychological health and wellbeing. Research on “eudaimonic” wellbeing (i.e., flourishing and living well versus simply chasing happiness) consistently shows that people who have a clear sense of purpose, who feel they are contributing something of value, who help others, report better mental health outcomes across a range of measures. In brief, AI's encroachment into domains of human purpose poses significant risks to human health and mental functioning.

5. AI-mediated relationships are disconnecting us

The quality of our social relationships is one of the most robust predictors of health (both mental and physical) and longevity, and is considered a core pillar of health along with sleep, diet, and exercise. In some studies, it is even a better predictor of health than diet, exercise, or smoking. This makes the current, gradual substitution of human relationships with AI-mediated relationships a serious concern. Although this may be a foreign concept to some readers, more and more humans are seeking AI companions, and relationships with chatbots that are designed to provide emotional and psychological support (and of course, social media feeds curated by AI-driven algorithms).

Of course, this doesn't mean technology can't facilitate human connection. But there is growing evidence that more and more people are pursuing superficial, algorithm-mediated social “connection” and AI “relationships”, which do not provide the same psychological benefits as genuine, reciprocal human relationships. One of the major risks of this trend is not just that people will suddenly and exclusively use AI for connection instead of people, but that the conditions for deep human connection (i.e., reciprocal support, in-person interaction), will quietly erode without anyone noticing, until the absence of that connection starts to show up as loneliness, disconnection and withdrawal, or a vague sense that something fundamental is missing from day-to-day life. This is already occurring now.

6. Privacy is an illusion under constant and expanding surveillance

AI systems require huge amounts of data to operate, and staggering quantities of personal data are now being harvested, analyzed, monetized, and acted upon in ways most people are not remotely aware of. Beyond the obvious privacy concerns of data harvesting, there is a measurable psychological toll to living under conditions of constant and pervasive surveillance - even if it’s surveillance you've technically consented to (do you ever read the fine print in those user agreements? Me neither.). Psychology research on the “chilling effect” shows that when people know or suspect they are being watched, they modify their behaviour, self-censor, and experience higher baseline levels of anxiety. As an example of this, whenever you see an advertisement pop up for a unique product or service you were recently only talking about (yes, your phone is listening for meaningful cue words), does that experience make you feel relaxed or uneasy? The cumulative effect of living in a world where your behaviour is continuously tracked, analyzed, and predicted is psychologically disorienting and exhausting.

7. Deepfakes and misinformation are distorting our perceptions and undermining our trust in what is real

Our ability to trust what we see and hear – in our senses themselves – is being challenged. AI-generated misinformation, deepfake videos (“AI slop”), synthetic voices – all of these are degrading our capacity to have confidence in basic facts. Psychologically, this matters because we are social animals who depend on shared reality to coordinate and cooperate with each other, and remain safe in an already noisy and chaotic universe. When the foundation on which knowledge rests becomes unreliable, when we can't even trust what we see, hear, or read, it creates chronic emotional strain, confusion, disorientation, and fear. Through these distorted lenses and fun house mirrors, just interacting with the world and trying to make sense of it becomes exhausting.

 

- Skills and Strategies for Protecting Your Brain in the AI Era -

 

We are not helpless in the face of this challenge. We are resilient animals. Molded by eons of evolution, we are genetically driven to adapt and survive. The psychological tools we have for managing stress, maintaining focus, and living a meaningful life are well-established and do not require AI to implement. In fact, many of them work precisely because they reconnect us to the parts of our experience that technology tends to pull us away from. Let’s look at a few of those core tools.

A. Reduce overwhelm and stress

1. Protect your sleep

Sleep is foundational to every aspect of psychological functioning. Chronic sleep dysregulation and/or deprivation impairs emotional regulation, memory and attention, decision-making, and one’s capacity to be resilient under stress. AI increases the risk of sleep impairment by triggering mindless scrolling, increased exposure to activating blue light, and encouraging consumption of distressing information in the evenings (i.e., doom scrolling) – all of which are reliable ways to crater your sleep quality and, in turn, your quality of life.

Protecting your sleep in the AI era means treating high-quality sleep as a necessity rather than an optional activity that you may or may not get around to after you’ve spent the evening doing other things. In practice, this involves:

• • • Creating and protecting “sleep opportunity”. Sleep opportunity is the total time we dedicate to being in bed with the intention of sleeping. This means blocking into your schedule the total number of hours needed for sleeping (including the time it takes to fall asleep) in order to fully recuperate each night.

    • Scheduling time before bed to relax the body and brain. In practice, this involves setting a firm cutoff time roughly 1 to 2 hours before bed where you get away from screens and transition to activities that prepare you for restful sleep. To relax the body you might do some stretching, meditation, relaxation breathing, or take a bath or shower. To relax the brain, this involves putting problems away (i.e., “closing open loops” in the brain, gratitude journaling) and engaging with information that is familiar, not exciting or novel (e.g., no new music).

    • keeping devices (including TVs) out of the bedroom.

    • Being radically honest with yourself. Are your evening screen habits, even if they are entertaining or distracting, actually worth the troubles they cause?

2. Go on an “information diet”

One of the most effective things we can do to protect our brains from becoming scattered and exhausted is by being deliberate about the quality of information we feed our brains. Think of this quite literally as managing the “diet” of information your brain “eats”. In the same way the quality of the food we eat influences how our bodies feel and perform, the quality of the information we feed our brain influences the way we think, feel, and behave. If we generally focus on information related to personal growth, health, creativity, gratitude, and positive relationships, we will feel more connected to others, hopeful, functional, and optimistic. Alternatively, if we focus on stressful, enraging, tragic, or traumatic content, then we will feel more irritable, hypervigilant, anxious, and exhausted, which in turn results in inattention and poor focus. Moreover, because our attentional systems are biological and therefore finite, every algorithm-driven feed, regardless of the content, becomes a potential mental health liability.

In application, managing our mental diet means:

• • • Limiting social media use and consider ditching it altogether.

    • Increasing the physical distance between you and your phone (putting it in another room when you need to be focused).

    • Setting specific times for checking news and social media rather than compulsively grazing on information throughout the day.

    • Intentionally choosing your information sources rather than passively accepting whatever an algorithm surfaces.

    • Recognizing the difference between information that actually helps you navigate your life in the real world and information that simply activates our anxiety without providing any health benefit or real-world value.

    • Intentionally assessing how you feel and function after exposure to different information sources.

    • Avoiding drama and trauma. True crime and shows involving hostile and/or high-conflict social interactions are physically distressing (and even injurious) to the brain.

3. Cultivate mindfulness and present-moment awareness

I've written about mindfulness before, but I’m returning to it - not only because the evidence for its effectiveness continues to accumulate - but also because being proficient in mindfulness facilitates the application of almost every other skill. I acknowledge there are differences in each individual’s capacity to understand what mindfulness is, as well as to cultivate the skill and apply it in practice. With that said, I strongly encourage everyone to learn about it and stick to the practice. Obviously, like any skill, it takes time and effort to develop, but if you have the capacity to do this, I believe it will be one of the most helpful tools in your psychological toolbox.

In brief, mindfulness is simply the practice of observing one’s present experience, moment by moment, without judgement. This includes moment-by-moment awareness and acceptance of the thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, etc. that make up your conscious experience — without trying to change or judge that experience.

In an increasingly digital world and the context of AI-related stress, mindfulness is and will be particularly valuable for two reasons. First, it counteracts the fragmentation of attention that comes with constant digital engagement by training our capacity to sustain focus on a single thing. Second, it provides a means of relating to our experience – to anxious thoughts about the future, about AI, unemployment or underemployment – without being consumed by them. We can learn to watch thoughts as merely events passing through our awareness, rather than facts about reality that we should be compelled to act on immediately. Mindfulness won’t directly solve most life problems but it does help us manage how we interact with those problems and the symptoms those problems cause.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of mindfulness or want a deeper explanation of how it works, I'd strongly encourage you to read my earlier post on the subject. There are also great books on the subject by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Sam Harris. Sam Harris also has a fantastic mindfulness training app called Waking Up.

4. Exercise

The evidence here is completely unambiguous: regular physical exercise is one of the most impactful interventions for anxiety, depression, and stress that we know of. It works through multiple mechanisms - neurochemical, hormonal, social, and attentional - and the evidence base is as strong as anything in the clinical literature. It reduces inflammation in the body and brain. It enhances sleep quality by increasing homeostatic sleep drive (i.e., the body and brain’s appetite for sleep). It improves vascular flow - and thus oxygen supply - to the brain, in turn improving memory, attention and focus, and problem solving. For most people, it enhances mood and motivation, reduces anxiety, and facilitates an emotional state of euphoric “non-wanting” (i.e., cessation of craving).

I consider physical activity as the foundation for psychological health more than as a supplement. Our bodies are built to move and they suffer when they don’t get enough. When our bodies become inactive or sedentary - paralyzed by our screens and algorithms - getting moving in the physical world is a genuinely restorative act. Exercise re-establishes our sense of inhabiting a physical body, of being located in physical space, of being truly biologically human. It involves directly, tangibly engaging with an external world rather than gazing through an electronic interface at a digital counterfeit of reality.

B. Maintain focus and attention

5. “Deep Work” and monotasking

Decades of cognitive science have determined that human beings are not naturally built for multitasking. What we’re actually doing when we “multitask” is rapidly switching our attention back and forth between tasks. Each switch incurs a cognitive cost. The result of this repetitive switching is worse performance across all tasks, greater mental fatigue, and reduced satisfaction with the work itself.

An alternative to multitasking is “monotasking” – deliberately scheduling blocks of uninterrupted time dedicated to a single task. This is something Cal Newport calls “deep work”. Monotasking is both a productivity strategy and a mental health strategy. Cultivating (or retrieving) our capacity for sustained attention in this way is a critical practice in the present environment because our attention is increasingly hijacked by sophisticated AI-powered systems designed to fragment it. Again, because this kind of repetitive training actually physically rewires our brains to be more attentive, consider monotasking training as analogous to strengthening any other muscle on your body that needs regular exercise to stay strong and functional.

6. Set digital boundaries and practice good technology hygiene

The concepts of “setting digital boundaries” and practicing good “tech hygiene” have become exhausted clichés, but the principles underlying them are still sound. Frequent unblocked notifications will hijack your attention again and again. Infinite, unchecked scrolling is engineered to prevent natural (i.e., healthy) stopping points. AI-driven algorithms are optimized to keep you engaged for hours without no regard for the utter destruction of your time and your health. They are designed to keep you ingesting information - advertisements, memes, political rage bait – whether you like it or not, absorbing your time and your life one swipe at a time.

Assertively taking control of your digital environment - turning off non-essential notifications, using app timers, deleting apps that don't serve your health or your values, creating tech-free times and spaces - is not about rejecting technology. It's about optimizing your life by having technology facilitate your life - by using it to enhance your real-world existence - not the other way around. Remember, AI-driven algorithms are intentionally designed with specific behavioural objectives in mind, and those objectives are not necessarily aligned with your psychological wellbeing.

7. Read long-form content

Reading long-form content - books, essays, long-form journalism - trains a type of sustained, linear attention that is an increasingly rare and valuable human trait in an increasingly digital world. Long-form content requires us to hold complex arguments or narratives in mind over time, to follow complex reasoning like humans are capable of rather than to just peck at simple stimuli like pigeons. This kind of training requires our brains to (re)learn to tolerate the absence of novelty and stimulation between key points. This maintains a cognitive stability that algorithm-driven media systematically destabilizes. So instead of scrolling on your phone, read a book or a long article. And if this idea activates feelings of anxiety or repulsion in you, don’t ignore or judge those feelings; reflect on them with genuine curiosity.

C. Live Meaningfully

8. Clarify your core values and live more consistently with them

One of the best sources of psychological “grit” is having a clear sense of the core principles or “values” you stand for - the kind of person you are or want to be, what you're working toward, what your life is really about. This is not the same as having a fixed life plan; it's much more fundamental than that. Values provide stable compass headings when life is good, as well as when circumstances are uncertain or grim, and the environment is in flux. Although there are hundreds of possible values a person can hold, some examples of common values include: physical health, meaningful relationships, contributing to society, helping others, learning and growing, financial security. Although we can set specific goals that are consistent with our values, think of core values (e.g., financial security) as the compass headings that provide the meaningful direction in life and specific goals (e.g., create an emergency fund) and actions you take (e.g., place 5% of monthly earnings in a savings account) as the features and waypoints of the path you walk while following that heading.

In an era when AI is rapidly shifting the landscape of work, productivity, creativity, and general human contribution, knowing and frequently returning to one’s core values will be a critical tool for mental survival. It will offer a consistent compass heading through the fog - a stable, meaningful answer to the question “but what’s this all for?” - even when the answers to specific career and purpose questions remain uncertain.

9. Invest in relationships with actual human beings

We’re genetically wired to thrive in groups with other human beings, so deliberately investing in genuine human relationships is critical to healthy brain functioning. This means actually showing up in person for the people in your life, prioritizing time together, and being willing to have the kind of deep conversations that screens often replace. To do this, we need to be honest with ourselves about whether our texting, video calls, and social media use is enhancing our real relationships or substituting for them. These are different things, and the difference matters.

10. Engage in values-congruent activities that AI can’t replace

Consider the activities in your life that feel most inherently meaningful — activities you engage in for their own sake rather than for external validation or productivity. For many people, these involve physical challenges, positively contributing to the community, creative expression, caring for others, connecting with nature, or spiritual practice. These should be activities that are difficult to automate, delegate to AI, or replace with a digital equivalent. Actively building into your schedule (and then aggressively protecting) time for these activities will you connected to the real world and sources of meaning that are not subject to technological hijacking.

11. Seek professional support when it's needed

If you find yourself struggling — with anxiety about the future, with feelings of meaninglessness, with the kind of chronic stress that doesn't lift on its own, consider speaking with a psychologist, therapist, or counsellor. The strategies I’ve listed in this post can be useful, but they are not a substitute for professional support when that support is what's actually needed. Seeking help is not a sign of weakness; it's a demonstration of the same self-awareness and pragmatism that makes any other adaptive strategy effective.

 

- How to Prepare Your Brain for a Post-Singularity World -

 

I admit this section involves a level of speculation that is a little unusual for a psychology blog. The so-called 'singularity' - a hypothetical point at which artificial general intelligence (AGI) surpasses human cognitive capacity and begins recursively improving itself - may or may not occur. Moreover, if it does occur, it will be on a timeline that experts disagree about substantially. So clearly, I am not in any position to tell you it is coming, or when, or what form it will take. But with that said, a meaningful number of serious researchers and experts in the field believe the moment of singularity is coming - possibly within a decade - and the implications of living in a world shaped by that possibility, regardless of whether it materializes, are worth thinking through and preparing for.

1. Make peace with uncertainty

Tolerating the unknown, or uncertainty, is one of the most demanding challenges for humans, which is why it deserves to be said first. One of the core tasks of psychological maturity is developing what psychologists sometimes call 'tolerance of uncertainty' - the capacity to function adaptively in the absence of definitive answers. Uncertainty can be about a number of things, like:

• • the future (e.g., will I still be employed next year?)

  • health and illness (e.g., do I have an undiagnosed terminal illness?);

  • other people (e.g., what do others think of me?)

  • why certain events occur (e.g., why did they break into my car?)

Fortunately, tolerance of uncertainty is not a personality trait but rather a skill that can be developed.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), in particular, offers a useful framework here. Rather than trying to achieve certainty about outcomes, which is often impossible, ACT emphasizes first clarifying your values and then committing to behaviour that expresses those values regardless of what the future holds. This is a necessary strategy for living in a world that is genuinely unpredictable and potentially changing multiple times per day. You cannot control what AI will become or how it might affect the world around you. You can manage how you engage with that world based on what matters most to you.

2. Ground your identity in what cannot be automated

A significant part of what makes the singularity a threatening concept is its implication that human cognitive capacities - the things many of us have organized our identities around - are not uniquely valuable. Many humans like to innovate and build things, create art, do research to learn about the physical world, help other humans, and so forth. But if AI agents and AI-powered robots can write, reason, diagnose, create art, produce music and movies, conduct research, build machines, program other AI agents, and problem-solve at superhuman levels, then what meaningful activities are left for humans?

At bare minimum, the felt sense of being alive, of loving and being loved, of making meaning in the face of mortality, of interacting with the physical world through a body – is at the core of what it is to be biologically human. Whatever AGI can do at the level of information processing, it does not undergo the experience of heartbreak, observing a child discovering something for the first time, or observing a sunset and feeling the weight of their own finitude. Centering one’s identity around the human experience - experiencing relationships with others and with the world, experiencing life within a body, and experiencing sensations that are irreducibly personal to you – provides grounding in a world that may look and function “less human”.

3. Adopt and cultivate "adaptability" as a core value

If evolutionary history teaches us anything it’s that humans are remarkably resilient and adaptable. Despite the corresponding discomfort, people often adapt to circumstances that would have seemed unendurable if anticipated in advance. While all humans have some inherent genetic adaptability, enhancing our adaptability is not a passive process. Adaptability requires intentionally training ourselves in flexible thinking and mindfulness, intentionally seeking the support of others, a willingness to grieve what is lost, an openness to frequent change, the ability to swiftly pivot to what is occurring next, and an increased sense of control/agency over certain aspects of one's life. Cultivating this adaptability now - before any singularity arrives - is the best preparation for navigating whatever does arrive.

4. Build and join communities of meaning

Throughout our history, humans have navigated profound environmental, social, and technological disruptions through collective meaning-making - through communities, group rituals, shared stories, and mutual support. Western individualistic culture has, to some extent, eroded these adaptive collectivistic practices, and this is a major vulnerability to our survival. If AGI arrives, it will likely drastically and dramatically transform our society, and unified communities that share adaptive values, tolerate individual differences, support each other through uncertainty, and construct shared narratives about what matters will be better positioned to navigate that uncertainty compared to groups of isolated individuals trying to navigate the same changes alone.

5. Engage ethically and politically

One of the best antidotes to helplessness is action. Feeling that we have no influence whatsoever over the forces shaping our lives is highly corrosive to our health. Alternatively, feeling that we are engaged and contributing to a larger cause works to protect our brains – not to mention it often contributes to actual change.

As we speak, the development of AI is being shaped by policy decisions, corporate choices, regulatory frameworks, and public advocacy. Ordinary people do have a voice in this process, even if it is modest. Staying informed, participating in democratic processes, supporting organizations working on responsible AI development (e.g., advocating for regulation) is good citizenship. Action doesn’t have to be monumental or unsustainable. Simple action at a local level within one’s sphere of influence is enough to override or temper feelings of helplessness.

6. Adopt the “long view” of human resilience

Humans have survived and adapted to changes of extraordinary magnitude before. The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the advent of mass media, nuclear weapons, and globalization. Each of these revolutions have transformed human life in ways that were initially disorienting, sometimes catastrophic, and ultimately navigated. Not without cost, not without suffering, not without loss. But they were navigated.

I’m not pointing this out to encourage complacency or as a way of shrugging off the unique threat represented by AGI; the scale of what AI may represent is different in important ways and the psychological challenges will be very real. But for sound reasons, we should resist catastrophizing. Problems rarely become catastrophic and even when they do, living under the constant assumption of catastrophe rarely helps in responding to and navigating actual catastrophes when they do occur.

In closing

AI is not going to stop developing. The uncertainty of this AI era we’re living in is unlikely to resolve soon or cleanly. But we are not passive recipients of whatever the technology industry decides to build next. We have agency over our attention, our relationships with each other, our values, and our daily choices stemming from those values - and those are exactly the domains that matter most to humans in the process of living a meaningful life.

If you are finding that anxiety about AI or the future in general is significantly affecting your health and daily functioning, please don't hesitate to reach out. These are precisely the kinds of problems psychological treatment is intended to help with.

Now, get off your device :)

Caelin