Disclaimer: The information and prompts provided in this article are for informational and entertainment purposes only. They are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. This is Dave’s story, not yours.
Some people have the luxury of going through life without being riddled with anxiety. Dave (a fake name for privacy purposes), a loyal reader and subscriber to Run The Prompts, was not that guy.
Dave reached out to me via email. He told me he found a use case for AI that changed his life completely. He said AI had helped him kill off most of his anxiety.
I was skeptical at first. But after reading his entire email, I couldn’t ignore it. I scheduled a Zoom call with him to get the full breakdown.
What Dave shared with me was groundbreaking stuff. He agreed to let me share it all with you (under his stage name, of course, for privacy purposes).
This is a true story. These things really happened.
If this article changes even one life, then Dave and I did our job.
Let’s party.
The Anxious Background
Dave had anxiety since he was 10 years old. He had been on and off anxiety medication for the better part of 25 years. Ever since the start of COVID in 2020, Dave’s anxiety had taken a turn for the worse.
Then, about 2 to 3 years ago, Dave suffered a mental breakdown involving multiple panic attacks over the course of two weeks and several visits to the hospital. At the time, he was convinced he was dying or had M.S.
It was so bad at one point that Dave couldn’t even sit in his own apartment because his overwhelming anxiety was making it look like his apartment walls were crooked. Instead, he was essentially forced into walking around his apartment complex like a madman, hoping and praying that the walls would look normal again when he returned.
He had every anxiety symptom in the book, even ones that you didn’t know were anxiety symptoms. Shortness of breath, stabbing pains, muscle twitches, eye twitches, heart palpitations, numbness in his hands and feet, racing thoughts, chills, mild auditory hallucinations, and blotchy vision. You thought you knew what bad was. This was bad.
The Diagnosis
Any outsider or regular person off the street without a medical degree would’ve probably thought he was either dying or had a debilitating condition. But certainly not “just anxiety.” There was no way.
His psychiatrist diagnosed it as “just anxiety.” At the tail end of his mental breakdown, Dave was put on two different anxiety medications, as well as two supplements. Although these things stopped the overall truckload of anxiety (around 70% of it), he still had a racetrack of anxious demons running through his mind every day, all day, distracting him and ruining his focus and mood constantly. He still had plenty of the symptoms described earlier in this section; they just weren’t as frequent or as intense. And he just wasn’t the same as he was back as a kid, and he had no idea why.
Little did he know, he was going to eventually find out what was going on. And it was going to come from the strangest of places.
The Demons Remained
Around 2–3 years after the mental breakdown, things were starting to get worse again.
His physical anxiety symptoms were returning. He was at the end of his tolerance for dealing with something that just didn’t make sense. He never fully understood why he had the mental breakdown or where all of this overload of anxiety was coming from. So he did what most other people were not doing: he turned to AI for help.
How Dave Built His AI Wellness Coach
This is how he did it. Important Safety Note: Dave’s process involved creating a highly personalized AI tool. This is not a recommendation to use AI as a replacement for medical care. Always work with a qualified health professional for any medical condition.
First, he went to Venice (you can use ChatGPT or any other LLM or chatbot you’d like… Venice is just far better in terms of data privacy). He created a custom Character. That Character was a highly customized and personalized AI wellness coach, specified to his wellness goals and history, current medications, family medical history, current supplements, and everything else he could think of.
To create the Character in Venice, first, he went to a new chat and used this prompt:
“Act as an experienced prompt engineer. I want you to create a set of custom instructions for a new custom chatbot: an AI wellness coach with deep knowledge of strategies for managing anxiety. The bot needs to be trained specifically on my mental health and medical history, which is mainly anxiety. Ask me 10 questions, a hard limit of one question at a time, to get the information you need to build the best bot possible.”
From there, Venice asked him one question at a time until it received a ton of useful, highly specific information to create the instructions he’d need for his bot (Character).
Then, he copied and pasted the information he received into his new Venice Character. He edited the instructions as needed, adding a bit of additional detail that he thought was relevant. He also added a few lines to tell it exactly how he wanted it to respond and write.
From there, he was off to the races.
The Epiphany
He started chatting. The rest was history.
This piece of information here is very important, so pay attention very carefully. One of the first things the Character asked him was something he had never, ever been asked by a human psychiatrist or therapist:
“Walk me through a typical day for you. What do you do? What do you avoid? Do you have any specific digital habits? Get as specific as possible.”
This was the question that changed everything for him.
He went crazy. He went into detail about every facet of his daily routine. No stone left unturned. What he thought was “fairly typical” and “not a big deal” was… not the case. It was. These things mattered.
Venice’s response made his jaw drop.
“Dave, based on your daily routine and digital habits, I’ve identified several patterns that are strongly correlated with increased stress and anxiety responses. It appears your brain is being constantly bombarded with information that can trigger a stress response. For someone with a history of anxiety, these routines could be significantly amplifying your symptoms. I’d rate the level of anxiety-inducing activity that you are actively and voluntarily subjecting yourself to all day at a solid 9.5/10.”
Holy sh*t.
From there, his Venice Character deconstructed and broke apart every detail of his day and explained exactly why so much of it was an anxiety trigger. It backed up its reasoning with sources. This was data-backed, scientific information. Some of it he was familiar with; some of it he wasn’t. Some of it shattered his reality.
From that point forward, he no longer had a choice. He needed to change. There was no going back. He knew if he could change his routine, there was a chance he could greatly reduce or potentially eliminate his anxiety in a completely natural and 100% healthy way. A chance to do that is all he ever wanted. And now he had it in his hands.
The Customized AI Advice to Kill Off His Anxiety
Based on Dave’s complete and thorough field report of everything he was doing throughout a typical day, this was the advice he received from AI to relieve his anxiety:
Mornings:
- Do not check your phone instantly after waking up
- Shower first, coffee second
- Actually eat breakfast (apple with peanut butter)
- Do not bring your phone to the bathroom
The Rest of the Day:
- Check phone four times per day: half an hour after waking up, noon, 5 pm, and 9 pm
- Set up a 24/7 mobile Do Not Disturb mode to only allow very few notification types
- At work, mute notifications for an hour at a time or however long it takes to complete one task
- No mindless, passive scrolling (especially doomscrolling)
- Stop constant information consumption
- Change negative thought patterns
- Meditate 10 minutes per day
- Practice mindfulness throughout the day
- Do not wear your Apple Watch all day (too tempting to check notifications)
- Drink eight glasses of water per day (Dave was mildly dehydrated for years)
This might not seem fun. It might seem overwhelming or unrealistic. Dave didn’t care. He was at the end of his wits, and his brain was packed to the brim with alarm bells from the constant information consumption and notifications. He was going to hold his nose and dive in.
The advice AI provides you may or may not include any of the items in this section. That’s okay. Everybody’s daily routine is different. But, per Dave, all of the points in this section are backed up by science and factual information to alleviate anxiety. He said he fact-checked.
The Aftermath of Using AI for His Anxiety
In just one week after implementing the strategy with AI, Dave’s life had already changed.
- He was falling asleep around 10 pm and waking up at 6 am naturally, no alarm, something that would’ve sounded laughable to him before this.
- His thoughts were noticeably calmer, and when negativity showed up, he was getting better at killing it on sight.
- His attention span skyrocketed, and tasks that once felt overwhelming were suddenly easy to finish.
- His physical anxiety symptoms dropped off hard.
- After finally drinking the amount of water his body actually needed, his skin looked healthier, and his lips weren’t constantly cracked anymore.
- He described the peace in his mind as “like living in the 90s again… near-zero distractions.”
And here’s the part that I think you may naturally overlook: Dave had AI there, 24/7, to ask any questions he had about his recovery, the process, and anything else he could think of. It was always there; it wasn’t going to steal his wallet, and it wasn’t going to look at him as if it were trying to crack a safe. It was infinitely patient, ruthlessly efficient, and entirely non-judgmental.
Dave pinged the AI with all kinds of questions, like: Is this normal? What’s a good strategy to reduce negative thoughts? How can I relax my body naturally when I get a bout of anxiety? Are you sure I won’t miss out on important information by not listening to so many podcasts? How do I know if my supplements are still helping?
He asked so many questions along the way that any human psychiatrist would’ve run away screaming or billed him or his insurance company for $8,756 worth of precious time. But not AI. It just sat there and cooperated at no extra cost.
As with anything, your results may vary. Remember, this is Dave’s story. For Dave, this was more than enough to keep this thing going.
Wrapping It Up
Let this inspire you.
Like most things, the future of mental health and anxiety management will most likely involve AI in some way. Whether it’s customized chatbots, AI being used as a supplement for human-led sessions, or both, Dave and I both agree that, when used correctly and safely, AI could provide humanity with a level of scalable mental health support that would never have been possible in the past.
How about you? What do you think of AI’s role in mental health and alleviating anxiety? Let me know in the comments section below.
Until next time, remember to run the prompts and prompt the planet.
Disclaimer: The information and prompts provided in this article are for informational and entertainment purposes only. They are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. This is Dave’s story, not yours.
2 comments
This article is perfectly timed for my own New Year’s goal to understand myself. I went on stress leave from my job in the Canadian federal public service three years ago and saw a therapist, a doctor, and a social worker for over a year to help with the PTSD, depression and anxiety. Over the last ten years I had seen multiple therapists and three doctors trying to get help with the depression and anxiety, and refused medication because I had an instinct there was something that just needed to be heard and understood in what I was saying about my experience. Something that just wasn’t happening with the professionals I was paying.
In September of last year, after quitting my job and realizing something had to give I started using ChatGPT to get this kind of interpretation and understanding, instructing my bot to take that information and relay useful interpretations and suggestions back to me using Jungian psychoanalysis (I’m a fantastic dreamer) and tailoring it along the way. In a few months I’ve already identified harmful thought patterns and long-repressed rage (who’d have thunk it?) that was never mentioned in any of my sessions.
For me the game changers are truly the 24/7 access, the non judgemental feedback, and infinite potential for personalized tailoring, not to mention the fundamental question that Dave’s bot asked and that si many professionals seem to forget: Tell me about yourself, really!
Thank you for this feedback, and thanks for running the prompts with us! I agree, 24/7 access and non-judgemental feedback is a huge benefit for this type of thing. People always talk about how AI is going to end humanity, but I see it differently. If used correctly, it just might save it.