At 23, Sulen seemed like a model student at her university in Seoul. She studied economics, kept her grades high, and never missed deadlines. To her parents, she was the pride of the family. To her peers, she looked calm, capable, and disciplined. But beneath the surface, she was unravelling.
Her hands trembled before presentations. She struggled to sleep more than four hours a night. Panic attacks crept in quietly — in the library, on the subway, while brushing her teeth. Yet to the outside world, she looked perfectly fine. In a culture where silence was mistaken for strength, her suffering went unseen.
Sulen couldn’t tell her parents. She knew they would dismiss it as stress or tiredness. She couldn’t tell her friends either — everyone around her was exhausted, and she didn’t want to seem weak. Therapy felt out of reach: too expensive, too stigmatized, and too overwhelming to even consider. Alone in her dorm one night, she typed “AI therapist for students” into Google.
That search led her to Noah. Marketed not as a replacement for therapy, but as an AI Emotional Coach, it felt approachable. She downloaded it.
Her first message was vague: “Feeling off. Not sure why.”
Noah responded with patience. It asked her to notice her body, her breath, her racing thoughts. It reflected her words back without judgment. For the first time, Sulen felt seen in a space where she didn’t have to perform strength.
She began using chat mode during commutes, typing fragments of thoughts she didn’t dare share elsewhere. At night, when panic threatened to swallow her, she whispered into the voice input feature. Noah helped her name her emotions, track her triggers, and understand that anxiety was not a personal failure, but a natural response to relentless pressure.
Over time, Sulen found relief in small but powerful ways. She started sleeping longer. She said no to commitments without collapsing under guilt. She stopped blaming herself for not being “strong enough.”
“Noah didn’t make the anxiety disappear,” she said later. “But it helped me stop hiding and start living.”
For Sulen, Noah became the one space where invisible struggles were finally allowed to exist — without shame.
Download the Noah AI app for iPhone and Android today. Contact us about Noah for your school, university, or organization. You can reach out to us on sophia@heynoah.ai
Disclaimer: The images used in this article are either AI-generated or sourced from Pinterest for illustrative purposes only and do not depict the actual individuals mentioned in the story. All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our users.
