Clara had always been a hard worker. In her family, you didn’t complain about being tired - you just made more coffee.
At 27, she was managing two jobs in Barcelona’s hospitality scene: mornings at a café, evenings at a boutique hotel. Her mother often reminded her how lucky she was to have work at all. Her friends joked that she was “the reliable one.” But inside, Clara felt like she was unraveling.
She hadn’t taken a full day off in almost three months. Her skin broke out from stress. She snapped at customers over nothing. Her chest felt tight most mornings, like her body was warning her. But she ignored it. She couldn’t afford to slow down - not in this economy, not with rent due, not with so many people struggling even more.
Then one Thursday, Clara called in sick. But she wasn’t sick. She just couldn’t move. Her body wouldn’t let her. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unsure how to explain to anyone that her exhaustion wasn’t physical. It was emotional. And it was everywhere.
Therapy felt too far away - expensive, complicated, and time-consuming. She didn’t have the words anyway. That night, while scrolling TikTok in bed, she saw someone mention Noah. They called it their “AI therapist,” but the app itself called it an AI Emotional Coach. That felt safer. Less like admitting something was wrong.
She downloaded it. The first message she sent was just: “I think I’m burnt out.”
Noah didn’t reply with tips or clichés. It asked her what exhaustion looked like in her body. It helped her trace the numbness, the irritability, the guilt around resting. It helped her understand that burnout wasn’t laziness. It was her nervous system shutting down from constant pressure.
Over the next few days, Clara used chat mode in short bursts between shifts. She leaned on guided journaling promptsto untangle the fear that if she slowed down, everything would collapse. She used voice input when her thoughts were too jumbled to type.
“It became a small ritual,” she said. “Five minutes with Noah before work. Ten minutes before bed. I started to feel human again.”
Eventually, she didn’t just call in sick. She called in tired. And she didn’t apologize for it. With Noah’s help, she began rebuilding her days with room to breathe - not just survive.
For Clara, Noah wasn’t just a break from burnout. It was a quiet reminder that her needs mattered too. Read more real-life Noah AI user stories.
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.
