The first time Dana realized something was wrong, she was standing in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store. She had her list in hand, but her heart was pounding as if she’d just run a marathon. Her chest tightened, her hands shook. She left her cart behind and drove home in tears, ashamed of panicking over nothing.
At 30, Dana had a good job in finance, a circle of friends, and a résumé that looked perfect on paper. No one around her suspected the reality: she was constantly on edge, overwhelmed by racing thoughts, and running on two to three hours of restless sleep.
“I didn’t look sick, so people assumed I was fine,” she said later. “But my body was screaming at me every day.”
Therapy had always been something she thought about, but the costs in the U.S. were daunting. With student loans and rent in Boston, it felt impossible. Instead, she tried podcasts, yoga, and journaling apps — but nothing stuck. One night, scrolling Instagram at 1 a.m., she came across Noah.
Marketed as an AI Emotional Coach, Noah didn’t promise to replace therapy. It promised something Dana desperately needed: a private, judgment-free space to process her anxiety.
The first time she typed into the app, she kept it vague: “I’m not okay.” Noah didn’t ask her to explain everything. Instead, it asked: “Where does the ‘not okay’ feel strongest right now — your mind or your body?”
That question slowed her down. She realized she hadn’t connected her spiraling thoughts with the tightness in her chest before.
Over the weeks, Dana began using Noah in different ways. Chat mode on her lunch breaks to dump the racing thoughts. Voice-to-text on her drive home, whispering her worries aloud instead of bottling them up. On the nights when panic built up, real-time voice mode gave her a safe outlet at 2 a.m. when no one else was available.
Gradually, she noticed changes. She started sleeping more. She became less afraid of anxiety attacks because she had language for what was happening. And she stopped pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.
“Noah became the one place I could stop performing,” Dana reflected. “It helped me listen to myself instead of just surviving.”
For Dana, Noah wasn’t about erasing anxiety. It was about making space for her to face it — and finally breathe again.
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.
