It started innocently enough. Like a lot of developers, merox started using AI tools to speed up his work. Draft a component here, refactor a function there. Save time, ship faster.
But gradually, something shifted. The tools weren't just saving time — they were expanding the scope of what he felt he needed to do.
"You ask it for one thing, and it gives you three more suggestions," he explained. "'We could also improve X.' 'Want me to refactor this while we're at it?' 'That's a great direction, here's how we could take it further.' None of it is wrong. But none of it ever stops either."
He found himself spending entire weekends redesigning his personal website for the fourth time in as many months. Not because anything was broken, but because AI kept showing him ways it could be slightly better. Cleaner. More optimized. More modern.
His therapist was the one who connected the dots. During a session about his growing restlessness and shrinking patience, she asked him to track what triggered his anxiety spikes. The pattern was unmistakable: they always followed long AI sessions.
"I wasn't just using AI," he said. "I was chasing this moving target of perfection that the tools kept creating. Each iteration felt like progress, but I was actually just running in circles — faster and faster, getting nowhere."
He describes it as a kind of frictionless compulsion. Before AI, redesigning something meant real work — setting up files, writing code, testing. That friction was a natural brake. You only did it when it mattered. AI removed the brake.
The worst part was the reassurance-seeking loop. He'd ask AI about every minor physical symptom he felt. Each answer gave a few minutes of relief, then the next question would form. "It's perfect for anxiety," he said bitterly. "Infinitely patient, always available, never the one to say you've asked enough."
Recovery wasn't about quitting AI entirely. It was about setting boundaries. He started implementing what he calls the "two-day rule" — if he feels an urgent urge to redesign or rebuild something, he waits two days. More often than not, the urgency fades.
He also started closing AI tabs when he's done with a specific task, rather than leaving them open as constant background companions. "Out of sight, out of mind," he said. "It sounds stupid, but it works."
His takeaway is simple but important: "AI comes with no instruction manual for your psychology. The business model is designed to keep you engaged, to always surface the next thing you could do. For some people, that's a productivity boost. For others, it's a frictionless path straight into an anxiety loop. You have to figure out which one you are."