Worried AI will take your job? A psychologist on coping with job insecurity

A lot of people are quietly asking the same question at the moment: is AI going to take my job? Some ask it after a restructure or a company announcement. Others ask it at 2am, after an hour of reading forum threads. If you are one of them, it is a reasonable question to be asking. Some roles are changing quickly and nobody can promise you where yours will land. What a psychologist can help with is the part that sits on top of the real uncertainty: the constant worry, the lost sleep and the sense of being frozen.

Why the threat of losing work hurts so much

You might expect the stress to arrive when a job actually goes. In practice, the threat is often harder to live with. Research on job insecurity going back decades has found that the perceived threat of losing work is linked to poorer mental health and lower wellbeing, even before anything has happened (Sverke, Hellgren and Näswall, 2002).

Worry about AI adds features that make it especially sticky. The threat is vague, it is huge, it is outside your control and it is in the news every day. Psychologists describe the difficulty many people have with not knowing as intolerance of uncertainty, and it is one of the main things that keeps chronic worry going. Every article you read answers one question and raises three more.

Work is also rarely just a pay cheque. If your skills are a big part of who you are, the idea of a machine doing them can feel like a verdict on your worth. That is one reason the fear can feel out of proportion to anything that has actually changed in your job so far.

Signs the worry has become a problem

Some concern is useful. It can push you to learn something new or have a conversation you have been putting off. It has usually tipped into something harder when:

• you spend hours reading about AI and jobs and feel worse afterwards
• you lie awake running through worst-case scenarios
• you avoid learning new tools or looking at job adverts because it feels unbearable
• you keep asking colleagues, friends or chatbots whether your job is safe, feel briefly better, then need to ask again
• you feel tense, irritable or flat most of the week
• you have stopped enjoying time away from work

If that sounds familiar, you may be dealing with a form of anxiety rather than ordinary concern, and it responds to the same kinds of support.

Sort your worries into two piles

One of the most useful ideas from cognitive behavioural therapy is that worries come in two kinds.

Practical worries are about problems you can do something about, even a small thing, this week. ‘I don’t know how to use the tools my team is starting to use’ is a practical worry. So is ‘my CV hasn’t been updated in six years’.

Hypothetical worries are about things nobody can answer yet. ‘What will my industry look like in 2035?’ and ‘what if there are no jobs for anyone?’ are hypothetical. You can think about them for hours and be no closer to an answer, which is why they wear you out.

Try writing your worries down and marking each one P or H. For practical ones, choose one small next step and put it in your diary. For hypothetical ones, practise noticing them (’there’s the 2035 worry again’) and letting them go without following them down the rabbit hole. You will not manage this perfectly, and that is fine. The aim is to spend less of your day in the second pile.

Five things that help

• Set a news window. Pick one short, fixed time to read about AI and work, and keep it out of the hour before bed. Checking more often feels like staying prepared but mostly feeds the worry
• Take one concrete step. Spend 20 minutes trying a tool relevant to your role, or book a course. Doing something small tends to reduce anxiety more than thinking about doing something big
• Ask a direct question. If your organisation is changing, ask your manager how your role is expected to evolve. A real answer, even an uncomfortable one, is usually easier to live with than silence
• Notice reassurance seeking. Asking the same question over and over, of people or of a chatbot, gives brief relief and keeps the cycle going. Try delaying the urge by an hour and see what happens to the feeling
• Widen your sense of who you are. Acceptance and commitment therapy asks what you want to stand for across your whole life, in and out of work. Spending time on those things builds a sense of worth that no restructure can take away

If you have already lost work

If your role has gone, or you have been told it is at risk, the feelings can include shock, anger, shame and something close to grief. That is a normal reaction to a real loss. Practical help matters here too: Acas and Citizens Advice both publish clear guidance on redundancy rights in the UK. Keeping some structure to your days, staying in contact with people and being wary of the pull to hide away all help. If low mood lasts for weeks, or you feel hopeless, please speak to your GP or a psychologist.

When to get support

If worry about AI and your job has lasted for weeks, is affecting your sleep or relationships, or is stopping you from making decisions, it is worth talking to someone. Our page on AI anxiety therapy explains how we work with this, including CBT and ACT. It often sits alongside work stress or burnout, and a clinical psychologist can help you untangle which is which.

The Online Psychologists are HCPC-registered clinical psychologists working online with adults across the UK, with no GP referral needed. When you are ready, you can get started and tell us a little about what is going on.