Venturous Counselling is a queer- and BIPOC-led therapy collective offering anti-oppressive, justice-oriented mental health support in Vancouver, Port Moody, and online across BC. This article explores the cultural shift toward analog living as a response to AI saturation, examining how the dominance of artificial intelligence affects self-worth, body image, creative authorship, and our capacity for imperfect, embodied human experience. Going analog is reframed here as a somatic, political, and relational response to a generated world. Venturous supports adults, youth, couples, and families navigating anxiety, burnout, grief, trauma, chronic pain, self-worth and body image concerns, identity questions, and the systemic conditions that shape mental health.
In this article:
- Going Analogue is Skin Deep
- AI Changed What We Trust Before It Changed What We Produce
- When Everything Is Generated, What’s Still Yours?
- The Body Keeps Reaching for What’s Real
- Perfectionism Has a New Engine
- What AI Can’t Do (and Why That Matters for Healing)
- Analog Practices Worth Trying
- Discernment and Embodiment Isn’t Anti-Technology
- FAQs
- Next Steps
Going Analogue is Skin Deep
You’ve probably noticed it. The pull toward something your hands can touch; a book with pages, a pen that bleeds ink onto paper, flour on a counter, a camera that doesn’t autocorrect your face before you’ve even seen it.
2026 has been called the year of analog and the trend pieces are everywhere: Gen Z is knitting, vinyl sales are climbing, people are buying analog clocks and film cameras and writing letters by hand again; crafting supply sales are up across the board, with nearly three quarters of adults participating in a crafting project last year, and board games outselling expectations. The word “slop” was named 2025’s word of the year by Merriam-Webster, defined as low-quality digital content produced in quantity by AI.
And underneath all of that data, something simpler is happening. Something marked within our bodies in resistance to AI.
People are reaching for friction, for weight, for texture. Before anyone calls it a lifestyle choice or a wellness practice or a content strategy, the body is already there; already pulling toward what’s real, already flinching from what’s been smoothed into nothing.
A nervous system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do when the environment stops feeling authored by anyone human.
AI Changed What We Trust Before It Changed What We Produce
Artificial intelligence is now woven into almost every layer of daily experience; it writes emails, generates images, summarizes articles, drafts cover letters, composes music, creates art that looks like it was painted by a person who doesn’t exist. It can mimic your voice. It can simulate empathy. It can produce a paragraph about grief that reads like someone who has actually grieved… That’s the part that rattles people. Because when a machine can produce something that sounds like it came from lived experience, the question shifts from “is this useful?” to something far more destabilizing:
How do I know what’s real anymore?
That question resonates within the body. It shows up as a low hum of unease you can’t quite name; a tightness when you scroll, a strange fatigue after consuming content that looks right but feels hollow, a flicker of distrust you can’t always explain. It also shows up in relationships, in how quickly we second-guess whether someone’s words were crafted by a person or a prompt, whether the care behind a message was real or delegated to a machine. The distrust seeps sideways into everything.
adrienne maree brown talks about how we are in “a time of new senses.” The world is asking us to develop capacities we haven’t fully built yet; discernment as a practice, the ability to feel the difference between something authored and something generated, a kind of somatic literacy that no one formally teaches but that our bodies are trying to learn on their own.
When Everything Is Generated, What’s Still Yours?
AI can write your journal entry. It can generate affirmations tailored to your attachment style, produce a self-care plan, a coping strategy, a grief ritual, a love letter; it can draft your wedding vows if you ask it to.
So what’s left that actually belongs to you?
When the output is always polished, always optimized, always grammatically flawless and emotionally calibrated, something starts to happen to the person consuming it; you start to feel like your own thoughts aren’t enough, your own words aren’t sufficient, your own handwriting and your own first draft and your own shaky attempt at expressing what you feel starts to look inadequate next to something a machine produced in four seconds.
This is where the analog turn intersects with self-worth in a way most trend pieces won’t name.
The dominance of AI recalibrates what “good enough” means.
It raises the floor of acceptable output to a level that no human being, on their most productive day can reach; and for folx who already carry perfectionism, who already edit themselves before they speak, who already feel like they have to perform competence just to be taken seriously, AI becomes another measuring stick, another mirror that reflects back a version of you that’s smoother, faster, more articulate, more together.
More perfect.
Perfection, when it becomes the ambient standard, is a form of erasure, a form of violence. It shows up as inadequacy; as comparison; as the feeling that your unedited self isn’t fit for public consumption. It shows up in your body, in the chest tightening when you draft something and hesitate to send it because it doesn’t sound polished enough, in the way you rewrite the caption six times and still feel like a fraud.
It takes the whole “self-branding” of the social media era down a whole other, more sinister rabbit hole, one where you’re simultaneously erased and told you have to be presented perfectly at the same time.
I don’t think there’s room for us, the real us, in that equation.
The Body Keeps Reaching for What’s Real
The explanations being offered for the analog turn are mostly about nostalgia, about digital detox, about screen time and dopamine loops, and those explanations aren’t wrong but they stop short of the thing that actually matters: people are reaching for experiences that can’t be generated. Experiences where the imperfection is the point.
The wobbly line in a sketchbook. The burnt edge of bread you baked yourself. The smudge on a letter you didn’t rewrite. The photograph where someone blinked and you kept it anyway. The sound of a record crackling before the song begins. The way clay resists your hands before it yields.
None of these things can be optimized; they can’t be autocorrected, can’t be smoothed into something flawless by an algorithm, and that is precisely why they feel grounding. The body knows the difference between something made and something generated, between something that required effort and mess and presence and soul and something that appeared fully formed in a text box. You feel it in the weight of a book, in the scratch of a pen, in the heat of a kitchen, in the ache of hands that shaped something imperfect and kept going.
Somatic knowledge. Older than any technology. And will last longer than any trend.
And this is where the trend framing collapses entirely, because Indigenous communities, BIPOC communities, queer communities have always known this. Hands-on making, oral storytelling, communal cooking, seed saving, fibre arts, medicine gathering, fermentation, letter writing: these practices were never trends. They were survival; they were culture; they were the way people held knowledge in their bodies before colonialism reorganized everything around speed and productivity and disembodied efficiency. The fact that capitalism is now repackaging ancestral practices as lifestyle content and selling them back to us is worth noticing.
Perfectionism Has a New Engine
AI doesn’t just generate text. It generates faces; bodies; images of people who don’t exist but who look flawless in a way that real folx never do. It smooths skin, corrects symmetry, produces a visual standard of beauty that has no pores, no asymmetry, no texture, no evidence of living or beingness. And it does this constantly, across every platform, in every feed, without disclosure, without consent, without accountability.
For folx already navigating body image concerns, this isn’t abstract. This is daily exposure to a standard of appearance that was literally manufactured by a machine, amplifying already unachievable, non-neutral, Eurocentric beauty standards, and the body responds to that exposure whether or not the mind has caught up with why. The pit in our stomach, trained by centuries of oppression and hierarchy, doesn’t distinguish between a real image and a generated one when it comes to comparison; it just registers the gap between what it sees and what it is. And it gets bigger, louder.
The analog turn, in this light, is also a turn toward bodies that are real. Unfiltered. Imperfect. Present. A turn toward making things with hands that are visibly, undeniably human; hands that shake, hands that have scars, hands that don’t look like stock photos.
There’s something healing about choosing to make something imperfect on purpose; about refusing the standard, about saying this is what I made, it’s uneven, and I’m not going to run it through a filter. That refusal is doing therapeutic work whether or not anyone names it as such; it’s a body image practice, a self-worth practice, a quiet act of resistance against a machine that only knows how to produce the flawless version of everything.
What AI Can’t Do (and Why That Matters for Healing)
AI can simulate a therapy session. It can generate reflective questions, mirror your language back to you, produce responses that sound attuned.
But it can’t sit with you.
It can’t be changed by what you say. It can’t feel the weight of your silence or notice the thing you almost said and hold space for it without rushing to fill. It can’t hold the tension between two things that are both true and refuse to resolve them for you; it can’t grieve with you; it can’t be wrong in a way that opens something up.
It can’t be human with you and witness your pain through theirs.
Therapy, the kind that actually transforms, requires two nervous systems in a room. A person who is willing to be affected by your presence; someone whose body responds to yours, whose attention isn’t algorithmic, whose silence isn’t a loading screen. That’s what analog means in the therapeutic context. Human. Embodied. Present. Imperfect. Relational.
And that’s what we do at Venturous Counselling. Our counsellors in Vancouver and Port Moody don’t work from scripts and they don’t optimize your healing; they sit with you in the mess of it, the contradiction, the grief, the anger, the hope that keeps showing up even when you wish it wouldn’t. They use somatic and art-based practices because the body and creativity are analog technologies. They’ve always been. And in a world that’s increasingly generated, that matters more than it used to.
Analog Practices Worth Trying
If your body is asking for something it can touch, here are some places to start. Try the one that makes your hands itch.
Handwriting. Not typing, not dictating; writing by hand. A journal, a letter to someone, a grocery list, lyrics to a song you love. Your handwriting is yours. No font can replicate it. Let it be messy.
Cooking without a recipe (or from one in a book). Close the app. Open the cookbook your grandmother dog-eared. Or don’t use one at all. Let the food be imperfect and yours. Have fun with what comes out.
Film photography. You get 24 or 36 shots; you can’t see them yet; you don’t know if you got the framing right or if there’s a lens flare. You have to wait, that’s the beauty of it.
Walking without a podcast. Just your feet and the sounds that are already there. Let your thoughts move at the speed of your body. Actually listen to your voice speak within you; or be with the silence in a world that’s just too loud.
Knitting, crocheting, or fibre arts. Repetitive, rhythmic, deeply regulating; your hands make something that takes hours, and at the end, you can hold it. Feel the accomplishment, the connection, the exchange that happened metaphysically when you interacted and created something that’s fully yours.
Board games and puzzles. Shared attention without a screen. Laughter that brings back the “you just had to be there” within your relationships, those pieces that are connective in ways no algorithm can reproduce.
Drawing or painting without reference. Let it be terrible. Let it be weird. Let it be yours. Do scribbles, it doesn’t even have to look like anything. There’s no outcome to achieve here.
Reading a physical book. No hyperlinks, no sidebar ads, no algorithm deciding what you read next. Just you and the page, the smell of the paper. Put notes in the margins and give it to someone you love or save it for your children.
Letter writing. Send it through snail mail! The delay is the point. Someone will hold your handwriting in their hands; you created something that can’t be reproduced. That means something.
Gardening or plant care. You can’t rush growth; you can’t optimize a seed. You just tend to it and wait and see how it shows up. Plants don’t have a goal they’re moving towards, they just are and they just grow.
Playing music by ear or singing without an audience. Your voice is a body thing. Let it be that. Feel how it resonates within you; the tremor of the voice, the expansiveness of your lungs, the reverb of an echo that in itself, is its own ecosystem.
Discernment and Embodiment Isn’t Anti-Technology
AI will keep advancing; it’ll get more convincing, more embedded, more invisible, and that makes the question of what we choose to do with our hands and our attention and our presence more urgent rather than less. Going analog is about choosing, deliberately, to do things that are slower, harder, less polished, and more human, because you deserve to live inside a body that trusts its own capacity to make something; that is part of an ecosystem that is alive and changing and moving. Even if that something is imperfect. Especially if it is.
Mariame Kaba writes about “one million experiments.” Change doesn’t come from one big revolution but from a million small, imperfect practices of living differently. Going analog is one of those practices; not the whole answer, but a real one, a body-level one, an experiment in trusting that your unoptimized self is enough.
And if the world built by AI makes it harder to believe that, then maybe the most radical thing you can do right now is make something with your hands and refuse to fix it.
FAQs
What does “going analog” mean in the context of mental health?
Going analog in the context of mental health refers to intentionally choosing embodied, hands-on, and screen-free activities as a way to be. It can also help to regulate the nervous system and counter the effects of digital saturation and AI-generated content. Rather than a lifestyle trend, it can be understood as a somatic, political, and relational response to environments that feel increasingly disembodied and optimized.
How does AI affect body image and self-worth?
AI generates images and text that are consistently flawless, creating an ambient standard of perfection that real human bodies and expression can’t match. For folx navigating body image concerns or perfectionism, constant exposure to AI-generated content can intensify comparison, self-editing, and feelings of inadequacy; the body registers the gap between AI-polished output and lived reality, which can deepen existing self-worth struggles.
Is going analog the same as digital detox?
Digital detox focuses on reducing screen time; going analog goes further. It involves actively choosing embodied, tactile, and imperfect practices over generated, optimized ones. A digital detox might mean putting your phone in a drawer for the weekend; going analog means reaching for a sketchbook instead of an image generator, writing a letter instead of dictating a message to AI.
Can therapy help with the anxiety or disconnection I feel around AI?
Yes. Therapy, particularly somatic therapy and art-based therapy, supports folx in reconnecting with their bodies, their creative capacity, and their sense of authorship over their own experience. At Venturous Counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody, our counsellors work with anxiety, burnout, self-worth, body image, and nervous system overwhelm through anti-oppressive, justice-oriented, embodied approaches.
What are some examples of analog practices that support mental health?
Handwriting, cooking without screens, knitting and fibre arts, film photography, gardening, walking without headphones, reading physical books, playing board games, drawing without reference images, letter writing, and playing music by ear are all analog practices that can support nervous system regulation, self-worth, and embodied presence.
Why is the analog trend connected to social justice?
Many of the practices being reclaimed under the “analog trend” label are ancestral, Indigenous, and community-rooted practices that predated colonially-defined productivity systems. The analog turn is also a refusal of the extractive logic that drives AI development, which relies on scraping human-made art, language, and labour and repackaging it without credit or compensation. Many AI development models also profit off of extracted, underpaid labour of the Global South in order to develop and categorize its models. Not to mention the massive environmental impacts that has on our planet, particularly, again, in the Global South.
How does Venturous Counselling approach this topic in therapy?
Venturous Counselling supports adults, youth, couples, and families through somatic therapy, art-based therapy, and other embodied modalities that are inherently analog. Our practitioners don’t rely on scripts or optimized approaches; they co-create relational, justice-aware therapeutic experiences that honour the body’s knowledge and resist the pressure to perform healing perfectly.
Next Steps
Not sure where to start?
Take our 3-minute quiz to find your best-fit counsellor at Venturous.
Ready to talk to someone?
Book a free consultation with one of our counsellors in Vancouver, Port Moody, or online across BC.
Want to learn more about how we work with body image and self-worth?
Visit our Body Image Therapy page or our Self-Worth Therapy page.
Parveen is a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with a Master of Counselling Psychology (MCP) who specializes in art-based and somatic psychotherapy. She works with the stories that keep people stuck in overdrive: the ones about worthiness, about what people might say, about who you’ll disappoint if you stop. Her sessions are direct and warm, and she especially welcomes BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ folx seeking honest, creative support in Vancouver and online across BC.
