Your manager just announced the team is "going all-in on AI." Your LinkedIn feed is a wall of hustle-porn about prompt engineering. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet alarm is going off. You didn't ask for this. You were good at your job. Now you're supposed to become a different kind of good at a different kind of job — on someone else's timeline. This is the guide for that moment. First, Name What You're Actually Feeling Most "AI adoption" content skips straight to tips and frameworks. That's a mistake, because the real blocker isn't skill — it's the emotional undertow nobody talks about. AI anxiety in the workplace shows up in specific flavors: Competence grief : You spent years becoming expert at something. AI does a passable version of it in 4 seconds. That's a loss, and it's okay to name it. Identity threat : For knowledge workers especially, what you know is often who you are . When that knowledge feels commoditized, the existential weight is real.…