It’s late. You’re a little worse for wear. And feeling nostalgic.

You know that what you really shouldn’t do now is send a text, yet the more you try to talk yourself out of it, the worse the urge gets.

You wake up the next morning in a full-body cringe, dreading the ritual rereading of your phone. You wish you hadn’t sent that text. Later, you might try to repair the damage (and your ego) with yet another text. And so the cycle of impulsivity and regret continues.

Lots of people write letters or emails they don’t ever intend to send, as a means of harmlessly getting it all out there, or of constructively thinking about what they would say to someone in a magic world where it would be productive and relieving to do so. But text messages are different, because the short format, immediacy and ease of clicking “send” make it harder to control.

Fascinated by this dynamic, the New York-based artist Hanny Ahern began texting herself instead of the objects of her agita. She added herself as a pseudonymous contact in her own phone, and sent herself the sometimes “elaborate emoji compositions” or words, redirecting the urge to send impulsive texts.

“It changed the way I used my phone from anxious and impulsive to creative and fulfilling,” says Ahern. “When I would get a notification from myself, I would feel a certain excitement, almost as if I were getting a text from another person. I’d go back to the messages months later and be so grateful that I sent them to myself instead of to the other person, because I realized how much time had changed my perspective.”

Moreover, Ahern realized she wasn’t alone. “Many of us seem to be in a room together with a text-bubble draft looming in our heads, unsent and unrequited. So the question became: how can the medium of SMS be gently subverted to challenge alienation and misunderstanding in text communications, and to free up some mental space?”

Working with the technologist Chris Allick, Ahern began creating a project called When I Think About You I Text Myself to create a “relational intervention” in the text messaging medium. Rather than send that ill-advised text, you set afloat your tricky little digital boats in the direction of an anonymous phone number – provided online – which will then automatically send your own words back to you at intervals of three, six, nine and 12 months so you can revisit them privately, safely and with the distance of time.

‘You’re depending on a disembodied high’

The project was initially conceived primarily as a work of art rather than a public service. Ahern describes being influenced by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s idea of the “self-amputated image”, which describes our relationship to technology. “In his essay the Gadget Lover, McLuhan uses the myth of Narcissus to describe ‘cultural narcosis’, or a numbing loop that is extended between ourselves and the gadgets that ‘are ourselves’.”

The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves. Marshall McLuhan, The Gadget Lover, Understanding Media

When I Think About You I Text Myself debuted as part of Temporary Highs, an exhibit that ran earlier this summer at the Bitforms Gallery in New York, curated by Lindsay Howard, devoted to “how the structure of the internet enables reward-seeking behavior”. Other works in the exhibit dealt with themes such as online shopping, video games, work and drugs. It’s not too much of a stretch to talk about ill-advised texts alongside other self-destructive behaviors. The cycle of impulsivity, instant gratification and then regret brought on by the clarity of a new day is part of the experience.

“I thought [Temporary Highs] was the perfect context for the project, because it presented a way to reverse the reward system,” Ahern says. “If the smartphone causes alienation, communication paralysis and numbness, then I want to challenge that in a way that provokes emotion and creativity … if you rely on a text message exchange for satisfaction, you’re depending on a disembodied high. There are a lot of stress hormones activated by phone notifications and, in a way, the nervous system is partially hijacked to meeting this new extension of the self.”

Waiting: tumult of anxiety provoked by waiting for the loved being, subject to trivial delays (rendezvous, letters, telephone calls, returns)

Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse

During the first week of When I Think About You I Text Myself, anyone who texted the provided number received responses personally written by Ahern, along with automated, programmed texts designed to prompt the user to express themselves.

Although providing each individual text with personal attention wasn’t practically or emotionally sustainable for Ahern, she says it was important to her that the project account for some ambiguity between human and machine. “I learned through testing that people were more likely to communicate [if given] a little bit of feedback, and that they were more likely to quit texting and give up expressing themselves if they felt they were texting into a vacuum,” says Ahern.

‘The simplicity was beautiful’

When you talk to a human in 2035, you’ll be talking to someone that’s a combination of biological and nonbiological intelligence Ray Kurzweil

Through Ahern’s project, we learn that knowing we may receive a response is part of the irresistible urge of texting – even if we don’t know whether the response is coming from a human or a robot, and even when it’s just our own words and feelings reflected back at us at the project’s preordained three-month intervals. She also says she learned from the patterns and commonalities among the messages she received.

“Most of the responses were related to love in one way or another. All in all, the most common expression was and is some version of ‘I miss you’,” Ahern says. “That simplicity was very beautiful. I heard from people who are harboring secret crushes, falling in love but too afraid to say so, stepping outside their relationship or hoping to get back together with a past love. Some were cathartic, angry or even accusatory. Others were venting at work or family. It seemed like most of these people were using the project as a way to communicate feelings that would otherwise complicate delicate relationships.

“The texts were anonymous, which was helpful in staying objective,” she continues. “There were times where I thought, Mom, is that you? Or, oh man, is this my ex? But in fact I’ll never know, and most likely, I was seeing that all of our stories aren’t that different.”

Ahern says that as an art project, When I Think About You I Text Myself’s primary goal is to invite expression, and anything users share is at their discretion. Participants’ phone numbers are anonymized, texts aren’t shared publicly and all the information is stored in a secure database.

“This hotline should in no way replace the option to reach for a real person. In fact, I hope that it shapes the thoughts and feelings, and provokes authentic communication with real live people, perhaps after some reflection,” Ahern adds. “This phone number is more like a safe space waiting room for all the pent-up communication.”

Next time you can barely contain that text you know you aren’t supposed to send, try Ahern’s hotline instead. It is an altogether different feeling, to know your message joins a current of so many others like it, and to know that instead of doing something you’ll regret, you’re engaging in a thoughtful loop of reflection with yourself.