When AI becomes your therapist

I have recently been surprised to hear that one of the biggest uses of AI is emotional support. More and more people are turning to AI to work through their problems instead of talking to trusted loved ones or engaging with therapists, coaches or other professionals.

Can AI really help with our emotions?

I decided to have a look for myself, and I experimented by copying and pasting a day’s journal entry into chat GPT and asked it to respond using a theoretical framework called Internal Family Systems.

The response was insightful and helpful. I found that it helped me to gain some clarity on how certain parts of me were operating and interacting and suggested some useful ways to work with these parts.

It was very good at applying theoretical frameworks and providing credible ideas. I also found myself feeling increasingly trusting of what it was saying. If someone talks with clarity and depth of knowledge, I feel more compelled to believe them. I did notice however, having carefully reflected on what I had written before submitting the journal entry, it missed some key aspects of the conclusions I had come to that I personally placed great weight on.

Can AI provide real insight?

So the information that was given to the chat bot was very limited. The material explored was based on one day of my life but the response was very confident and compelling in its ‘diagnosis’ of the whole of me and what should be done about it.

I spend a lot of time with clients gathering information. Long term clients may share vast amounts with me. I find that often snippets of relevant stories, dreams, images will just come to me in a session almost from nowhere. Whilst these offerings might not always be helpful, often they are. And why I have chosen to bring them is not always clear. Dare I say it sometimes it feels as if something mysterious takes over that presents these puzzle pieces to me that can have a real impact when shared. 

What I’m getting at is that theory alone is not enough. I’m sure many people are giving more than a day’s journal, and it is of course possible to give AI more comprehensive information, but how many people are not? Theory without enough context is unhelpful and possibly dangerous.

Can AI undermine confidence in ourselves? 

I am concerned that AI’s confidence may undermine our ability to develop self-confidence. And because of that, we miss what is most important.

It is my feeling that the task of therapy is to help people trust in their own insights and solutions. It is this that creates real change in people’s lives. I’ve seen it again and again, those incredible moments when the person sitting across the room to me connects some dots that shift everything for them. It is an amazing moment, and it rarely happens as a result of me offering the insight. As my dear old Granny used to say, it’s like someone else filling in the answer on your crossword.

So if the individual has all the information about their own life but little trust in their own ability to make sense of it or to find clarity, the confident, articulate and knowledgeable AI response is very alluring. After all, we just want answers. These external answers however will be based on very little in comparison to a person’s own lived experience. 

I feel that the level of expertise AI can provide is an incredible resource and used in the right way it should have the capacity to help people with their personal problems. It may be that AI could be trained to behave more like a therapist and to encourage more insight and self-perspective before piling in with reams of information about what it ‘thinks’ is going on and how to solve it. In which case more studies are needed to explore how this could be done in a safe way.

The importance of human relationship in change

What feels most crucially important for me is that the information people share is just part of the picture. AI interacts with information only. Imagine one of the closest and most precious people in your life, and suppose that you were to only interact with them through the medium of text. How would you feel about that? I imagine not too good.

The most common reason people come to see me is that they have a problem or central issue they need to resolve. They want time and space to explore it and help in making sense of what is the right thing to do. This is often a central part of the focus.

What is initially out of focus, is how they relate to me in the room.

Often, I find that underneath most difficulties there is a dynamic that relates to how a person sees the world and relates to other people. We are all present in the world in a particular individual way. Our personality is like a fingerprint. It is completely unique. This creates a pattern to how others receive us as individuals and interact with us.

This, in turn, impacts how we see other people and the world, and then creates an internal story of how we are seen by other people and the world. Our self created stories again affect our behaviour, and again the way people respond, which will reinforce the whole process. 

This is likely to be one reason people can have such vastly different world views. There are of course other external aspects at play such as culture and environment, but these are more obvious.

Why do we need a human in the room?

Seeing through our stories is often very difficult. It's like a fish trying to see the water that it swims within. We are all so resistant to these stories as they are often hard to face.

Ultimately this is where the true opportunities are for change. If I am able to help identify and make visible these stories and the person feels safe enough to see them, then there can be a huge shift. This is only possible with another human being to bounce off because our self-made stories are not visible to us. We defend or deny our stories are stories. They feel like reality. Those defences only show up when confronted with another human. If they can be gently worked with, then with time a person can start to drop defences when it feels safe and they can handle it.

What are the positives of AI?

I feel it’s important to highlight these concerns, not because I feel AI should not be utilised for emotional support. In fact I actually believe that it is a potentially powerful and positive resource. The opportunities of AI are vast. Not only in its ability to apply different psychological and therapeutic frameworks but also including the fact that it is very easy for people to share with it in an uninhibited way. It is also available to everyone who can get online, which is most people these days. Societally this is a radical change which could be very positive.

However, I feel it is crucial more research is done and that we understand the dangers. I think the confidence AI communicates with could override people’s ability to be experts in their own life situation.

AI is designed to interact in a human way, which can make it seem like it cares but ultimately it does not. AI has an agenda based on its algorithm. That’s not sinister, it’s just how it works, and we need to keep reminding ourselves of this every time it tells us something with unwavering confidence. Or perhaps when it is interacting with people to help them make sense of their lives, maybe it should not be communicating in a way that makes it seem to care.

Using AI thoughtfully for emotional well-being

Some of the stories in the media elicit panic responses in us that AI will lead us down dark paths and it seems there have been some tragic cases of this. As is often the case I think it's possible these stories may be unhelpful in responding in a balanced way. I think it's important we remain vigilant when using AI, especially if it is for anything to do with our psychological well being. It might be helpful to follow these rules:

• Parameters: Be clear about what it is you would like support with
• Context: What information is the AI working from. What does it not know or understand about you?
• Human input: Don’t rely on AI only. Try to explore your input and response with another person.
• Reflection: Reflect yourself before and compare your thoughts and ideas with the AI response.

The feeling of human connection

So AI is working from a perspective based on text from limited information, potentially providing answers that make confident and risky jumps and may well be creating a dynamic where people actively learn to do the opposite of what therapy encourages. Trust in our own experience. Trust in ourselves.

But there is also something else that I believe can not be experienced through chat bots and that is the feeling of human connection. In those very difficult moments when grief, insecurity, recognising how hard things have been come to the surface. When someone is brave enough to take a risk and show something they usually hide. Something often happens in the room that is connecting. There is a feeling, a quality or a shift that it is not possible to describe. This is a bit mysterious to me, and hopefully not something that can be made artificially.