After being sent this photo last weekend… I felt it was really important to discuss this, and also to explain why using AI or Chat GPT as a therapy replacement does not only not work, but may be very dangerous.

First, as someone who chronically sits on the fence, rarely ever fully agreeing or committing to one side or the other of any debate—and truly being someone who appreciates both sides of a healthy argument—on this one point, I am firmly off the fence.

It is not the same as being with a real person who cares deeply about both you, and the outcomes of the work.

Let’s get into it.

I get it—therapy can be expensive, time-consuming, and confronting. So if there’s a shortcut, a free tool that gives you answers that sound pretty insightful, why not use it, right?

But let’s put this frame on it:

How many times have you asked your friends for advice, and they’ve told you exactly what to do but…you haven’t done it?

Or how many times have you said “I really should start doing ___,” but never followed through?

If you’re anything like all the other humans I know, I’m going to guess… a lot.

So how does therapy even work to actually help people?

This could be a blog post in itself, but let me offer three key pieces:

• Therapy helps rewire brain patterns: Through consistent reflection, insight, and new emotional experiences, therapy can help activate neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to form new pathways—supporting healthier thought patterns, emotional regulation, and behaviour, over time.
• Helping heal trauma through safe processing: Trauma isn’t just about painful memories—it’s about physiological information held by your body and nervous system. Therapy offers a contained space, with competent company, to process experiences at a pace that’s tolerable, reducing reactivity and helping to restore a sense of safety and sovereignty for you.
• Human connection is medicine: It is biologically regulating to feel truly seen and emotionally held by another human. The therapeutic relationship itself (not necessarily any specific tips, tricks, words, or advice, but the relationship) is the reparative experience in therapy—offering co-regulation, presence, and a template for more connected relationships outside of and beyond the therapy room.

In short: the things you’re trying to move through—anxiety, trauma, shame, old patterns that are keeping you stuck—require time, guidance, connection, and attuned support from a fellow human with a body and a regulated, human nervous system. None of which are available through a screen.

Now let’s zoom in on why AI in particular falls short
:

• It’s incredibly biased. What you ask, how you phrase it, and the emotional tone you use can drastically alter the response. In some cases, AI will mirror what you want to hear instead of what might actually challenge you or invite reflection. (Did you know that AI is also racist, sexist, homophobic and carries very serious climate and sustainability implications?
• Yes, humans are biased too, but therapists spend years in school through their Master’s degrees learning to notice and manage their bias (not to mention the requirement that they be supervised by other professionals in their field to ensure they are supporting their clients in the best way possible). If bias or projection shows up in the therapy room, it’s something that therapists have been trained to name, work with, and use relationally. AI has no accountability, no self-awareness, and no supervision.
• AI cannot assess emotional readiness. Especially with trauma work, your therapist is constantly tracking your nervous system—your window of tolerance, your body language, your tone, how you’re speaking about something difficult. AI cannot tell when you’re dissociating, hyper-ventilating or numbing out, or when something might be too much, too soon.
• There’s no therapeutic containment. If you’re cracking open deep emotional content or trauma memories with AI, and it gives you a cold or generic answer, then closes the tab—you’re left to hold it all by yourself. A skillful therapist would notice, slow you down, check in, and help ground you before you leave the room.
• It keeps you in your head. Often, when we learn on AI as a tool for “self-help”, we are operating from the neck up, largely out of touch with our bodies. Insight is an important part of healing, but it’s only one part of the picture. Therapeutic growth generally requires and invites embodiment, connection, nervous system regulation, and emotional vulnerability—all of which require an experiential, felt sense, not just a clever thought.

If you’re turning to AI because therapy feels out of reach—whether financially, geographically, or emotionally—please don’t feel ashamed. We get it. There are systemic barriers in the way making access to 1:1 therapeutic support hugely challenging, and inaccessible for many (we’re working on this on our end, but there’s a long, long way to go). 

You’re doing your best with what’s available. But please don’t stop at AI. Please reach out to a real person. Resources do exist. It’s ALWAYS appropriate to ask your practitioner about sliding scale or affordable options. Explore community-based programs. Perhaps consider working with a therapist-in-training. Maybe you’d like to try a peer support group.

The answer to trauma and anxiety is not sitting alone in a room, on a screen. 

You don’t have to do this alone, and you weren’t meant to.

We’re here, and many others are too.

We care about you.

You’re not alone.