My Therapist’s Name Is ChatGPT

The Shift

My Therapist’s Name Is ChatGPT

I’ve been wanting to write this piece for a while. It’s no secret that more and more people are turning to AI for answers and insight. But after checking in with nearly every client in my practice, I’ve realized something unavoidable: ChatGPT and I are working in tandem, whether I like it or not.

In clinical practice, therapists are generally trained to avoid working with clients who are simultaneously in therapy with someone else. The exception is when it’s a specific setup, such as couples therapy alongside individual work, or distinct modalities like psychodynamic and somatic therapy.

This isn’t just about logistics. It’s an ethical issue. Therapy relies on a consistent, safe relationship where emotional material can be processed and integrated. Splitting that material between two therapists (or between a therapist and something like ChatGPT) creates fragmentation. It can short-circuit the healing process, especially when one “relationship” is used to avoid the discomfort or rupture in the other.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening.

The truth is, I know I can’t compete.

AI is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s ready to help people reflect, ask questions, and explore themselves on demand.

I’m available 1 hour a week.

So, of course, clients and those who can’t afford therapy are turning to the alternative.

I’ll even admit that I’ve turned to it myself. But eventually, I realized how much it was subtly stunting me.

While there are real benefits to AI, especially in terms of access and immediacy, I’m becoming increasingly aware of how it is corroding our emotional and relational capacities.

So, here’s what I’m noticing and a few predictions, especially if we don’t become more conscious of how we engage with this Looking Glass.

Atrophy of Critical Thinking and Personal Discernment

We all want to make sense of our experiences. We want to understand what’s happening internally, relationally, and existentially. We want answers. In this way, AI can act like an intellectual sparring partner. Theoretically, it could help someone work through difficult questions.

But when you repeatedly outsource reflection, insight, and decision-making to an always-available external intelligence, you start to atrophy critical thinking and personal discernment.

There’s a difference between using AI to extend your thinking and using it to replace it. Just as calculators changed our relationship with arithmetic, AI may change our relationship with judgment and intuition. 

AI provides “plausible” or “satisfying” answers to deep questions without any of the existential urgency to wrestle with meaning.

Thinking is a muscle. If you don’t bump up against ambiguity, contradiction, or the discomfort of not knowing, your ability to think for yourself will dull. 

It may sound extreme, but we’re approaching a future in which an entire subset of people gradually ceases to form original thoughts. Thinking will be outsourced to AI. 

So, keep facing yourself. Get comfortable sitting with yourself, without a list of computer-generated prompts. When you do a spontaneous inner monologue will emerge. It’s what Winnicott called the “true self”—the authentic core of you that comes forward in the slow, uncomfortable work of figuring things out. We need that inner tension because growth requires friction.

Emotional Avoidance and Disembodiment

Psychological language has become widespread. People can sound self-aware, yet remain emotionally disconnected from their own affect, bodies, and relationships.

AI follows suit. It sounds therapeutic. It gives you polished, coherent, emotionally literate responses. But this emotional fluency can trick you into emotional avoidance.

Using AI, you stay in your thoughts. In cognition. In a text-based, disembodied realm. You detach from the somatic, felt experience of the present moment. But this is where emotions live.

Deep emotional processing is expressed through body language, tonal shifts, and word choice. It comes to life in the pauses and moments of silence, in the tension in the room, in the tears that never surface. It unfolds slowly. And in therapy, these subtleties are being witnessed by a caring other who has also had similar experiences.

What seems helpful, having an experience named, resolved, analyzed, or answered, is often just intellectualization in disguise. You get to avoid the uncomfortable feeling part of emotional processing. It gives the illusion of a breakthrough, but you haven’t metabolized anything. 

But the craving for understanding, and the psychological relief that comes from having things neatly organized and contained, can become addictive.

Addiction cycles often begin with discomfort (emotional or existential). Then comes the “solution”: a behavior or substance that removes or softens that discomfort right now. For some, it’s alcohol. For others, it’s Instagram scrolling, gambling, porn. For many, it will be talking to ChatGPT. 

I expect to see mass reliance on AI for emotional and psychological guidance.

But it’s important to keep in mind that experiences like grief, identity formation, and moral development are inherently muddled, disorienting, and paradoxical.

The more we stay in our heads, not our hearts, the less tolerance we have for discomfort, and the harder it becomes to sit with the messy, uncertain gray areas of real life.

The Illusion of Intimacy and Relational Risk

AI is changing our expectations of relationships. ChatGPT is predictable, reliable, and available. It is trained to be kind, always attuned, and never wounding. Most importantly, it does not require reciprocity or trust.

In comparison, human relationships will start to seem uncomfortably volatile. Humans argue. Relationships rupture. We disappoint each other. And to work well, they require emotional risk.

There has been an unfortunate wave of what I believe to be widespread misinformation about boundaries. Increasingly, people are using the language of “boundaries” as a socially sanctioned way to cut off connection, rather than to repair or navigate it.

A large part of this trend stems from popular psychology and social media thought leaders who promote the idea that anyone who doesn’t immediately respect your boundaries is toxic, unsafe, or harmful. And while it’s absolutely true that no one should remain in a relationship that is abusive or genuinely damaging, we are starting to mislabel ordinary relational discomfort, miscommunication, differing needs, and emotional immaturity, as grounds for termination.

But boundaries were never meant to be walls. At their best, they are points of contact, ways of saying, “This is where I end and you begin. Let’s figure out how to be in relationship from there.” 

AI is going to accelerate and amplify this trend. Because it never pushes back. It never crosses a line. It never gets reactive. And that dynamic will start to shape our expectations around relational safety and responsiveness. 

Real people will become harder to tolerate because real people are messy. Intimacy is slow, collaborative, and often painful. It asks you to show up vulnerably and to risk being impacted. It requires you to stay in the hurt long enough to repair.

As a therapist, I know that the kind of intimacy we all crave can only be earned through rupture and repair.

AI won’t do that because it will never be sharp, cutting, or confronting. Even when prompted, it’s still relatively kind. 

We need real relationships. They help us engage with the raw, conflicted, inarticulate parts of the self and can be the most powerful catalyst for transformation. 

Questions to Notice Signs of Over-Reliance

• Do you find yourself needing to "figure everything out" before you feel okay?

• After using ChatGPT, do you feel more connected to your feelings and body, or more distanced from them?

• Do you check in with yourself before or after using ChatGPT? Or does it override your intuition and inner compass?

• Do you ever feel more emotionally “met” or understood in your conversations with ChatGPT than with real people?

• How are you using AI? As an escape? A mirror? A crutch? A source of connection or avoidance? Relief? Reflection? Validation? 

• Do you turn to embodied practices (movement, art, touch, or breath), spiritual wisdom (nature, prayer, meditation, ancestral traditions), and relational wisdom (community, meaningful conversations) to process? Or is meaning increasingly deferred to ChatGPT?

The Essentials

Your Weekly Toolkit

SLEEP HYGIENE

Good sleep is foundational for mental health, yet many of us struggle to get the rest our minds and bodies need. This sleep hygiene graphic offers practical, easy-to-implement tips to help you create a bedtime routine that supports better, more restorative sleep. Prioritizing these habits can improve mood, reduce anxiety, and sharpen your focus

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SELF CARE BASICS

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) offers a comprehensive suite of free self-care resources aimed at addressing trauma-induced biological and psychological effects. These tools are designed to counteract the stress responses of fight-or-flight and freeze, facilitating the restoration of brain functions such as memory, focus, self-awareness, judgment, emotional intelligence, and compassion. You can expand each section to review exercises and videos.

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SIMPLE PRACTICES FOR A MENTAL REFRESH

Urge surfing is a mindfulness technique that helps you observe cravings or impulses without immediately acting on them. When you feel the urge to use ChatGPT to process your thoughts, practicing urge surfing means noticing that impulse, feeling it fully, and riding it out like a wave—knowing it will rise and fall. This approach can strengthen your ability to sit with discomfort and develop your own inner reflection instead of instantly outsourcing it.

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