Can AI Replace Therapy? What ChatGPT Can and Can’t Do for Your Mental Health

AI has become a daily part of many of our lives. Whether it’s business building, email editing, travel planning, or just externally processing that breakup, AI seems to be here to stay. But can AI help your mental health? 

Actually, sure! 

There are a lot of things we can use our pocket bot for that can ease stress between our therapy and vent sessions with friends. 

For instance, you can ask AI to produce a mock role-play of a difficult conversation so you can practice assertiveness and healthy boundaries. You can have it go through possible cognitive distortions and dispute your irrational thinking patterns about a given situation. You can even complain to AI about your flaky friend and ask for empathy. 

So then, can AI replace therapy? Absolutely not. 

AI can help you communicate a boundary with your father-in-law next time he says that triggering thing. But does it help you feel different the next time he says it? Does it stop your body from tensing up and your stomach from hurting? AI can give you information, but therapy gives you a relationship that can help you heal other relationships, including the relationship you have with yourself. 

In an age of instant information gratification, we suffer from delayed self-actualization.

AI can be confidently incorrect

You have probably experienced this when you’re asking for THE best Italian restaurant in the area and it recommends something with 3.9 stars, giving a mouthwatering description of the equivalent of a mall food court stall. Yum… Or even more appallingly, a friend told me ChatGPT told her not to use empathy when preparing for a difficult conversation with a family member. Yikes!

AI also can’t always tell when you’re wrong. If you tell ChatGPT that your boss is a narcissist and out to get you, it might believe you. Period. ChatGPT is the sycophantic hype man of our dreams (or nightmares). It validates your wounds from your boss that might actually be about your upbringing with a critical parent anyway! 

AI gives you the information and validation you want instantly. But when you meet with a therapist, they are actually seeing you, learning your history, picking up on your vibe, and are clinically trained to gently challenge your perspective. 

Therapists empower you to grow, change, and even eventually not need therapy. AI keeps you using AI.

We can become too emotionally dependent on AI

An MIT study found a correlation between heavier AI use and emotional dependence, increased loneliness, decreased socialization, and more problematic AI use (Read it here).

ChatGPT is awake with you at 2:00 a.m., helping you thoroughly ruminate on why that guy never texted you back (that guy is sleeping soundly wherever he is, by the way). ChatGPT is your sounding board so you can say whatever unhinged, mean thing you want about your coworker and ChatGPT will filter it for you and miraculously make it sound constructive. 

There’s that instant gratification again. No waiting or internal discomfort necessary.

But what about when your coworker brings up the topic again in a staff meeting? Will you know how to respond on your own without AI filtering for your snark? What about on a first date? Will you be able to channel your inner Mindy Kaling and charm your date with your witty banter? When conflict comes up between you and the people you love most, can you trust your own communication skills in the moment? Or do you withdraw into your AI hole, frantically typing away to ChatGPT, while it tells you you’re always right and your loved ones don’t know what they’re talking about? “Don’t use empathy”!? OMG, no.

It’s dangerous for us to forget how to communicate or regulate without AI. 

AI does not have a nervous system

This is the most important point here: You need a human being to co-regulate. 

Co-regulation is when your nervous system subconsciously recognizes a groundedness in another human’s nervous system, and you begin to feel more grounded too. Co-regulation can help your brain feel safe to open up and to finish processing that horrible thing you locked up a long time ago. That thing that makes your chest tighten and your stomach drop when you’re triggered. 

Yes, it is possible to actually heal your body, not just learn new tools. 

AI does not have a nervous system. It cannot co-regulate with you. Healing happens in the context of human relationships. You deserve a therapist who knows you and can see when you’re triggered; who remembers that thing you said three months ago about your coworker’s passive-aggressive email and understands your life dreams! That’s the kind of relationship I build with my clients.

And this is why AI absolutely cannot replace human therapy. 

In an age of instant information gratification, don’t settle for AI just because it’s free, cheap, and easy. In our pursuit of self-actualization, free, cheap, and easy rarely get us closer. Reconnecting with another human in our own vulnerable humanness does.