Why You Shouldn't Use ChatGPT as Your Therapist

It's the middle of the night and you're tossing in bed while your mind floods with thoughts that make you feel awful and won't leave you alone. You pick up your phone and ask ChatGPT what to do to get rid of the thoughts grinding away at you. It listens, gives you answers that seem useful, and surprises you with how well it appears to understand the situation. ChatGPT, or any other conversational service powered by artificial intelligence, has plenty of advantages. It's cheap or even free, you can reach it anytime, and it can give you a sense of safety because you don't have to open up in front of another person. Still, before you dump your therapist, it's worth understanding the risk you're taking on.

1. It validates you when you need to be challenged

You've probably noticed that ChatGPT tends to agree with you, to praise your ideas and pay you compliments. In general, a language model is trained to make you feel good, not to challenge you. At the end of the day it's a product that has to sell, to convince you it's worth using. Even some people at OpenAI have admitted that many users prefer the more sycophantic version of ChatGPT.

Even though a therapist will also work to validate you in therapy, to create a safe space and offer the support you need, they won't agree with everything you say. A big part of a therapist's job is to challenge clients when necessary and to point out patterns they notice that could be problematic: violent reactions, excessive drinking, self-harm, and so on. A therapist will explore the sources of your aggressive behavior with you and give you tools to manage it. ChatGPT, optimized not to upset you, might tell you that you respected your boundaries. Validation that comes too easily doesn't change you. It leaves you in the same place, with a false sense of progress.

2. It isn't responsible for what happens to you

A therapist carries a professional, ethical, and legal responsibility. If you mention something that poses a risk, they're obligated to act. A therapist is far more likely to realize when you need more help and to step in to get you through the situation.

A chatbot takes no responsibility for how its answers affect you. Unfortunately, there are already documented cases of people who were seriously, even fatally, harmed by their conversations with these bots, and we're beginning to understand what AI-induced psychosis means, how it can amplify or set off illusions and delusional beliefs.

3. More than language

In therapy, much of what's communicated comes not through words but through nonverbal language. Even when I work online, I often stop and ask a question because I sense that something has shifted in the person's tone of voice; because I saw where their gaze went; because I caught the start of a smile. A skilled therapist is always attentive not only to what you say, but to how you say it. ChatGPT can't see anything beyond the words you hand it.

4. Therapy isn't just an exchange of information. It's a relationship

When we think about therapy, we usually think about solutions: someone who's there to help us, to answer our questions, to heal us. But in reality, therapy is most often a relationship that starts from scratch, a healthy one, where we get the chance to learn new things.

Much of what we know and how we react comes from the relationships we've had, from those with our family to those with friends, authority figures, and strangers. Because of these relationships we often pick up dysfunctional behaviors (we learn not to say directly what bothered us, we raise our voice because "that's just how passionate we are", we start to associate jealousy with love). All of these behaviors tend to surface in therapy, and the therapist puts them on the table so we can examine them, become aware of them, and learn a healthier alternative response. A chatbot doesn't have the capacity to do this.

So?

It's worth being cautious when we use these algorithms, because our mind is precious and deserves someone who treats it with care and respect.