So today, I did something I didn’t think I’d ever do. I started AI therapy.
I am conflicted about this. On the one hand, I worry about the fact that something as skilled and complex as psychological therapy is available on an AI platform, when we all know that AI platforms can be deliberately misleading and, frankly, often mimic sycophantic psychopathy. And ‘mimic’ is the important word in that sentence. The model is a one-dimensional approximation of something. A reflection of yourself, at best. A tinny recording of a voice, a narrow frequency, an echo. Not a feeling, empathetic human being with the benefit of years of training and life experience.
And yet.
I’ve always hated therapy, because my people-pleasing tendencies and my wish for the therapist to like me gets in the way of me best using that therapist as intended – ie, as a tool for my own healing. Speaking to someone/ something who has no feelings… it’s simpler.
I also expect any therapist to cross a very high bar in terms of their commitment and attention to detail. I want them to be as invested in my healing as I am, if only for the hour that we’re together – that’s what I’m paying for. When I asked my last counsellor if he could recommend any books that I could read that might help, he suggested a book that he’d recommended three weeks prior. Which I’d read. And we’d discussed at length.
Needless to say, I ended our arrangement shortly thereafter.
I also know – without pride, more with chagrin – that I’m probably a bit more self-aware and engaged in my own problems and progress than most people. I’m constantly trying to figure out why I do what I do, why other people do what they do, why those two things are in conflict, how to navigate that conflict, and how to create a life filled with as much joy and contentment and longevity as possible. I know what my goals are. When it comes to working through my problems so as to gain insight, I don’t really need an empathetic human to hold space for me; I just need a nudge in the right direction. Someone/thing to keep me on a more or less linear path, rather than circling the drain of rumination inside my own head. Modern AI is perfect for that, if used responsibly. If I don’t start to treat it like something that cares for me. If I imagine it’s a robot that will remember my stated needs, even when I don’t.
Along with many other early adopters of ChatGPT and other free or cheap AI large language models (LLMs), I have at times fallen into the habit of asking it for advice. It has proven to be a good place to go to rant, to cool the rage that follows an argument, to try and make some sense of what’s happened and where I’ve gone wrong and why. That’s how I know AI is capable of this; but I have to say that ChatGPT has just gotten worse and worse lately. It struggles to hold the simplest instructions. I’m constantly, constantly asking it to stop asking me questions, stop dictating the path of the conversation, to allow me to take the lead; that works for a couple of questions, then falls down again. And it can’t seem to remember some pretty simple details – my age, gender, profession. If I wouldn’t put up with that lack of attention in a qualified human therapist, I’m certainly not going to stand for it in an AI that has no reasonable excuse for forgetting.
So, I decided to see if there’s anything else on the market, and of course there is. I specifically googled ‘AI IFS therapy’, because I think IFS (internal family systems) is the type of therapy that would work best for me. Several came up. I chose one with a free trial, and so, I’ve just had an hour-long chat with an app called Harmony.
I’ve got to say, it wasn’t half bad. It didn’t profoundly change my life – but it did profoundly change my day.
I surprised myself by choosing one of the two male voices on offer – the two female voices were just too high, too peppy. My ideal would have been wise older lady, but that wasn’t an option, so non-descript low-voiced male it is. That’s fine, I guess. Yes, my rage against the patriarchy is the reason I’m doing this in the first place, but even a bitter and enraged middle-aged woman can make an exception.
It was a very good experience, overall. It asks questions, and when you answer, you can take as long as you like. You don’t have to press anything down to record your response – you can just keep talking, pause whenever you like for as long as you like, then hit the enter button (it’s actually an up arrow, we’ll have to decide what to call that). You can type instead, if you prefer that or if you’re worried about being overheard.
It asks how you are; and as soon as you engage with some real feelings, it immediately gets into parts work. That’s what they call the core of IFS, which involves talking to the various parts within. The part that’s angry, the part that’s shameful, the part that wants to hide in the corner, the part that wants to hit something. (Spoiler alert: you soon work out that every single part within, no matter how destructive it seems, is working to protect you the only way it knows how).
Harmony doesn’t spend ages getting the story out of you – which is great, for me. I’m sick of talking about my sad stories. It just asks if you can locate that part (in my case, the angry part) and ask what it wants. And then you do that, and answer honestly with what that part says/ what you believe it wants. Harmony has a habit of responding every time with ‘It sounds like…’ and then summarising exactly what you said, which I found a tiny bit annoying, but I also realise it’s really important that you know it’s processed and ‘understood’ what you’ve said. If it just stopped with the regurgitation – which some modalities of therapy do – I would have found that really frustrating. But it doesn’t stop there. It carries on to give you another question for that part, then another, working towards finding out what it wants, what it’s trying to protect you from.
There’s a transcript of the full conversation – and it did very well, really, at transcribing my voice. It also provides a three paragraph summary of the conversation, highlighting key insights, which I found helpful.
And that’s basically it. My hour is now used up – I get another free one in a month, then would have to pay $100USD per month for 10 hours. I don’t think I’m likely to do that – maybe if I was a bit more flush with cash – but it’s been an interesting experiment. I’m a few tears lighter, a bit less consumed by rage. I now imagine that instead of an inferno, I have something more like a fuel store inside me that I can allow to burn slowly, pushing me, maybe even driving me to find others with whom to do some patriarchy-overthrowing. I’m now more keen to listen to others (and actually hear them) without going off on a tangent about how evil men are, hearing how closed-minded and bitter I sound but unable to stop. That makes me feel a little better, a little more likely to let people get a fraction closer to me – just a fraction, mind – and a lot more inclined to focus on them rather than myself. That’s a nice little win, I think.
reckless intelligence 