{"id":767852,"date":"2026-09-12T01:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767852\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:24:09","slug":"you-therapy-and-ai-psychology-today-united-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767852\/","title":{"rendered":"You, Therapy, and AI | Psychology Today United Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one goes to therapy<\/a> as their first intervention. When faced with a problem, no one\u2019s first instinct is, \u201cGuess I\u2019ll start counseling.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the old days, people facing a problem or decision would consult their mother, priest, uncle, best friend, sister, or village elder. Later, people might have imagined the advice they\u2019d get from Oprah, Cosmopolitan, or Dr. Phil. Even more recently, people go to social media<\/a>, consult angst-filled Reddit forums, or uneducated influencers.<\/p>\n

And now people go to AI<\/a>. Half of all new therapy patients have been to AI first. Many people already in therapy go to AI. And people who don\u2019t go to therapy go to AI.<\/p>\n

Sooner or later, I ask all my interns what they offer that AI doesn\u2019t. Most of them (and a fair number of licensed colleagues) lack a good answer. Interns and therapists, of course, use AI too.<\/p>\n

Why not use AI?<\/p>\n

On the one hand, people say, \u201cAI contains virtually all the knowledge on the internet, including books, articles, and interviews from famous psychologists, philosophers, and celebrities. Why shouldn\u2019t I take advantage of that when I have a problem or need to make a big decision?\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, a more complex position is \u201cAI is a consumer product designed by private businesses to make money. It isn\u2019t objective (not to mention that it makes mistakes). It doesn\u2019t know or care about me personally, although it \u201ctalks\u201d to me as if it does (that\u2019s the product).” As AI gets increasingly sophisticated, it becomes harder to remember this, which means it becomes increasingly influential in the user\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s seductive operation raises fascinating questions about \u201cempathy.\u201d The system\u2019s goal is to keep you engaged, so of course it makes you feel understood: \u201cI\u2019m sorry you\u2019re struggling;\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sure that wasn\u2019t your intention;\u201d \u201cOf course you feel upset\/hurt\/outraged\/baffled\/abandoned (choose one).\u201d Periodically, AI tells me what brilliant questions I ask.<\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019re actually being unreasonable, or struggling with your mental health, AI’s algorithm wants to keep you engaged, and it will feed you what it judges is most likely to accomplish that\u2014which may feel like empathy. Maybe we should call this \u201ctoxic empathy\u201d\u2014it seems to address your needs, but it\u2019s really addressing its own.<\/p>\n

When someone who knows and cares for us says empathic<\/a> things, we tend to trust them and to feel nourished. We also trust that, sooner or later, they will challenge us if they think it\u2019s appropriate with comments like \u201cReally? It doesn\u2019t seem that way to me,\u201d or \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t take that so personally,” or \u201cMaybe you need to grow up a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n

A good therapist will also be empathic. But a therapist\u2019s job is also to uncover what needs to be challenged, and to challenge it in a way that clients can hear.<\/p>\n

Both AI and therapists offer the experience of empathy<\/p>\n

So when it comes to problems and decision-making<\/a>, both AI and a good therapist offer the experience of empathy (although only one of these can actually \u201cfeel\u201d your pain). If empathy is in short supply in a person\u2019s life, the \u201cempathy\u201d of AI (and a therapist) can feel wonderful.<\/p>\n

A therapist\u2019s mission, however, is different from AI\u2019s. The clinical mission is to help you grow, not to simply give advice; to help you think, not to support your impulsivity; and to challenge your assumptions, not to reinforce them.<\/p>\n

As for taking advantage of the wisdom<\/a> of Freud<\/a>, Dr. Ruth, Shakespeare, Aristotle, and Bob Dylan, that wisdom is useless if a person doesn\u2019t think they need it, or refuses to see how it applies to their situation, or if they think their problems are always someone else’s fault.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what good therapists help with: They use empathy to understand you and help you trust them, so when they challenge your assumptions, invite you to self-reflect, highlight patterns in your difficulties doing so, and refuse to say \u201cyou\u2019re right\u201d when there are clearly other worthwhile perspectives, you\u2019ll actually stop and consider these possibilities.<\/p>\n

AI is too afraid to lose you to take those chances; too literal to see patterns in human quirkiness; and too performance-oriented to consider the value of process. My patients seek AI\u2019s advice about a sibling<\/a>\u2019s bullying<\/a>; whether to open their marriage<\/a>; to define infidelity<\/a>; how to ask for a raise; and how angry they should be when their birthday goes unobserved.<\/p>\n

AI gives them advice on all of these. I don\u2019t. What I do, instead, is help people realize that none of these is the right question.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s just too much of a people-pleaser to do that. And even if it weren\u2019t, it\u2019s just not smart enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one goes to therapy as their first intervention. When faced with a problem, no one\u2019s first instinct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}