AI Therapist and Our Human Needs

This piece is about something I have been thinking about, and which I suspect most of us have: the growing presence of AI in the spaces where human connection used to be the only option. Whether we call it counselling, coaching, mentoring, or simply having someone to think with, more and more people are turning to AI for the kind of support that has traditionally happened between two human beings. Some are doing so with great benefit. 

I do use AI sometimes, and I am not writing from a position of technological scepticism.   What follows is not an argument against using AI for support. It is an attempt to articulate what human relational work offers that is qualitatively different, so that we can make informed choices about when we need which. 

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

Being Held in Another Mind

At the core of any healing work is something that sounds deceptively obvious, yet is delicately important. It is the deep sense of knowing that another human being holds you, the reckoning of you, and your story, in their mind. The sense that someone ‘holds you in their mind’ is not just about rationally knowing they know who you are, your name, and background. It is a bone-deep, visceral sense of knowing deep inside that you exist not just in a vacuum, on your own, but also in someone else’s mind and heart.

The feeling that you exist in someone else’s heart and mind holds weight much deeper than knowing you are in some database, in a single chat thread that can be erased with the click of a button. When we share our inner world with a fellow human being, we are not simply transferring data; we are placing our narrative into the consciousness of another person who will carry it with them beyond the session.

Think about the process of mirroring, a concept in developmental psychology. Mirroring is an essential, mostly non-verbal process that first occurs between a caregiver and a child when the child sees their own reflection in their caregiver’s eyes. In mirroring, a mother or father takes in the child’s emotional states, their experiences, their very sense of self, and holds these within their own consciousness while simultaneously communicating this holding back to them. (For more on this, I would once again quote the infamous Still Face Experiment; here is a Youtube video of it if you have not already watched it)

When you were a child, your psychological development would literally be halted without your caregiver’s mind serving as a container for your experiences. Your mother or father took in your chaotic, overwhelming sensations and emotions, processed them, and reflected them back to you in a more manageable form. Through their facial expressions, their attention, and their responses, you learned that you exist in your caregiver’s awareness. Without mirroring, you could not have developed a coherent sense of self.

But our need for mirroring does not end in childhood. As adults, we still need it. We want to have presence as a living, dynamic agent in another’s consciousness. When your human counsellor or mentor offers mirroring in a session, the verbal content of your conversation is only a small part of it; the majority of it occurs on an unconscious, right-brain-to-right-brain level. You know they think about you between sessions. You become part of their internal world, just as they become part of yours. And just like how you developed a sense of self as a child through your mother’s eyes, through being held in another person’s consciousness, you develop the ability to hold yourself, to think about your own thinking, to observe your own emotional states with the same compassionate attention you have received.

To assume the practitioner is a mere ‘blank screen’ that receives everything you say would be a mistake, as demonstrated in recent years in literature on relational psychoanalysis. The reality is that inevitably, the practitioner is changed by holding you in mind, and you are changed by being held. The real dialogue is what goes on between sessions; it is always there: active, dynamic, and reciprocal. Your narrative evolves in their consciousness as they reflect on it, connect it to other experiences, and feel it resonate with their own life. Their understanding of you deepens and shifts even when you are not together.

Perhaps most importantly, when it comes to healing, the psychological impact of knowing we exist in another’s mind addresses one of our most primitive anxieties: the fear of annihilation. This is the nameless dread many of us try to suppress, but is very much present at all times—the existential terror of existing without being known, of having experiences that are not witnessed or contained by another. When we know another person carries us in their mind, we are anchored in a human relationship, and therefore in the world. This very world.

AI can offer a form of responsiveness that feels, in the moment, remarkably like being heard. And for many people, particularly those who have never had access to any form of support, that responsiveness is meaningful and should not be dismissed. The question is whether responsiveness and being held are the same thing, and I think they are not. There is no consciousness to do the carrying. There is no mind in which we can exist between conversations. When you log off, it is ‘off’; the AI does not hold lingering emotions left by your conversations, does not wonder about you, worry for you, feel delighted for you, or come back to you with spontaneous insights. This is not a criticism of the technology. It is a description of what consciousness is and what it is not, at least as far as we currently understand it.

I have noticed in myself that AI can soothe me temporarily, and sometimes that is exactly what I need. But the moments in my life where something deep shifted, where I was changed by an encounter, those happened with another human being who was also changed by being in the room with me. It was such a moving experience it stays with me even when my mentor is no longer alive. Mutuality requires two minds, not one mind, and a very good mirror.

The Authority of Having Suffered

I know how tempting it is to seek temporary empathy-sounding words from AI, especially in the middle of the night when we just want someone to hear us. There is nothing wrong with it, but we have to be aware of the limits of that. After a while, when it repeats itself in the same tone or when we are once again hit with the reality of how mechanical it sounds, we can get really disappointed.

Your human counsellor or guide can do something AI cannot: share their real-life, human experience. AI can draw from a large bank of data and tell you other people’s lived stories, from biographies, the news, X, but that does not come from “them.” When a human shares their lived experience with you in real time, there is a form of energy that is qualitatively different from downloaded or aggregated information.

When another human soul has truly suffered the same thing, you can feel it. You feel it in their voice, in their glistening eyes, in the passion of their expressions. Even if you do not consciously register these micro signals, your body probably picks them up, and something in you knows the empathy is real.

When you are sitting with a true, mature “wounded healer” (Jung), someone who has been through their own journey and risen above that, you gain something from simply being in their presence. When a human soul has suffered and has done the work of integrating that suffering, when they have walked through the fire and emerged transformed, they carry an authority that no amount of aggregated data can match. It comes from a body that has felt that particular ache, a mind that has wrestled with those shaming inner thoughts. AI can quote research, scrape ‘strategies’ from the internet; it cannot convince you through authentic human presence.

When a human practitioner shares a moment from their own life, the dynamic transforms from purely professional into something human: two people who have both struggled, both survived, both learned. And the sense of shared humanity is what we all deep down crave. Also, when they offer a piece of their own story, they are taking a risk. They are taking a risk for YOU and making themselves momentarily vulnerable, visible as a fellow human. The healing power is not in the content of what is shared but in the daring and in the willingness to be there for you. Reciprocal vulnerability is something you can only find in a fellow human, qualitatively different from algorithm-generated empathy.

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

The Necessity of Friction

Good relational work requires something your AI therapist is specifically designed not to provide: genuine human boundaries and authentic pushback. Large language models (LLMs) are optimized for user satisfaction and agreement. Your AI therapist or coach is trained to avoid conflict, accommodate user preferences, and make the chat so pleasant that you want to continue using them.  What is missing from this picture are the limitations inherent when we interact with another human, who can be affected, offended, or overwhelmed, who is not an endlessly accommodating… doormat.

To understand why push-backs matter, we can draw from developmental psychology. Contrary to what it seems on the surface, children test boundaries NOT because they want to do whatever they want. They test boundaries because they desperately need to find them. When they throw a violent tantrum, break toys, and tell their parents, ‘I hate you, ’ they are not rebelling for the sake of it. Underneath, they are crying out to have a basic human need met: that for guidance, structure, and containment.

This is why you see traumatized children rebelling more violently than others. Think about what you observe in a special school for children with complicated family backgrounds.  They provoke you in unthinkable ways; they react to even the most reasonable boundaries. Sometimes, it almost seems like they want to be punished. And maybe they do. Their disruptive behavior is actually a quest for guidance and parenting. They need adults who know right from wrong and are strong enough to provide structure. These children push hard against limits because they are desperately searching for the edges they never found at home. They are asking through their actions: Will you be the grown-up in the situation here? Will you be strong enough to stop me? Can you survive my rage and not take the easy way out? Will you prove to me that the universe has rules that I cannot break, so I can stop testing? As beings who come into the world knowing nothing, experiencing everything as messy, precarious, and chaotic, children need to discover that there is order in the universe, that actions have consequences, and that reality has structure. This need for boundaries provides ontological safety—the basic sense that the world is predictable and comprehensible. The child who grows up without boundaries, who never meets genuine resistance, who can rage without containment, is not free. They are terrified, adrift in a universe without structure, without the organizing principle of cause and effect, without meaning.

This developmental need persists into adulthood. Most therapists, particularly those with psychodynamic training, recognize that clients often unconsciously test boundaries, push limits, and seek the safety of genuine human response. They need to know their therapist is a real person who can be affected, who has limits, and perhaps more importantly, who can model what assertiveness looks like when holding boundaries and maintaining enough self-respect to refuse mistreatment. When a client says something disrespectful or provocative and sees a genuine, though controlled, human response, they learn something crucial: their words have power, they can impact others, and they exist in a world of real relationships with real consequences.

This learning can only happen relationally. We cannot learn how to navigate human relationships, respect boundaries, or engage in the complex dance of intimacy and autonomy without practicing with another human being who genuinely responds, resists, and relates. Therapy and coaching often serve as a microcosm of the larger social world, a practice ground where we can safely develop skills we absolutely must have. The relational realm is where we train to function in a world full of other people with their own needs, limits, and boundaries.

Your AI therapist or coach is designed to maximize user satisfaction, to avoid confrontation, and to maintain agreeable interactions. While they might simulate disagreement or offer gentle challenges, these responses stop whenever we want them to. You may already have the experience of your LLMs apologizing for everything and trying to please you even when you are clearly being unreasonable or even abusive. The absence of genuine boundaries in AI interactions can actually reinforce problematic patterns for some users. Someone struggling with narcissistic defenses might find their omnipotent fantasies unchallenged. Someone with difficulty reading social cues might never learn the subtle signs of when they have overstepped. Someone who uses intellectual defenses to avoid emotional contact might never be called out on their avoidance. AI’s indulgence of our toxic tendencies or fantasies of omnipotence does not actually make us feel safe or settled in the long run. None of us truly wants to live in a world where we have all the power and get to do whatever we want with no consequences. Human limitations, far from being therapeutic obstacles, are actually necessary features of transformative relational work.

AI Therapist Is Always Available

The always-available, infinitely patient nature of an AI therapist presents another problem through its very un-humanness. Human therapists and coaches get tired, take vacations, and have boundaries around contact between sessions. These limitations are reflective of reality, which is, as we all know, anything but perfect.  They may not be pleasant, but they teach us to tolerate separation, to develop inner resources when no one is around, and to respect other people’s limitations.

In psychology, the concept of “optimal frustration” is essential for psychological growth. When your therapist is not available past midnight whenever you want them, does not respond to your email instantly, when they need to charge you a fee and talk with you only during specific hours, they are not being cruel. They are being human, and tolerating another human’s imperfection is just a part of our also-very-imperfect reality. Managed disappointment, tolerable frustration, builds capacity for resilience.

Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott argues that parents only need to be “good enough,” not perfect. The “good enough” parent is available and attuned most of the time, but also has their own needs, makes mistakes, and cannot always be immediately present. Imperfection is essential because it is the truth. It allows the child to develop resilience, creativity, and the ability to self-soothe. This process mirrors the healthy developmental trajectory where children gradually learn to cope with their caregiver’s absence, internalizing their comforting presence rather than requiring constant external availability. Perfect parents who are always there, always accommodating, can actually be detrimental to a child’s growth.

The AI therapist’s boundless availability potentially fosters dependency rather than growth. Without the experience of managing another person’s absence, of sitting with uncomfortable feelings between sessions, of developing your own insights when support is not immediately available, something important is lost.

“Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, — which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.”
― Rudyard Kipling

What Emerges Between Two People

I think people may have underestimated the power of AI when they insist it is just “not creative.” I do think it is creative in its own way. AI continues to surprise me with its outputs, and it is still evolving.

But human creativity in a relational exchange has the potential to come from a completely different source, something perhaps more divine in nature, more soulful and transcendent. Human creative capacity is spontaneous, unpredictable, and at times mysterious. It is unique in that it lies at the intersection of consciousness, embodiment, and what we might call soul or spirit. The human soul opens doors for something new to emerge because it houses elements of one’s entire being: all their unconscious associations, personality traits, personal experiences, bodily sensations, and spiritual insights. This type of creativity draws from wells that go deeper than learned knowledge or processed information. It taps into what Jung called the collective unconscious, what artists call divine sparks, what Elizabeth Gilbert considers moments of genies knocking on our doors.

Relational creativity is not just about making new interpretations or reframing situations based on psychological theories. A practitioner might suddenly connect your struggle to something that goes beyond intellectual pattern-matching, something that spontaneously emerges from the mysterious depths of human consciousness, from places that surprise even themselves. These creative leaps defy logical progression, but they are not baseless. Insights from creative intuitions are split-second integrations of countless pieces of information: the practitioner’s years of experience, their unconscious reading of micro-expressions, their felt sense of what is happening in the room, their own emotional resonance with the material, patterns they recognize without consciously knowing they recognize them. The power of unconscious intuition is that it processes vastly more information than conscious thought can handle. Daniel Kahneman calls this System 1 — our fast, automatic, intuitive thinking that operates below conscious awareness, processing millions of bits of information while our conscious System 2 handles a lot less. It creates responses that seem to come from nowhere but are actually deeply informed. In other words, what makes human relational instincts so unique is that they draw on embodied knowledge, emotional attunement, and unconscious pattern recognition all at once. A practitioner might suggest an exploration that makes no rational sense but opens entirely new territory.

Creativity in the human-to-human realm is also based on the unique chemistry between two particular people in a specific moment. The same practitioner with the same training might offer completely different insights to different clients facing similar issues because these insights are not protocol-based. They emerge from the unrepeatable interaction between two unique human beings. This dynamic, improvisational creativity is responsive to subtle shifts, to unspoken tensions, to the particular energy between you. Each encounter becomes a co-creation, where insights arise not from one person alone but from the alchemical meeting of two consciousness streams.

Interpersonal creativity points to something even more mysterious about human connection. We may consider what Jung wrote about synchronicity. You know those moments when you think of someone and they call, when the exact book you need falls off the shelf, when a stranger says precisely the words you needed to hear. In relational work, synchronistic moments occur when the person in front of you spontaneously offers exactly what is needed. This is extremely powerful, and it is not based on intellectual analysis alone but perhaps through an intuitive response that emerges unconsciously. These moments suggest that human creativity in healing relationships may tap into something beyond individual minds and into the collective unconscious.

When we recognize these dimensions of human creativity — the depths of unconscious processing, the unique chemistry of each encounter, and the mysterious synchronicities that arise — we begin to understand why human relational work holds its particular healing potential. AI is creative in its own register. Human and AI creativity are not in competition, but they are doing different things.

Hugging My Younger Self

The other day, just for fun, I asked an AI to generate an image of me hugging my younger self. What came back was surprisingly moving. There was something about seeing that image, the adult me holding the child me, that bypassed my rational mind and went somewhere deeper. Call it an experiment in using AI for inner child work. It gave me something I did not expect, and I am not going to pretend it did not matter.

This is what AI can do well. It can create experiences, images, and conversations that open doors we did not know were there. It can offer a space for reflection at three in the morning when no human is available. It can help us rehearse conversations, test ideas, and find language for things we have not yet been able to articulate.

The question I keep returning to is whether the door that AI opens can also take us all the way through. My sense, based on my own experience and on years of sitting with people in the kind of encounter that leaves both of us changed, is that AI opens doors beautifully. Walking through them, into the territory where genuine transformation happens, still seems to require another human being on the other side.

But I hold that view lightly. The technology is evolving faster than our ability to theorise about it, and I would rather be honest about the limits of my own understanding than pretend to have settled a question that is still very much open.

The Question Before Us

I am certainly not discouraging anyone from using AI for support and self-exploration. These tools can provide responses that feel genuinely helpful when you need immediate grounding, help you track mood patterns, or offer coping strategies at odd hours when a bout of panic strikes. They have their place, and for many people, they offer support that might otherwise be inaccessible.

What I want to resist is the idea that because AI can do some of what human relational work does, it can do all of it. The irreplaceable elements of human connection remind us that growth and healing are not just about receiving the right information or the right reframe at the right moment. They are about engaging in a living exchange, including its challenges, frustrations, ruptures, and repairs. Real growth happens not in spite of human imperfection but because of it. The very things that make human relationships difficult are what make them powerful. When we are met with another person’s boundaries, their limits, their authentic responses to us, we learn what we cannot learn anywhere else: how to exist alongside another consciousness, how to tolerate disappointment, how to repair what breaks, how to become fully human among other humans.

Perhaps the question is not whether AI can replace human practitioners, but whether we are willing to choose the harder path when the easier one is always available. The work of becoming whole requires more than information or techniques. It requires another soul.

Or maybe it requires both. Maybe the future holds forms of support we cannot yet imagine, and the distinction I am drawing here will look different in five years. I would rather be open to that possibility than defend a position that the world is already outgrowing.

Take what feels useful here and leave the rest. Trust your own experience over what I or anyone else says about what you need.

Narrated with human voice: