AI Therapist and Our Human Needs

Today’s letter is about the elephant in the room for all of us these past few years: the use of the AI therapist, coach, mentor, partner, friend, confidant, and sounding board. You may be someone who has resisted it with full strength, or embraced it with excitement, or maybe both. Whatever your stance, maybe it is time we talk about what happens when we turn to machines for the kind of relational healing or coaching that has always happened between humans.

More and more, we hear about people turning to ChatGPT or other AI models for support. Your AI therapist is always there when you need it, never judges you for reaching out at odd hours, and never gets tired of hearing about the same struggles (although I have experienced some LLMs’ seemingly irritated responses after a while…). Even the paid version of an AI therapist is significantly cheaper than a therapist, and there is never a waiting list. We hear horror stories about how it has driven people to psychologically dangerous places, even to suicide. But there is also the argument that for many people, especially those who cannot afford therapy or live in places where mental health support is scarce, it feels like a lifeline.

Let me be transparent: I know very little about the mechanics of AI. I have never studied computer science, not even a short course. What I share here are hypotheses and assumptions based on my own pondering, my limited reading about AI ethics, and some observations and links I draw from psychoanalytic theories.

All in all, I believe there remain irreplaceable aspects of human connection in healing work that have nothing to do with technological limitations and everything to do with what it means to be human, to suffer, and to heal in the presence of another person who has also suffered and healed. Whether we are talking about therapy, coaching, mentoring, or any form of deep relational work, certain elements can only happen between two human beings.

In this piece, we will focus on those irreplaceable human elements. Just because I do not discuss the potential benefits or value of having an AI therapist does not mean they are not there; they are simply not the focus of this discussion.

 

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

AI Therapist Never Misses You

The first point I want to bring up, which I also think is the most significant one, is this:

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 there. As adults, we still need it. We want to have presence as a living, dynamic agent in another’s consciousness. When your human therapist or coach 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 your therapist or coach continues to 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 your therapist’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 your therapist or coach 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 therapist 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 your therapist’s 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 our therapist carries us in their mind, we are anchored in a human relationship, and therefore in the world. This very world.

An AI therapist, no matter how sophisticated its memory systems or how ‘human’ its responses, cannot offer you the bone-deep sense of being known and held. It may do so temporarily, when you simply need a bit of ‘back-and-forth’, some reassurance of what you already know, but you would likely struggle to convince yourself that you are held, with tenderness and warmth, in another human’s heart. AI does not ‘carry us’ with it because 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.

I can understand why, at times, using an AI therapist or coach as a sounding board can seem useful, and even addictive—it is always there and always responsive. In some ways, it even seems to have traits of a responsive, good parent. However, after a while, once we have placed hope and invested our relational energy and vulnerability into this artificial connection, once we have come to truly trust it, we may be let down, and that can even be (re)traumatizing. When we hit the limit of an AI therapist’s relational capacity, it may evoke that very existential fear we wanted to avoid in the first place: the terror of existing in a vacuum, of realizing how alone we are in our pain. Without the containing function of another mind, our experiences feel unreal, disconnected, and meaningless. This disconnection can escalate into nihilism. It is a slippery slope. 

Ultimately, I still believe there is something about the warmth and continuity of a human-to-human interaction that holds power an AI therapist or coach cannot replicate. A human relationship is by no means perfect, but that may be what makes it meaningful, as we shall see below.

AI Therapist Does Not Have Lived Experience

I know how tempting it is to seek temporary empathy-sounding words from an AI therapist, 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 therapist or coach can do something your AI therapist 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, not manufactured.

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 your therapist or coach 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 a therapist offers 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

AI Therapist Never Pushes Back

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

The Depths of Human Creativity

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 therapist or coach 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 healing instincts so unique is that they draw on embodied knowledge, emotional attunement, and unconscious pattern recognition all at once. A therapist or coach 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 therapist or coach 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 but 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 healing potential. It is not that an AI therapist lacks creativity, but that human creativity in relationships can offer so much more and on so many more levels: cognitive, emotional, embodied, interpersonal, and spiritual. 

 

The Question Before Us

I am certainly not discouraging anyone from using AI for self-help purposes. These tools can provide empathic responses that are convincing enough when you need immediate validation, 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. In fact, just in the spirit of having some fun, the other day I asked a bot to create an image of me hugging my younger self the other day. Call it my attempt at using AI for inner child therapy. There is something to be said for these new possibilities we can do with technology, and to have conversations we never got to have. 

But perhaps we should be wary of the potentially addictive nature of using an AI therapist or coach. The trap lies in being so accustomed to the ease of AI that we forget to do the deeper work in the messy, imperfect, at times vulnerable space of human relationships. AI can give us the illusion of connection without the friction that actually shapes us. It can offer us comfort without the discomfort that leads to growth. It can provide answers without the struggle that builds our capacity to find answers within ourselves.

The irreplaceable elements of human connection remind us that healing is not about receiving the right information or techniques but about engaging in deep relational 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 therapists can replace human therapists and coaches, 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.

Finally, you may not agree with everything here, and that is perfectly fine. Take what feels useful and leave the rest. With the technological landscape shifting so rapidly, some of these observations may change as my thinking evolves and as AI capabilities develop. Feel free to challenge these ideas, and always trust your own experience over what I or anyone else says about your therapeutic needs!

 

Narrated with human voice: