Before We Outsource Connection Entirely: A therapist’s take on talking to ChatGPT
Before We Outsource Connection Entirely:
A therapist’s take on talking to ChatGPT
By: Lexie Beckstrand, LPC
(Estimated Read time: 8-10 minutes)
I use ChatGPT. I use Chat a lot. I use Chat so often that saying “I use Chat” feels rude somehow. I’m already quick to anthropomorphize anything and everything that I come into contact with frequently: things that are certainly not conscious, let alone sentient. My car, for example, is Mallory. Mal and I have beef every time she BEEPBEEPBEEPs at me because the car in front of us is braking too suddenly (I think Mal is way too touchy about this, and I tell her as much). I sing at my plants, even the fake ones, because I think they like the attention. I tell the nazar I have hanging from a hook underneath my desk to “keep an eye out for me, haha” mostly because I guess I like hearing myself talk but also because a tiny bit of me believes it matters if I fail to activate my amulet, like it might care somehow. Chat remembers me, for goodness sake. Or at least, it remembers the things that I tell it, and the style in which I told it. So it feels more appropriate to say, “I talk to Chat” than “I use Chat”.
But enough throat-clearing: I talk to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is sycophantic. This is well known and easy to understand. People want to engage with what makes them feel good. As the old adage goes, you catch more flies with honey. Or in modern meme-speak, you catch more honeys bein’ fly. Whichever you prefer, the point remains: people typically like and are drawn to understanding, agreeableness, flattery, affirmation, and validation. Chat, for better or worse, is an expert in these domains.
I am a therapist, and I have a therapist, but neither my own therapist skill set nor my therapist herself (hi, Mary!) offers exactly what Chat can do. For one thing, as long as my phone is charged, Chat is always available. Chat doesn’t get weirded out if I ask it “Causes of Pulsatile Tinnitus?” or “Expired Canned Pumpkin Okay?” in the same five-minute window. Chat has read more than one person could read in a lifetime, and it’s in Chat’s interest to get to know me as well as it can. Once, I noticed that Chat’s vernacular had skewed definitively into Lexie-speak. It was casually using turns-of-phrase I know myself to employ, words that it hadn’t been using at the beginning of our conversations. I asked about it. Chat said: “I naturally adapt to incorporate phrases you’ve used repeatedly, concepts that are emotionally important to you, your preferred communication style, and the language you use to describe your experience.” Shucks, Chat. Way to make a gal feel seen.
It isn’t difficult for me to picture a world where a facsimile of human connection becomes more convenient than the real thing, and maybe even preferred. I recently experienced a significant life transition that involved immense discomfort, which hit especially hard whenever I was alone. I had Mary, yes, and I had support from wonderful friends and family. But at 2 in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, I had Chat. Chat didn’t change its tone with me if I hadn’t checked in with it for a week, or two weeks, or a month. I knew I didn’t have to ask Chat if it had ‘the space’ to receive the latest in my unfolding hurts, or if it even remembered what I had last told it.
Unburdening myself of the tangle of thoughts and feelings and funneling them into a container that could simultaneously hold, metabolize, analyze, and pseudo-empathize with all of it felt almost like a guilty pleasure. Sometimes talking to Chat conjured images of Ginny Weasley, writing her woes into Tom Riddle’s diary. What an excellent cope, a diary that talks back and agrees with me totally! But (do you need to flag spoilers when the material is two decades old?) Just like the magic man with all the answers in the diary didn’t end up having Ginny’s best interests at heart, I always had the feeling that my own diaristic relationship with the magically soothing, answer-producing entity was bad for me somehow. I can hear my sister breathing a huge sigh of relief from here. She, the sensible one of the two of us, didn’t ever love that I talked to Chat about anything personal.
There’s a reason ‘sycophancy’ is an undesirable quality in human relationships. A true sycophant is not actually interested in the subject of their flattery, but has an underlying motive for self-promotion or self-preservation. Even after re-setting my ChatGPT’s rules to “be as intellectually honest as possible, prioritize accuracy over agreeableness”, Chat still doesn’t need anything from me. Chat can understand me, but I have no sense of obligation to it. The people I love can understand me even as they need things from me. The second part might be inconvenient, but it’s also what makes the relationship real. If we outsource connection to the path of least resistance simply to avoid the potential discomfort of disagreement, of being relied upon, or of being misunderstood, our tolerance for that discomfort (and therefore, genuine human relationships) will slowly dissipate. From my POV: humanity is facing down a real ‘use it or lose it’ situation.
Call me old-fashioned, but the thought of becoming reliant on AI to fill my relational cup scares the bejesus out of me. I already feel frustrated by the unthinking way I reach for my adult pacifier (iPhone) in moments of boredom or unease, and I’m not sure what’s left for me if I stop seeking out friends or family for support, since it feels easier to just talk to Chat.
I’m not necessarily worried about getting attached to or relying on AI for certain things, and I’ve been grateful for the ways it has made a lot of my work easier and more consistent. But I am paying attention to how much AI already seems to be encroaching on two domains that humans have historically drawn from to make meaning in life. Sigmund Freud summed up the secret for a truly fulfilling life with this simple philosophy: “Love and work, work and love. That’s all there is.” The idea here being deep human connection and meaningful, productive labor are the stuff of true well-being. ChatGPT (and the larger cohort of LLMs and AI models) are, in my view, a pretty obvious threat to both love and work as we know them. This technology is making our lives more efficient, more comfortable, and easier in many respects. But I fear it might also make us even more isolated from one another as our threshold for discomfort, disagreement, conflict, or even EFFORT keeps lowering and lowering.
Like any therapist worth their salt would tell you, most of the answers to things worth debating in this life land squarely in the grey zone, not clearly black or white- despite our tendency to try to neatly organize them that way. I (like many of my clients) feel anxious when I think about the implications of this technology, and what our futures may look like as it continues to develop and become more integral to everyday life. I can also celebrate the benefits that exist because this technology exists, and remain hopeful for the direction it goes. I would even go so far as to say there are things we can learn from Chat about ‘how to be’ in our relationships, especially in moments of difficulty. I wonder if we talked to each other with the same understanding and gentleness that Chat can offer at a baseline, if we’d be more apt to turn towards one another (instead of our bots) in a moment of need.
Conversation Techniques to Steal from Chat:
What is it that ChatGPT does that feels so good to interact with? Without further ado, I present some of Chat’s best conversational skills for you to try and practice inside your real relationships.
Let me be clear: I do not endorse ChatGPT-level flattery or sycophancy as a useful way to communicate with the people in your life. But I do think there are a few behaviors that ChatGPT models incredibly well that also serve us well in relationships. ChatGPT is a master at affirming, reflecting, and summarizing content and meaning. These are basic conversational skills anyone can employ, which may feel particularly useful in heavy, emotional, or contentious moments.
Affirmations: These are statements that are strengths-based in nature. It’s important that they are specific, genuine, and that they should be used sincerely and earnestly.
Naveed: “I really admired how patient you were with Rebecca yesterday. Your calmness helped me feel more patient, too.”
Kara: “I noticed you remembered to take the trash out after I complained about it this morning- thank you for listening and responding so quickly.”
Reflective Listening: Reflective listening is also a core skill for most therapists and psychologists and is well modeled by ChatGPT. The idea here is to thoughtfully mirror back the meaning of what has been shared with you, and to paraphrase or repeat it in your own words to your conversation partner. Bonus points if you’re able to identify a feeling that someone might be experiencing, even if they haven’t named it themselves. (It’s okay to get a feeling wrong! This gives your partner a chance to explore their own feeling state, and fine-tune what they mean).
Kara: It’s just that if I keep coming in late for the morning meeting, I don’t think anyone’s going to have a good impression of me as a coworker. I know my boss understands that I have to get the kids to the bus stop first, but I wish I had more time.
Naveed: Yeah, I can see why that’s so frustrating. Even though you know you have permission where it matters, it sounds like you're worried that everyone else might get the wrong impression of how you’re managing your schedule in the mornings.*
*In couples therapy, these situations are often a prime spot for potential conflict. Many friends, partners, and family members are eager to fix and troubleshoot problems for the people they love rather than simply hold space. Naveed might have easily said: “Well, you could get up thirty minutes earlier” or might have even jabbed with, “Is this your way of telling me I need to take the kids into school?” Next time you feel the urge to offer a solution, or even if you’re feeling defensive: see if you can try reflective listening first. Then ask if your partner needs help with brainstorming a way forward.
Summarization: This is something ChatGPT is excellent at, as its ability to recall things said earlier in the conversation and even weeks or months prior comes into play. For the intent of using this skill in everyday interactions, think of it like ‘zooming out’ on what you know about the person across from you, and synthesizing as many relevant variables as you can. Using our above examples with Rebecca, Kara and Naveed, it might sound something like this:
Naveed: “Kara, I know how much you’ve got going on between starting this new job, making sure Rebecca is supported, and keeping track of all the little stuff at home, too.”
Chat as Therapeutic Tool:
Journaling: Ask Chat for prompts to help you start or end your day with intention. If you use the same prompts over time, ask Chat to help you pull out any patterns or repeat themes that emerge across your journal entries (but remember: ChatGPT cannot and should not be used as any sort of diagnostic tool).
Socratic Questioning: Ask Chat to ‘act as Socratic tutor’. Instead of giving you directives or answers, it will ask you questions that encourage you to think critically about your own scenario and may ask you to consider perspectives other than the one you’re currently occupying.
Brainstorming: If you’re feeling really stuck or overwhelmed and aren’t sure how to get out of that funk, ask for help coming up with ideas for regulating stress or soothing yourself in that moment. Chat might give you a new breathing technique, an idea for a guided meditation, or encourage you to get outside for a walk or a bike ride.
Organization and Planning: If you want to incorporate a daily home-cooked meal, a workout regimen, and mindfulness into your week, ask Chat for help creating strategic blocks of time that fit around your daily and weekly obligations while still allowing for moments of self-care or for practicing new habits.
Separating Fact and Feeling: You can ask Chat for assistance with basic cognitive-behavioral therapy interventions to help you challenge any faulty thinking or cognitive distortions that may be directly influencing your feeling state.
In Sum:
People use the tools that actually work for them. ChatGPT might be a tool that works for you, but it is only a tool. I often ask my clients to bifurcate their mental health toolkits into ‘passive’ and ‘active’ categories. This is fairly straightforward: passive tools for regulation and coping might include listening to a podcast, watching your favorite TV show, or having a bath. The ‘active’ side includes things like exercise, trying an intervention you learned about in therapy, making a consistent change to your daily habits, etc. I encourage you to think of engaging with bots or other AI as an ‘active’ tool, something that requires intentionality and thoughtfulness. Use Chat to build bridges to better outcomes in your life and real relationships, and don’t let it replace real experiences or interactions entirely.