There have been a few times in the last couple of months where Chat GPT has come up in my counselling sessions. I’ve had a couple of new clients mention that they were drawn to book in with me because they’d been using Chat GPT to try to help them work through feelings of shame or anxiety and it really wasn’t helping. A few weeks back, a long-term client sheepishly told me that they’d asked Chat GPT to give them a hand with a challenging issue, which ended in tears. They told me “I realised I should have just emailed you to move our session closer, because using AI instead only made me feel worse”.

I know that a lot of folks are turning to Chat GPT and other forms of AI for therapeutic support. While I understand why it’s so tempting to do this (it’s instantaneous, it’s easy and it’s free!), Chat GPT isn’t a substitute for a session with a trained and qualified counsellor. Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t be using Chat GPT as your therapist:

It will tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear.

When you use Chat GPT, you type in a prompt and it gives you what you’re asking for. By it’s very nature, it’s designed to give you the answer that you want to hear. While this can be reassuring, it’s not necessarily going to be helpful to you in a therapeutic sense.

Part of the role of a counsellor is challenging what you’ve said, pointing out things you may not be considering or offering alternate perspectives. While it’s important for you to have your experience and emotions validated, that’s only half of the equation in therapy. You can’t learn and grow if you only confirm what you already know, rather than adding new ideas and possibilities. Chat GPT might be able to give you some artificial validation and confirmation, but it’s unlikely to lead you to a deeper understanding or more rounded perspective.

It will miss clues about what’s really going on

Chat GPT works on written prompts only. It can only use the exact words that you’ve typed to gather the meaning of your issue. However, as humans we communicate in so many ways beyond words alone. Non-verbal cues such as tone of voice, the pace of your speech, body language, facial expressions and emphasis can all give valuable information about the emotions and nuances behind the words. A counsellor is able to pick up on these things and draw your attention to them, which can lead to deeper insights and help you to feel like you’ve been truly seen and understood. For this reason, Chat GPT is likely to miss vital information about what’s happening in the background, and won’t be able to lead you to those really juicy insights that you can get from counselling.

It can’t be discerning or flexible

Chat GPT might have access to all the information about psychology, mental health and human behaviour on the internet, but it is limited in it’s ability to choose what approach to offer and how to present information. Counsellors have extensive training on working to understand clients and selecting the right therapeutic approach for the issue at hand.

I’ve spent years of study and practice learning to get to know each individual client and find exactly the right way to work with each person. That often means carefully blending different types of therapy and modifying the pace of sessions to make sure that they’re getting the best experience. A counsellor also needs to be able to read their client to know when they’re becoming overwhelmed and need a break, or if they’re in a good space and can be challenged a little. Chat GPT can’t do this. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t suited to individual needs.

It can’t offer empathy or validation

One of the biggest benefits of seeing a counsellor is being able to access a space where you can feel fully seen and heard. In order to experience growth, vulnerability and healing you need to feel like the person in front of you truly understands your experience and empathises with your feelings. Chat GPT isn’t able to do this. It can’t offer true empathy or validation, or mirror your emotions back to you to help you to truly see what’s going on. A real, human counsellor can offer you that insight and empathy that is vital to feeling safe to open up and make positive changes.

While Chat GPT can be useful, it’s no substitute for a trained, experienced, human counsellor. It simply can’t offer the depth of knowledge, level of understanding and empathy or tailored approach that you get with therapy.