In Defense of Human Connection

AI has ushered us into a new era.

If the internet was once considered the information superhighway, artificial intelligence is the Millennium Falcon—blasting us into hyperspace at faster-than-light speeds. It’s thrilling, powerful, and incredibly useful. But according to some experts, it’s also a little terrifying—and potentially transformative in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

Yikes.

Some of the most immediate questions involve how AI is changing our work, professions, training, and education. Its efficiency highlights just how differently machines process information compared with human beings.

And AI is no longer something clients are using independently, outside the therapy room.

Not a day goes by without a client mentioning how they've used ChatGPT to assess their mental health between sessions. They’ve turned to it for all kinds of reasons: plugging in symptoms for self-diagnosis, pasting in confusing text messages from partners, or trying to solve—or even “cure”—their insecure attachment style.

Some have even forwarded me their chatbot conversations.

I welcome it—with caution.

As healthcare systems and insurance companies increasingly incorporate AI-powered mental health tools, we will likely see these technologies become even more common. The question isn't whether AI will become part of mental healthcare. It almost certainly will.

The more interesting question is:

What parts of healing require something only another human being can provide?

For the record, I am not anti-AI.

Quite the opposite.

I use it. I find it fascinating. It regularly astonishes me with its speed, breadth of knowledge, and ability to organize information. For psychoeducation, reflection, brainstorming, journaling prompts, and helping people put language to experiences that feel difficult to articulate, it can be an incredible tool.

In fact, I think AI and therapy may work best as partners rather than competitors.

AI can help people organize their thoughts between sessions, identify recurring patterns, generate questions, or find words for experiences they haven't quite been able to express.

Then they can bring those insights into therapy—where another human being can help make meaning of them, explore the emotions underneath them, and integrate them into lasting change.

And yet, despite AI’s lightning-fast responses and 24/7 availability, clients still come to therapy.

Apparently, my job is safe—for now.

What human therapy offers is attunement: the felt experience of being seen, understood, and emotionally held by another person.

It offers nervous system co-regulation.

Some therapists jokingly say we rent out our regulated nervous system by the hour.

In other words, we lend calm to someone whose own nervous system has become overwhelmed.

The magic of therapy isn't simply what is said.

It's the subtle dance between two nervous systems.

It's eye contact.

Long pauses.

Tears.

Laughter.

A therapist noticing your shoulders relax before you do.

A voice that softens when you're scared.

A relationship sturdy enough to hold the parts of yourself you've hidden from everyone else.

AI can tell you what something might mean.

A therapist can sit with you while you discover what it means to you.

And that distinction matters.

Because healing is not simply the exchange of information.

Healing is relational.

It happens through connection, safety, vulnerability, trust, and the experience of being

known by another human being.

So, dear friend, use AI to your advantage—but use it with care.

Let it educate you.

Let it help you organize your thoughts.

Let it support your curiosity.

Let it give you questions to bring into therapy.

But remember that true healing rarely happens in isolation with a screen.

It happens in community.

In meaningful relationships.

In moments of vulnerability shared with another living, breathing human being.

In the presence of someone who can sit with your pain, celebrate your growth, tolerate the uncomfortable silence, notice the things you aren't saying, and remind you that you don't have to figure everything out alone.

AI may be able to process information at lightning speed.

But there is something profoundly human about having another person sit beside you and say, in one way or another:

“I see you. I'm here. We can figure this out together.”

At least for now, that's something no algorithm can fully replicate.

With my human emotional intelligence,

Mandy