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 a potential threat to humanity as we know it. Yikes.

The most immediate concerns? How AI challenges our work, professions, training, and education. Its efficiency highlights just how differently machines process information compared to human beings.

What’s particularly interesting is that AI is no longer just something clients are using independently. Not a day goes by without a client mentioning how they've used ChatGPT to assess their mental health outside of session. They’ve turned to it for a wide range of reasons: plugging in symptoms for self-diagnosis, pasting in confusing text messages from partners, or trying to solve—or "cure"—their insecure attachment styles. Some have even forwarded me their chatbot conversations. I welcome it with caution.

As healthcare systems and insurance companies begin incorporating AI-powered mental health tools, we will likely see these technologies become more common. The question is not whether AI will become part of mental healthcare—it almost certainly will. The 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 their experiences, 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 that have felt difficult to express. Then they can bring those insights into therapy, where another human being helps make meaning of them, explore the emotions beneath 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 client's felt sense 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 been 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.

At least not yet.

And perhaps never in the way that matters most.

Because healing is not simply the exchange of information. It is the experience of connection.

So, dear friend, use AI to your advantage—but do so with care. Let it educate you. Let it help you organize your thoughts. Let it support your curiosity. But remember that true healing rarely occurs 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, and offer something no algorithm can fully replicate: genuine human connection.

With my human emotional intelligence,

Mandy