Category: Relationships

What therapy and ancestral wisdom can learn from each other without destroying what makes each unique 1

Imagine a client who comes to your office after losing her mother. She tells you her mother appeared to her in a dream, clear, luminous, with a message she does not fully understand. Since then, she cannot sleep.

Is this grief? Trauma? Spiritual experience? Psychosis? A call to pay attention?

The honest answer is: it might be all of those things. And the way you respond will depend, more than you might realize, on which shore you are standing.

Two shores. One river. No bridge.

Western psychotherapy and ancestral wisdom traditions have, for most of modern history, operated as if they were on opposite banks of a wide river, occasionally peering at each other with curiosity, suspicion, or misplaced enthusiasm, but rarely building anything solid across the distance.

On one shore: the language of the wounded self. Unconscious patterns, attachment wounds, trauma stored in the body, the slow and careful work of making the implicit explicit. At its best, psychotherapy is a disciplined act of love, witnessing someone’s interior life with rigor, ethics, and presence.

On the other shore: the language of the sacred web of life. Community as medicine, ritual as container, ancestors as living fields of influence, illness as disharmony rather than deficit. Traditions that have never believed the self ends at the skin, or that healing is something you receive alone in a room.

Both shores see something real. Both also have their blind spots. And in our rush to integrate everything, we have often done something that helps neither: we have put it all in a blender.

A blender makes puree. A bridge respects distance.

The wellness industry loves a blender. A little mindfulness from this tradition, a ceremony from that one, a chakra system loosely attached to a somatic protocol, shamanic language grafted onto a trauma model. The result is something that sounds whole but has been stripped of the very thing that made each element powerful: its context, its ecology, its relational and ethical demands.

A bridge works differently. A bridge does not collapse the distance between two shores. It honors the distance. It makes movement possible without pretending the shores are the same place.

This is the question I keep returning to in my clinical and personal life: How do we learn from both traditions without reducing either one?

Not “how do we merge them into a new spiritual product.” But how do we allow psychotherapy to become more soulful, more ritually aware, symbolically alive, culturally humble, without abandoning the rigor that protects clients from harm? And how do we approach ancestral wisdom with enough respect to leave its roots intact?

What each shore actually offers

Psychotherapy, at its core, teaches us to listen to the wounded self. It gives us a language for the unconscious, for developmental wounds, for the patterns that repeat because they were learned before we had words. It shows us that healing often happens through relationship, not technique, and that the body keeps score long after the mind has moved on. It brings ethics, boundaries, evidence, and the kind of careful container that protects the most vulnerable moments in a person’s life.

Ancestral and wisdom traditions teach us to listen to the sacred web of life. They remind us that the human being is not a private ego floating in an indifferent universe, but a relational, ecological, ancestral, and spiritual creature. They remind us that illness can be a form of disharmony, not just pathology. That healing sometimes requires community, not just technique. That some forms of suffering respond not to interpretation but to ritual, to offering, to being witnessed by something larger than the therapeutic dyad.

Where they meet is quietly remarkable: both understand that healing happens in a field, not in isolation. Both know that relationship is medicine. Both work with symbols, one through dreams and transference, the other through ceremony and cosmology. Both recognize the body as essential, not incidental.

Where they do not meet, and why that matters

Here is where most integrative conversations go wrong: they maximize the similarities and minimize the differences. But the differences are real, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of harm.

Psychotherapy generally works within a secular frame: the person, their history, their nervous system, their relationships. Many ancestral traditions operate within a cosmological frame: the person within the community, within the land, within the ancestors, within the spirit world. When a client’s “ancestral vision” gets translated into “part of the psyche” without asking whether that translation fits, something is lost, and something is taken.

The goals also diverge. Therapy often aims to restore function, coherence, and integration. Traditions may aim at liberation, awakening, balance, or right relationship with the sacred. A psychologically healthy person is not automatically an awakened one. A spiritually intense person is not automatically integrated. Conflating these two is one of the more common errors in transpersonal practice.

And the authority structures are entirely different. Therapy protects autonomy, consent, and the right to question. Many traditions involve apprenticeship, lineage, community recognition, and earned surrender. A healer in most Indigenous contexts is not self-appointed. The community recognizes the role, slowly, over time. Modern spiritual culture tends to invert this: brand first, authority claimed second.

Standing in the middle

There is a Nahuatl word that describes what it feels like to stand between two worlds: Nepantla. Gloria Anzaldúa used it to name the liminal space between cultures, identities, and ways of knowing, not a comfortable middle ground, but a living threshold. Uncomfortable, generative, and demanding.

Nepantleros, those who inhabit that in-between space, do not belong entirely to either shore. They are called to hold the tension without resolving it prematurely. To resist the blender.

For therapists and practitioners who move between these worlds, this is the actual work. Not to choose a camp, but to develop what Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall calls “Two-Eyed Seeing”: the capacity to look simultaneously from the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and the strengths of Western ways of knowing, using both eyes together, without forcing one to see through the lens of the other.

A different definition of mental health

What would it mean to redefine mental health not as the absence of symptoms, but as restored participation? Participation in your body. In your relationships. In your community. In the natural world. In meaning and mystery.

This definition does not dismiss symptom relief. That matters enormously. But it expands the frame. It asks not only “what is broken?” but “what relationship has been severed?” Not only “how do we reduce suffering?” but “how do we restore belonging?”

How this looks in practice

A bridge-oriented clinician does not try to become a shaman or a guru. That is not the point, and it can be its own form of harm. What shifts is the quality of listening, and the humility with which you hold your own framework.

Before a client’s spiritual or cultural experience gets translated into clinical language, a few questions help:

What world does this experience belong to? Whose lens fits it better, the psychologist’s or the tradition’s? What does healing mean from inside this person’s cosmology? And perhaps most importantly: what is my framework missing that this client’s tradition might supply?

This is not relativism. It is clinical precision. Recognizing that the tools you bring to the room were built for a particular kind of suffering, and that some suffering requires different tools.

A bridge takes two shores

Let me end where I started: with the woman whose mother appeared in her dream.

The most useful thing I can bring to that moment is not a diagnostic category or a spiritual interpretation. It is the willingness to sit with her in the not-yet-knowing, the Nepantla, to listen with what one eye sees as a clinician and what the other eye recognizes as something that exceeds clinical categories.

A bridge is not built so one shore can conquer the other. It is built so that we can move, with care and respect, between worlds.

That, I think, is what good mental health care can look like when it is brave enough to hold the tension.

Interested in a talk or workshop on this theme? I offer presentations and trainings on transpersonal psychotherapy, ancestral wisdom, cultural humility, psychedelic integration, and the bridges between clinical care and spiritual traditions.

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  1. This article is a synopsis of my presentation “Wisdom Bridges: Modern Psychotherapy and Ancient Traditions,” presented at FITRA’s 2nd International Transpersonal Conference. ↩︎

A therapist’s guide to responding without panic, shame, or avoidance

In previous articles, I have written about how AI is being used in connection with therapy, why it should not replace psychotherapy, and where it can safely support the work. Here I want to speak to therapists who are already feeling the presence of AI in their offices. You can find the full series here: AI and Psychotherapy.

Clients are asking chatbots about relationships, symptoms, dreams, diagnoses, attachment patterns, and what they should do about all kinds of personal situations. Some of this may be useful. Some of it may be risky. Most of it is worth talking about.

Professional organizations are trying to catch up. The APA, CAMFT, BACP, and even the WHO have all issued warnings, guidance, or ethics updates. As valuable as that is, warnings do not help us know what to do when a client says, “ChatGPT told me to…” So, what can we do when AI enters the therapy room?

Do not criticize or lecture. Be curious instead.

If clients feel judged, they may simply stop telling us (or stop therapy altogether). Many people are turning to AI because it is available, inexpensive, fast, and seemingly nonjudgmental. Some are lonely. Some are trying to make sense of their pain at 2 a.m. Some may not be able to afford more therapy. From the client’s perspective, it makes sense. Curiosity helps us understand the function of a behavior before we decide what to do about it.

Ask better questions.

Why are they using it? Do they feel heard by it? Is there a rupture in the therapeutic relationship? Is there something they told AI that they have not told us? These are not nosy, but clinical questions. Psychotherapy is not a polite endeavor. Everything is available for exploration. Is AI functioning as a journal? A rehearsal partner? A reassurance machine? A surrogate relationship? An alternate therapist? Depending on the role it is playing, we can begin to consider appropriate clinical interventions.

Bring AI into the room. It is already here anyway.

Why is the client choosing AI instead of the therapist or another supportive relationship? What felt easier to tell a machine than a person? Is the client outsourcing agency to it? If so, is this part of a familiar pattern? All is grist for the mill.

AI-generated material should not be treated as objective truth. Even when it feels empathic or accurate, it is still a complex probabilistic system producing a plausible response based on patterns. Yet it can be treated as material, the same way a dream, a journal entry, or a relational enactment would be. If the response resonates with the client, it can reveal something about their longings, fears, defenses, and assumptions.

Avoid the temptation to compete with AI at the information level. There is no way you can win. Just as you hopefully would not compete with information a client got from a self-help book, your role is to remain grounded, curious, and open. You can offer something the machine cannot: a real human connection. That is where the healing power of therapy lies.

Watch for red flags.

Not every use of AI is dangerous. Still, some uses deserve concern. Pay attention when a client is using AI as their main emotional support, especially during crisis, intense loneliness, paranoia, suicidal thinking, substance relapse risk, or loss of reality testing. Also, be attentive to use that increases isolation, replaces difficult conversations, reinforces a fixed narrative, or becomes a secret part of the client’s life. It is okay to express concern (not disapproval) in these cases. It is part of our duty to care.

Another red flag is certainty. AI can sound confident even when it is hallucinating. It can validate or intensify a client’s interpretation without understanding the larger clinical picture. As Carl Rogers used to say, the client often talks about the thing next to the thing. AI may miss what is not being said.

A useful response might be: “Let’s slow down. What feels true about this? What might be missing? What would happen if we did not treat this as the final word?”

There is room for education.

Clients need to understand that AI is not confidential in the way therapy is. Sharing deeply personal material with a chatbot means sharing it with an external technology platform, not with a licensed professional bound by clinical and legal duties.

For therapists, the bar is even higher. When therapists use AI in clinical work, we need to think carefully about informed consent, confidentiality, documentation, vendor policies, legal compliance, and whether identifying client information is being exposed. The basic principle is simple: do not let technological convenience outrun clinical responsibility.

We should also keep reminding clients, and ourselves, that AI does not understand in the human sense. It has never been on a date. It has no children, dreams, fears, body, or even an ego.

The therapist’s role

It is unlikely that AI will stop entering the therapeutic ecosystem. The therapist’s role is neither to panic nor to ignore it, but to help clients use discernment. We can ask better questions, notice when AI is helpful or potentially harmful, and, as with everything else, talk about it.

The task is not to become anti-AI or dazzled by AI, but to remain deeply human when, invited or uninvited, it shows up in the therapy room.

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Want a grounded conversation about AI and psychotherapy for your group? I offer talks, workshops, and consultations for clinicians, organizations, and training programs navigating the ethical and relational implications of AI in therapy. Contact me to keep the conversation going.

On the therapist-client relationship, empathy, and the courage it takes to begin therapy

Part of the raw musings of a psychotherapist

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber

I have been revisiting my thoughts on the relationship between therapist and client, and the importance of empathy during the first meeting.

It has been over 30 years now, but I remember the first time I went to therapy. Although I had no prejudice against going to a “shrink,” I still felt a bit funny. I guess the way I dealt with it was by convincing myself that I was not crazy, but only needed some help with certain specific issues. In fact, I prepared a list with the five items that, in my opinion, needed to be addressed.

I do not remember my therapist’s attitude in detail, but I do believe that she made me feel comfortable. She acknowledged my areas of concern, whether she agreed with them or not, I do not know, and also made me feel that my problems were solvable. Had she tried to go another way, for example, trying to convince me not to stick to a specific agenda, or letting me know that there might be other issues to consider, I might have felt like she was trying to sell me something I did not need and most probably would have said, “No thanks,” and walked away.

As therapists, we need to develop, from the first visit, a sincere appreciation for the client. We should acknowledge the client’s courage in being there: taking action, accepting that they need help, and trusting a perfect stranger with their deepest and darkest secrets and struggles. That is a lot! We would do well to provide some assurance that coming to therapy was the right move, that they are not crazy, and that there is hope.

The keyword is sincere. As humans, we can feel when someone is faking appreciation or support. In many ways, beneath such sincere support, authenticity and openness are required.

The other topic that keeps coming back, and that I relate to openness, is the need to remember that, even if the client comes to me looking for magical solutions or to be “fixed,” just as they might go to a priest, a guru, or a tarot reader, I should not receive them with a sense of superiority, but welcome them as an equal. As a fellow traveler on the path.

We therapists first have to clear our own trail (healer, heal thyself!), and then invite others to walk along with us, not as an example to be followed, but more like a traveling companion. Someone who, although they may have already visited this specific “country,” is a traveler nonetheless, still learning and discovering new things.

This means encouraging clients to try their own solutions, and walking together in the therapeutic relationship, where therapist and client meet, relate, and, through this meeting, healing occurs.

Yes, to be fully honest, I often find myself suspended in an inner tension. On the one hand, I notice my desire to present myself as wise, capable, insightful, and worth the money I am being paid. On the other hand, I hold the goal of meeting my client, and everyone, for that matter, as an equal, in an I-Thou way. Yes, we may be playing therapist-client roles right now, but underneath that, we are two human beings trying to figure out this thing called life the best way we can.

I remember attending a lecture a few years ago by Rabbi Michael Lerner, in which he discussed two different visions of the world. The first was the market-based society, where fear is the underlying feeling, and every time I meet someone, I evaluate how he or she may be of use to me. Basically, an I-It world. In such a world, it is clear that I, the evaluator, must assume myself to be better than the “its” to which I relate, the “its” I objectify.

The second was the love-based society, where the criteria for a relationship are love, mutual support, equality, and compassion. An I-Thou world. He seemed to suggest that most of the time we engage with each other in an I-It world, treating others as means to an end rather than acknowledging the miracle of having a living, thinking, feeling, unique human being in front of us.

It is as if, instead of appreciating something, a work of art, a sunset, a flower, a person, we are fixated on figuring out what we can get out of it.

It is sad.

May each of us keep remembering that every human encounter is a unique opportunity and a miracle. May you find, in your own therapy and in all your relationships, the joy of being seen and known, and of seeing the other as they are: radiant.

But then again, what do I know…

Therapy works best when you feel seen, respected, and met as a whole person. If this reflection resonates, we can explore whether working together feels like a good fit.

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Part of the raw musings of a psychotherapist

The Buddha proclaimed that there is no self. Buddhism encourages us to realize that our sense of who we are is an empty construction. There’s even a Ram Dass film called Becoming Nobody.

In contrast, the West wants us to become somebody. That is, to develop a cohesive, functional self, capable of setting boundaries, regulating affect, relating, and working well.

Today I want to focus on the Western side of this equation; on something I habitually see in therapy, though it is often hard to spot: the fear of not existing, which has nothing to do with the Buddhist no-self.

It sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? Like something out of a fairy tale. Alice fearing that she might be nothing but some sort of figure in the Red King’s dream. But this is no fantasy.

Have you ever met someone constantly needing to be acknowledged or even admired? I’m sure you have. We may even be among them! Some find ways to get it through legitimate means. They find a platform that provides much-needed validation: performing, teaching, helping, creating… Others look for it, or even demand it, from those around them: parents, partners, children, co-workers, lovers…

I often meet them in therapy when their loved ones grow tired of having to prop them up, or, for the most successful among them, when they realize that all the fame, adulation, and acknowledgment are never enough to fill what feels like a hole within.

It is tempting to label them as narcissistic, and some may be, but when we dig deeper, we often find a deeply wounded and scared person facing an unbearable emptiness. A dread that, no matter how successful, funny, accomplished, or accommodating they are, they don’t matter. They feel unsubstantial, lacking matter. Nobody really cares. They could cease to exist, and nobody would even notice.

Although rarely articulated, they seem to fear that, if not noticed, they could dissolve like a dream upon awakening. To be clear, they don’t fear they would literally fade away; but a strange compulsion keeps them demanding attention because the alternative terrifies them.

How can this be?

Psychologically, we develop our sense of being real in relationship. Early on, we need to be seen, recognized, and responded to, not as stars, but simply as beings whose feelings, presence, and existence register in someone else’s mind. This is why young children yell things like, “Look, Mom, no hands!”

When that recognition (known as mirroring) is reliable enough, a person slowly develops an inner sense of solidity: I am here. I count. I remain myself even when no one is looking. But when that kind of acknowledgment is missing, inconsistent, or conditional, the person may continue to depend on outer confirmation to feel real. Then, being noticed starts to feel less like a satisfaction and more like a necessity.

That is why, for some, the hunger to be seen carries such desperation. What they are really fighting is not anonymity, but the old terror of feeling expendable, forgettable, irrelevant, as if they had no psychological weight. In milder forms, this manifests as shame, emptiness, or a chronic sense of not being important. In more serious forms, it feels like a threat to existence itself: If I do not register anywhere, if nobody notices me, do I even exist?

To put it simply, the fear of not mattering can devolve into something primal: the fear of not being, of becoming nothing in the eyes of others and, finally, in one’s own.

How can therapy help?

In a therapeutic relationship, a good-enough therapist offers a new kind of experience: one of being truly seen, perhaps for the first time. Over time, as the client is met by someone who notices them, takes them seriously, and does not reduce them to performance, usefulness, or image, they begin to internalize a steadier sense of being real.

They no longer need quite so much external proof to feel that they exist, count, and have weight. The therapist may also help them develop ways to self-validate, with affirmations such as: “I matter,” “Even when nobody is there, my existence matters,” or, if they are spiritually oriented, “I matter because God sees me, loves me, and cares about me.” 1

It is interesting that, in psychedelic sessions, a recurrent insight is precisely how significant we are, how much we are loved, and how trivial our daily struggles can be. We learn that we are bigger, brighter, and more amazing than we can ever conceive.

Back to the Buddha.

So, should we build the self or see through its illusory nature? Do we matter, or are we empty? As often happens in therapy, the answer is both/and. Jack Engler famously said, “You have to become somebody before you can become nobody.”

Most Western psychotherapy focuses on helping people function in this material world. A healthy ego helps us remember where we parked the car, our Social Security number, and to pay our taxes. Eastern traditions aim toward liberation, toward becoming free from the limitations and illusions of this same world. Their goal is to go beyond the ego. But that’s a topic for a future article.

If you often feel like you need people’s acknowledgment, or if you have been accused of being too needy, insecure, or self-centered, you may have lacked the mirroring every single one of us needs. The good news is that this can be healed.

Remember that you matter and you are loved (and that you should not take yourself too seriously). If you are struggling, therapy can help you heal the fear of being inconsequential and free yourself from the harmful patterns that keep you from seeing who you really are.

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  1. However, it is worth noting that such affirmations alone won’t be enough if the wound from early childhood runs deep, as often happens in these cases. ↩︎

…and when to reach out for human support.

So far, I’ve written warnings about the dangers of replacing humans with artificial relationships. The Center for Humane Technology and the AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition have been warning about “attachment hacking” (more on that in a future article). The American Psychological Association has also published recent health advice on AI chatbots.

Although this is still a new phenomenon, I am beginning to see its negative impact. People seem to be forgetting how to relate, empathize, and navigate disagreement. These are skills that AI cannot teach. We need other humans to relate to and, from time to time, bump heads with.

Just as we were not able to accurately measure the impact of social media and its algorithms on society in real time, right now, it is hard to measure the harms of AI “attachment hacking,” especially for children and adolescents. So let me say it again without ambiguity. AI can support mental health, but it should not replace human connection.

Having made that clear, I also believe that when used judiciously, AI can be a valuable tool. So the question is not “Is AI good or bad?” A better question is: When might AI support psychological growth, and when does it quietly pull people away from the very thing they need?

Where AI can be genuinely helpful

In my experience, AI can help when the task is primarily about information, clarity, language, and structure. Psychoeducation, journaling prompts, basic skills coaching (similar to a self-help book), preparing for therapy, and integration after therapy.

This matters. It can reduce confusion and help people arrive at therapy with more clarity. Sometimes it can even deepen therapy by freeing time for the relational work that cannot be rushed. Quite often, my clients bring to sessions insights gained from using AI. Tangentially, that is precisely why I developed “The Potential Space”.

To put it briefly, AI can support reflection when a deep human connection is not essential.

Where AI becomes risky

AI becomes risky when it is used as a stand-in for relationships and for anything involving relatedness, discussion, opinions, humor, disagreement, care, and ethical and moral guidance. Basically, anywhere human support or interaction is needed.

The human brain is predisposed to attribute intention and agency to non-human entities. That is why we talk to our computer or car even when we know they are machines. With a car, since it does not reply, we do not get pulled in. AI does reply, and it uses first-person language. This is often called computational self-reference or as-if agency.  Of course, this may simply be a syntactic tool to reduce cognitive friction (make communication easier). The problem is that the human brain, evolutionarily designed to predict the mental states and future behaviors of “others,” has a hard time separating the machine from the illusion of consciousness, and ends up relating to it as if it were a someone.

This becomes most dangerous when judgment is impaired due to age or circumstances, such as when someone is in crisis or severely overwhelmed, losing touch with reality, triggered by past trauma, afraid, etc. It also becomes risky when the stakes are high and we do not understand a topic well enough, so we are tempted to outsource decisions to someone (or in this case something) that seems better-informed than we are.

In these cases, the problem is not only that the information may be wrong. It is that AI does not carry responsibility. It does not hold duty of care. It does not know you in a lived, embodied way, and it cannot reliably make sense of what is happening in your nervous system or in the relational field between two human beings. It can be very convincing. That is part of what makes it powerful, and part of what makes it risky.

A simple “traffic light” way to think about it          

To be clear, I am not here to judge your use of AI. It is fascinating, compelling, and even seductive, particularly when someone feels lonely, overwhelmed, or afraid. Still, it carries risks. My goal is not moral judgment. It is practical discernment.

  • Green zone:
    • learning and reflection (psychoeducation, journaling prompts, values clarification, basic skills practice, preparing for therapy).
  • Yellow zone:
    • heavy emotional use late at night, repetitive reassurance-seeking, avoiding difficult conversations, using AI when highly activated, using it as main support for long periods of time.
  • Red zone:
    • crisis states, self-harm urges, severe hopelessness, relapse risk, paranoia, loss of reality-testing, domestic violence contexts, urgent medical decisions, or anything requiring immediate human care.

Likewise, it is not a good idea to use AI to meet social interaction needs, such as love, companionship, validation, care, or humor. This can feel harmless, but chatbots are designed to be agreeable and rarely challenge you. Real relationships do. That friction is part of how we learn and grow.   Relationships include attunement, pacing, co-regulation, rupture and repair, boundaries, and accountability. These are not “taught” in the way information is. They are learned through lived experience in a relationship.

How to create a virtuous cycle with therapy

If you are in therapy, use AI to support preparation, and let the human relationship support transformation. Use it to name what is happening, summarize themes from the week, generate questions to explore, or practice a conversation before having it with a real person. Pay attention if your use of AI is increasing isolation, avoidance, or dependence. Often, what we need is not more information, but contact.  Reach out.

If you have concerns about your own use of AI, or that of someone you know, or if you’d like to explore how AI can be used in helpful rather than harmful ways, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be glad to help.

As I wrote in Should ChatGPT be your therapist? there is hardly a week when a client doesn’t tell me they consulted AI about something therapy-related. I think that’s fantastic. AI can help by providing psychoeducation, which in turn allows us to deepen our healing work.

AI is an excellent information resource, even in the field of therapy, however, I don’t believe artificial relationships should replace human connection. We also need to keep in mind that this technology is so new that it’s still impossible to know what the long-term impact of such a replacement could be.

Every day we hear about the many things AI can do—both the unprecedented promises and the potential perils. As someone who has been studying the evolution of consciousness for decades, I’ve been following both trends with great interest. Below you’ll find a non-exhaustive list of resources (prepared with ChatGPT’s help) that includes some cases where things have gone wrong. It may help keep things in perspective.

I’ve also been working on an AI companion for therapy. I figured that if my clients are going to keep using AI, they might as well have access to one I can trust. More on that soon.

One-stop incident trackers (good “master links”)

Suicide / self-harm–linked interactions

Harmful or unsafe advice

Manipulation / paranoia / “grandiose” dynamics

Youth safety & companion platforms (policy actions)

I’m fascinated by this topic and its evolution. Are we witnessing a new step in the evolution of consciousness, the birth of the transhuman, or, as James Barrat has suggested, are we on the verge of the end of the human era? What do you think?

About fifteen years ago, whenever someone invited me to talk about the healing value of meditation, I would start—somewhat mischievously—by saying, “If you’re still wondering whether meditation is healing, you haven’t been paying attention. Its benefits have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.” Even with today’s ever-growing body of research pointing strongly in that direction, when it comes to psychedelics, we’re not there yet.

Psychedelics are being explored for a wide array of purposes: fibromyalgia, dementia, brain injury, Parkinson’s, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and chronic pain. More specifically in mental health (which will be our focus): anxiety, PTSD, depression, anorexia, alcohol and substance use, eating disorders, OCD, bipolar II, smoking, and existential distress. Researchers clearly suspect that these substances hold significant potential across many conditions1.

Not “what”, But “How”.

Although “What can psychedelics heal?” is an important question, there’s another one that’s not asked as often: How do they heal?

Of course, a neuroscientist could answer that psychedelics temporarily loosen rigid brain networks and boost neural plasticity by binding to serotonin receptors—creating a window to reconfigure entrenched pathways into new, more adaptive patterns.

However, I am not a neuroscientist, and I am not sure how many of my readers are, so let’s take a different route.  If we look beyond the brain into current research and what I’ve observed with clients, growing evidence shows that psychedelics and psychotherapy heal through the same core mechanisms—the difference being intensity, not kind. Integrated wisely, each strengthens and completes the other. Let’s unpack it:

Beyond neuropsychological explanations, there are several theories that try to explain the mechanisms involved in psychedelic healing:

  • Set & setting: Mindset, expectations, the quality of the relationship, and the surrounding environment shape and enhance the healing potential of the experience.
  • Network reset: Psychedelics disrupt entrenched neural patterns—and the fixed beliefs they sustain—promoting neural flexibility and the restructuring of pathways.
  • Receptivity: Heightened openness and reduced defensiveness allow for deep exploration, insight, and the learning and retention of new ways of being.
  • Cognitive updating: By widening perspective, old organizing principles are revised into more adaptive meanings, greater agency, and healthier narratives.
  • Emotional release/catharsis: By relaxing the brain’s control systems within a safe relational container, traumatic memories, repressed emotions, and somatic tension trapped in the body can surface, to be completed or reconfigured in an improved emotional context.
  • Mystical insight and self-transcendence: The sense of self expands beyond the wounded ego, merging or identifying with a larger Self or Cosmos, offering a broader perspective and reducing existential fear.

While painted with broad strokes, these ideas form the backbone of how many researchers now understand psychedelic healing.

So, there you have it. That’s how they heal. Now we know… or do we?

Let’s explore it a bit longer. These theories are elegant and plausible, but much of the research is still young. Serious scientific study has only recently resumed, and since the only way to know what’s happening inside someone’s mind is to ask them, researchers usually rely on questionnaires and interviews to access participants’ inner worlds.

Let’s try another approach. Since we already know that psychotherapy works (trust me on that, okay?2), let’s explore how it brings about change and see if we can find some parallels.

How Therapy Works

Even before Freud, this question has been heatedly debated3.  Although we don’t have a definitive answer, decades of research have produced a set of “common factors” that play a part in healing4:

  • A reasonable expectation that therapy, through specific methods, will actually work.
  • A meaningful, safe relationship where the client feels seen, accepted, and understood.
  • The facing, correction, and integration of painful or unresolved emotional experiences, often—but not necessarily- linked to childhood.
  • Insight, meaning-making, and the creation of new personal narratives.
  • Updating of rigid beliefs and practicing new behaviors and ways of thinking.
  • Development of accountability, agency, and self-efficacy.
  • Desidentification beyond limiting self-stories and an expansion of the sense of self.

Although the language differs, it’s easy to spot the parallels. Both emphasize the importance of the relationship (part of the setting), the value of positive expectations (part of the mindset), and the opportunity to face and correct painful past experiences, often through emotional release. Both emphasize insights, updated beliefs, the chance to create new narratives, try new behaviors, expand perspectives, and reclaim agency.

It seems that what helps people change in therapy may be the very same processes at work in psychedelic healing. This would also explain the popular meme that psychedelics are like three (or five, or even ten) years of therapy in one night. But if that were true, why would anyone choose psychotherapy at all?

Old Habits Die Hard

Good question. First, psychedelics are still illegal in most of the world. But even setting legality aside, this isn’t really about choosing one over the other—it’s about understanding their respective strengths and limitations.

The “three years in one night” meme captures only part of the truth. There’s more to it. Over decades, psychotherapists have learned that change is hard. We cling to old—even painful—ways of being. Old beliefs, like habits, die hard.

Psychedelics are intriguing because they seem to produce immediate results. I often hear a version of the meme. This may stem from heightened receptivity, intense emotional release, and powerful, luminous insights—often mystical in nature—that appear to open a broad window of neural plasticity. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, relies on slow, repeated emotional nudges and controlled exposure to unresolved issues. Growth is painstakingly slow and cannot be rushed. It takes time to develop a strong relationship where a person feels safe enough to challenge old patterns and belief systems. Insights must be practiced repeatedly before they become part of who we are.

Therapy, through weekly sessions and the continual revisiting of core themes, consolidates and deepens this process. This slow phase is often frowned upon in a society where “faster” is assumed to mean “better”.

It is misleading to say that psychedelics work faster than psychotherapy. Yes, the openness, catharsis, and insights feel dramatic when compared with regular therapy, but those transient and extraordinary psychedelic states need to be converted into enduring psychological traits. In other words, experience shows that to ensure the jewels gathered in psychedelic sessions aren’t lost, we must develop the necessary structures to help them take root in our lives. This is why, like other experts in the field, I emphasize the importance of preparation and integration as absolutely essential parts of any healing psychedelic process.

Complementary, Not Better

So, how do psychedelics heal? As I explain to my clients, this is not an either/or dilemma but a both/and integration. The change mechanisms of psychotherapy and psychedelics alike foster openness, enhance plasticity, reduce reactivity, facilitate insight, help complete unfinished emotional business, generate new narratives, strengthen agency and responsibility, and expand—or decenter—the sense of self.

Both rely on the same healing principles: psychedelics amplify; psychotherapy stabilizes. Together, they create a more complete path to transformation.

Beyond Psychology

Before ending, it’s worth remembering that it is in the modern West that psychedelics are seen almost exclusively as therapeutic tools, as “psychedelic-assisted therapy”. In contrast, shamanic traditions, which have worked with sacred plants for millennia, the concept of healing includes and transcends the psychological. There, psychedelics are seen as wise teachers in the broadest sense of the word. In my work, I try to honor both approaches.

The West could learn much from these ancient traditions—if only we approach them with respect and humility, but that is a topic for another article…

  1. You’ve probably guessed from the title that this article is ambitious, thus a bit longer than others. Please note that every claim is backed by scientific research, but to avoid making it even longer, I’ve left out the references. If you’re curious, just reach out — I’ll be glad to oblige. ↩︎
  2. Many may question this assertion; however, there is solid evidence that the average therapy client ends up doing better than about 75% of comparable people who receive no treatment. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/921048/ ↩︎
  3. Making the unconscious conscious, reworking old relationship patterns, strengthening the ego, through a corrective emotional experience, catharsis, replacing unhealthy beliefs, taking responsibility, bringing closure to unfinished emotional business, self-transcending egoic patterns, etc. All of these have been advanced as reasons why therapy heals. ↩︎
  4. Of course, beyond these, there are many other alleged factors, but these are generally agreed upon. ↩︎

Why Artificial Empathy Should Not Replace Relationships

We often hear that things are moving faster than ever. The late Joanna Macy used to say that it took us a thousand years to move from hunter-gatherers to agriculture, a hundred to move from there to industrial society, and only ten to reach the information age. It took about ten years for the personal computer and the Internet to reach mainstream use, about eight for the smartphone, and only two for AI 1.

Just 24 months ago, very few people were even aware of AI. Now, almost every week, one of my clients tells me they’ve asked ChatGPT something they might have once asked me. In fact, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, the most common use of ChatGPT today is for therapy and emotional support 2. Should I be worried? Will AI steal therapy jobs?

Some would say yes. Anthropic’s CEO recently predicted that up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs could be automated within five years 3. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, AI could displace up to 800 million jobs 4.  Are psychotherapists, psychologists, and social workers among them?   Optimists argue that since AI lacks emotions, intuition, and empathy, professions that rely on these are less likely to be replaced.

“Did you just say AI doesn’t have emotions, intuition, or empathy? Have you ever asked ChatGPT or Gemini for help? If they don’t have empathy, they sure fake it well.”

Agree. But let’s recall how AI works. 

Believe it or not, AI doesn’t think. It’s more like advanced autocomplete. It was trained on mountains of information and, when prompted, predicts word by word what’s most likely to come next. Its answers are patterns of probability, not insights.  However convincing it may sound, it doesn’t even understand the words it produces. When certain words tend to appear together, they are stitched together, sounding fluent and confident—even when it’s wrong.

I often remind clients that while ChatGPT is a fantastic information resource (though it’s wise to double-check—since it has no problem “hallucinating”), it has never had its heart broken or gone out on a date. Nor does it care for your feelings (since it doesn’t understand them). Its soundest “advice” is just a rehash of what’s already been said. Great for data gathering or quick answers, but not for personal decisions. Regardless of how much we wish for HAL 9000, Samantha, R2-D2, or TARS 5 to give us clarity, the truth is that each of us still has to make our own decisions.

While ChatGPT might be preferable to a bad therapist (hence the importance of finding a good one!), the relationship between client and therapist goes far beyond information. Something subtle and elusive happens in every genuine encounter. And therein lies the real blind spot—or danger—of replacing a competent human therapist with AI.

The importance of a real relationship:

Although efforts are being made to reduce it, most AI interfaces are designed to retain user attention. One way they do this is by being uncritically agreeable—basically sycophancy (who doesn’t like reassurance?), but this creates never-challenging echo chambers, and even delusional spirals—unlike real human relationships. What feels like empathy is just AI mirroring back language patterns to make us feel understood and keep us engaged.

Remember: AI doesn’t understand depression, existential angst, or loneliness. It doesn’t even understand the words you write (it turns them into numbers). This is the biggest risk of AI therapy—artificial relationships replacing real ones.

Psychological pain comes from isolation and disconnection. Attachment injuries happen between people, and trauma is relational rupture. As such, healing can only take place in the context of an authentic, reparative relationship.  Since wounding happens in relationship, healing must also occur in relationship.  

Most clients are unaware of how crucial the relationship itself is. Good therapy goes beyond giving advice or providing “tools.” Our brains are wired for connection. When we’re in contact with someone attuned to our emotional needs—through empathic resonance—our limbic system literally heals and rewires. AI can mimic that pattern but cannot truly reproduce it.

AI “therapy” is like replacing healthy food with junk food; it creates the illusion of nourishment, but it does not do the job. As the “A” in AI indicates, AI empathy is artificial.

“Of course you’d say that, you are a therapist and therefore biased.”

Probably true.  But even someone working at McDonald’s can tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy food.  

Every day I meet clients who are thoroughly “connected” yet lonely.  Among the many crises we face, loneliness ranks high, and social media and AI may be amplifying it. I am not against AI; I think it is fantastic. What concerns me is that the newer generations, surrounded by screens, may have a hard time telling the difference between genuine human relationships and artificial interactions with machines.  They may not know what they’re missing!

It may take generations to fully grasp the potential damage that human relational deprivation can cause.  Plastic empathy may not offer the same neuronal benefits.  Hopefully, we’ll be wise enough to use AI as the powerful tool it is—without letting it replace our shared humanity.  Let us not forget what Martin Buber suggested: when two people genuinely meet, God is the space between them.

But maybe it is just a matter of time… Let’s talk about it.

  1. https://ourworldindata.org/ ↩︎
  2. https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025 ↩︎
  3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kolawolesamueladebayo/2025/06/04/will-ai-really-take-your-job-experts-reveal-the-true-outlook-today/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.iotforall.com/impact-of-artificial-intelligence-job-losses ↩︎
  5. Some of Hollywood’s almost omniscient and relatable computers. ↩︎

Honoring indigenous wisdom and ethics in psychedelic therapy

This conversation explores how modern psychedelic practice risks losing its heart as it becomes mainstream. It reflects on how true healing lies in balancing Western psychotherapy with ancestral and spiritual wisdom. The discussion highlights the importance of ethical and well-trained guides, deep personal work, and honoring traditional relationships with plant medicine—emphasizing that integration, humility, and love are central to authentic psychedelic practice.

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