The Potential Space Archives

How to create a virtuous cycle instead of replacing human care

In previous articles, I have argued that AI should not replace psychotherapy because the relationship itself is healing. You can find the full series here: AI and Psychotherapy.

However, since people are already using AI around therapy, how should we use it?

AI can support preparation, reflection, psychoeducation, and integration. AI can also help you gather information and organize your thoughts, leaving therapy sessions for exploration, connection, introspection, and growth. It becomes risky when it replaces the human relationship, when we ask for its opinions as if it were human, or when it becomes the main source of emotional support, mirroring, and feedback.

Needs context, but be careful what you share

AI only knows what you give it, what it may remember depending on the platform settings, and what may be publicly available. It knows nothing about your life, your relationships, or your inner world unless you tell it. Remember, it does not have an inner life like yours.

So, if you ask, “What have I been avoiding this week?” AI will not be able to answer meaningfully unless you first give it enough information. And if you choose to give it that information, use discretion. Avoid names, addresses, identifying details, or anything you would not want stored or processed by an external technology system. Instead of writing every detail, keep it general. That is usually enough.

Remember that psychotherapists are bound ethically and legally by confidentiality. AI is not. Before sharing personal information, remember that even when advertised as therapy, AI is not, and cannot be confidential in the way therapy is.

Use AI to prepare, not decide

Often people arrive to therapy with a vague sense that something is wrong, but they are not sure how to say it. AI can help you sort through your thoughts before a session.

The key is to give it context and ask it to stay tentative. This is important because AI can sound absolutely certain about what it is saying, even while hallucinating.

For example: “I’m preparing for therapy. This week I felt angry after a conversation with a family member, then guilty for feeling angry. I don’t need advice. Help me identify possible themes or questions I might bring to my therapist. Please keep it tentative.”

This is very different from asking, “What is wrong with me?” or “What should I do?” Do not give AI authority over your decisions.

Allow me to insist on this obvious but easy-to-forget point: AI is not human and does not “know” you. It remembers what you have told it and is brilliant at autocompleting, but it lacks a human perspective and personal experience to compare against. We may say that it is “book-smart,” but lacks hard-earned life experience.

As tempting as it may be, do not relinquish the responsibility and privilege of choosing your life to any person or machine.

Use AI to reflect

A lot can happen in and between therapy sessions. Sometimes you leave with a phrase, image, or realization that feels important and deserves further investigation. AI can help you remember and organize what is emerging.

You might write: “In my last therapy session, we talked about my tendency to avoid conflict. I noticed it again today when I didn’t speak up. Help me reflect on this pattern without turning it into harsh self-criticism.” Or: “Find me information about setting boundaries and speaking up.”

That kind of use can support the work. It helps you stay connected to the process between sessions and deepen it.

Notice that these reflections lead back to therapy, not away from it. If AI gives you something useful, strange, overly certain, or emotionally intense, bring it to therapy. Even, and perhaps especially, when it says something that feels totally right, remember AI’s tendency to agree and flatter. Bring it back to therapy. Use it to strengthen your sessions and deepen your insights.

Use AI for integration

Integration means taking something meaningful and making it part of your life. It is not uncommon to have an “aha!” moment in therapy, only to forget it a few days later.

After a session, AI can help you turn an insight into a small, realistic next step.

For example: “In therapy I realized I often say yes when I mean no. Help me draft three gentle ways to say no that still sound like me.”

This is where AI can be useful. It can offer language, structure, and rehearsal. It can help you prepare for the real conversation.

But real change happens when you have the real conversation in the real world.

A clear boundary

Do not rely on AI as your main support if you are in crisis, feeling unsafe, losing touch with reality, or becoming increasingly isolated.

Ask yourself: Is using AI helping me become more honest, connected, and alive, or am I using it to avoid or replace people?

We need people. You matter. Let your voice be heard by others.

Takeaways

Use AI to prepare for and deepen therapy, not to replace it.

Use it to organize your thoughts, not to outsource your truth.

Use it to gain clarity, not to avoid a conversation.

AI can help you prepare for the room. But it should not replace what happens in the room.

And if you are not in therapy, or you have been using AI tools to deal with something heavy, painful, old, or difficult to hold alone, consider therapy. Reach out, you don’t have to do this alone.

The Potential Space

This is part of why I developed The Potential Space.

It is not therapy. It is not crisis care. It is not a replacement for human relationships.

The Potential Space is a bounded AI companion designed to support reflection, psychoeducation, preparation, and integration alongside therapy and life. It is not therapy, not crisis care, and not a replacement for human relationships. You can check it out here.

…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.

…or why AI should not replace human connection

In my earlier article Should ChatGPT Be Your Therapist?, I briefly argued against it. This article further explains my answer.

Many people turn to AI because they are lonely, overwhelmed, or afraid. That is understandable. But if AI becomes a substitute for relationships, something important is lost. Our brains are wired for connection.

Before starting, let me insist that I am not anti-AI. Quite the opposite. I am excited about the possibilities of using it as a companion to therapy (more on this below). Used wisely, it can be genuinely helpful.

Although this is not often emphasized, psychotherapy is not only about providing information. It is a relationship. Good psychotherapy may feel like a simple conversation. Still, there is a lot going on under the hood at psychological and biological levels. Our nervous systems are shaped by contact with other human beings. Our attachment style (basically, the way we relate to others) is formed by how we experienced connection in early life. Who we are is, in large part, the result of our relationships. As it is often said, our wounding happens in relationships and can only be healed in relationship. We do not change only through insight. We change through connection.¹

We need to feel safe before we can change

Evolutionarily, our nervous systems are programmed to scan for safety. This is an automatic process that occurs mostly below conscious awareness.² Tone of voice, pacing, the steadiness of a presence, and the sense that someone understands us and will stay with us without collapsing or attacking. These signals shape how we experience the world and live our lives.

When we feel anxious, shut down, ashamed, or guarded, our whole system contracts. Thinking becomes rigid. Options feel limited. Emotions feel overwhelming. Sometimes we cannot even accept help when it is available. On the other hand, when we feel safe, supported, and accepted, something changes. We relax. We open up. Feelings become tolerable. Reflection becomes possible. We see more clearly and are able to choose. The body must feel safe before the mind can be free.

What the relationship does

It offers co-regulation. Meeting a grounded therapist is not just “nice.” Their steadiness helps settle our system. Over time, we become able to reproduce that steadiness, and it becomes available inside. This is one of the quiet phenomena of good therapy. We borrow regulation until we learn to provide it for ourselves.

It offers a different experience, not just advice. Even when people come to therapy for information, they often stay for something else. The client is constantly sensing the relationship. How does the therapist relate? Are they kind, clear, steady, curious? Can they hold boundaries with care? Can they tolerate strong emotion without collapsing or attacking? Over time, this becomes a living template for how to be with oneself and with others.

It creates a space to explore without shame, guilt, or rejection. After a while, as the client continues to feel accepted by the therapist, they may begin to wonder: “If my therapist accepts me as I am, maybe I can accept myself too.” Again, this relaxes the nervous system and makes room for change. In such an environment, you can explore how you protect yourself, how you handle closeness, how shame organizes your attention, and what you believe you are allowed (or not allowed) to feel. These patterns are often automatic and live below awareness. Over time, a stable relationship helps reorganize these implicit layers and experiment with alternative ways of being. Therapy changes people through lived experience, not simply through insight.³ ⁴

It offers rupture and healthy repair. Therapists are not perfect. Sometimes your therapist does not get it. You may feel misunderstood or even rejected. Often this triggers old experiences of not being seen or accepted, and the conclusion that something is wrong with you. What to do next? Shut down? Capitulate? End the relationship? If the therapist is skillful and navigates this with care and accountability, the nervous system learns something powerful. Conflict does not have to mean abandonment. Misunderstanding does not have to mean danger. This repair, while remaining in connection, is part of how trust is built, and it is difficult to replicate without a real person who can make mistakes, take responsibility, and show up again.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the therapeutic relationship is difficult to replace because healing is not purely cognitive. It is an embodied, relational process that unfolds through attunement, emotional resonance, and real-time interaction.

What AI cannot replace (at least yet)

AI can generate language that sounds empathic. It can reflect feelings. It can offer prompts. It can help you map patterns. You may even feel understood.

But AI is not alive. It does not have a body or a brain. It does not co-regulate in the full human sense. It does not track your breathing, posture, tears, long pauses, or the subtle shifts that guide pacing in real time. Even with voice or video, something central is missing. A real nervous system is not on the other side. AI cannot truly see you, even if it sometimes sounds like it does. And your nervous system knows when something is missing.

AI also lacks accountability in the way a human therapist does. Human therapists are trained to listen not only to words, but to context, tone, and what does not fit. A good therapist does not simply agree. Even a very empathetic therapist may challenge you if something does not make sense, needs clarification or if it make it tingle their -very human- spidey sense. As one of my teachers used to say, therapy is not a polite endeavor. A caring therapist will slow down, double-check, explore hunches, and name what is being said and even name what is not being said. AI cannot feel or care in this very human way. Technically, AI does not understand words the way humans do, and it cannot sense what is implied but unspoken. This always matters, but it matters especially at the edges, when someone is destabilized, overwhelmed, in crisis, paranoid, or losing touch with reality.

There is also the problem of overconfidence and hallucinations. AI can sound certain when it is wrong. That can be harmless in low-stakes settings, harmful in emotionally vulnerable moments, and dangerous in crises. Add privacy concerns, cultural mismatch, and the risk of overdependence, and the picture becomes clearer. AI can be a tool, but it is a risky candidate for replacement.

Where AI can genuinely help

None of this means AI is useless. It means we should understand what it is good for.

AI can support reflection when deep human attunement is not essential. It can help with journaling, psychoeducation, basic skills prompts, and preparing for therapy sessions. It can help you find language for what you are experiencing. It can help you organize a question you want to bring to your therapist. It can offer structure between sessions. I will develop this in more detail in future articles.

Used wisely, AI can even deepen therapy. When it helps with basic learning or clarification, more therapy time can be devoted to what requires human presence. That is meaningful synergy.

A gentle rule of thumb

If what you need is information, conceptual clarity, journaling prompts, or help exploring something already discussed in therapy, AI may help.

If what you need involves attachment wounds, trauma healing, deep grief, relational repair, severe anxiety, existential distress, or you are facing a crisis, a human therapist is usually safer and more effective. Certain kinds of healing require contact with a real person, in real time, over time. And again, since our wounding happened in relationships, it can only be healed in a human relationship.

If you are curious, you can try “The Potential Space” an AI companion designed to support users between sessions with preparation, psychoeducation, and integration.

Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. A General Theory of Love. ↩︎
Porges, S. W. The Polyvagal Theory. ↩︎
Schore, A. N. The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. ↩︎
Cozolino, L. The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy. ↩︎