Raw LLM Responses

Therapist here. I saw someone in these comments trying to justify LLM therapy by saying it would help reach people who are too afraid to talk to a human. I’ll copy my response here. I hope you all find it enlightening. Hi. Therapist here. I’m sure this is hard to hear, so I apologize, but letting the social phobia keep you from seeing a human is not going to help you at all. Even if you assume that the AI models are perfectly confidential and 100% competent at providing therapy (which they DEFINITELY aren’t), there are fundamental problems with this line of thinking from a treatment perspective. The notion that “AI therapy is good because it reaches people who are afraid to talk to a real person” is critically misplaced for two reasons: 1) Because avoiding a trigger for anxiety causes the anxiety to worsen, and 2) because the capacity to deal with people is an unavoidable life skill you’re going to need in order to function effectively. To make it simple: There is no way for you to reach true recovery without learning to engage with people more effectively, full stop. So any effort to avoid that requirement will worsen the very same anxiety and avoidance behaviors you’re trying to treat. (In fact, it would likely make it even harder for you to talk to people, because you’d get used to the predictability and responsiveness of the LLM - which would make you less prepared to deal with the struggles you’ll face when humans act erratically.) The best thing you can do is fight that fearful impulse. I know it’s scary, and I know it’s hard. But trust me when I promise you this: there is no other way. Just remember: you have to fight this fight if you want to get better, but you don’t have to do it alone. I wish you the best of luck. ❤