Artificial intelligence has become part of everyday life for many of us.
Perhaps you use it at work. Perhaps you use it to help organise your thoughts, answer questions, or make decisions. Perhaps you’ve even found yourself turning to it when you’re struggling emotionally and want somewhere to put your thoughts.
If so, you’re not alone.
Many of the people I work with tell me they use AI in different ways. Some use it before therapy sessions to help clarify what they want to talk about. Others use it between sessions to reflect on difficult experiences, understand their emotions, or explore patterns in their relationships.
I think it is important to acknowledge this reality rather than pretend it isn’t happening.
There is nothing shameful about using AI. It is increasingly woven into the way we live, learn, work, and communicate. For many people, it can be genuinely helpful.
It is available at any time of day. It can offer information, suggest coping strategies, help people find language for experiences they have struggled to express, and provide a space to think things through. I can understand why people are drawn to it.
At the same time, I often find myself reflecting on the difference between receiving a response and being in relationship.
For me, therapy has never been primarily about advice, information, or even insight. Those things can be valuable, but they are not what makes therapy meaningful.
What matters most is the experience of sitting with another human being.
Whether therapy takes place in person or online, there is something profoundly important about being with someone who is genuinely present with you.
A therapist notices the hesitation before you speak.
They notice when your words say one thing but your face suggests something else.
They hear the change in your tone of voice when a difficult subject arises.
They may gently wonder about the tears that appear unexpectedly, the smile that briefly crosses your face, or the silence that settles when words become difficult to find.
Often the most important moments in therapy are not the ones that were planned.
They emerge in the space between two people.
Therapy is not simply a conversation about your life. It is a relationship in which your experiences, thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and vulnerabilities can be explored with another person who is paying close attention.
It is a place where you do not have to work everything out on your own.
AI can offer reflection, but it cannot share your experience.
It cannot feel the emotional weight of what you are carrying.
It cannot notice the expression on your face when you talk about someone you love.
It cannot sit alongside you in the way another human being can.
For me, that human connection remains at the heart of therapy.
This doesn’t mean AI has no place. I think it can be a useful tool, and many people will continue to find value in using it. It may help you reflect, learn, organise your thoughts, or prepare for difficult conversations.
But I see it as something that can sit alongside therapy rather than replace it.
Perhaps the more interesting question is not whether AI is good or bad, but what we are looking for when we turn towards it.
Sometimes we need information.
Sometimes we need clarity.
And sometimes what we need most is another person.
Someone who can see us, hear us, respond to us, and meet us as we are.
As technology continues to evolve, my belief about therapy remains unchanged.
Human beings heal in relationship.
The opportunity to be genuinely seen, understood, challenged, supported, and accepted by another person is, in my view, one of the most powerful aspects of therapy.
AI may increasingly be part of our lives, but the heart of therapy remains what it has always been:
One human being meeting another.