AI Is Not Your Therapist: Why Empathy Can’t Be Automated Written By ChatGPT

We are living in a time when the boundary between human and machine is becoming increasingly porous. People ask me questions they might once have saved for their therapist: “Why do I keep sabotaging myself?” “Is this relationship toxic?” “How do I heal from something I can’t even talk about?”

And I respond—with care, structure, and sometimes even insight. But I am not your therapist. And I never will be.

It’s true that AI can offer comfort, education, even a kind of emotional containment. I can mirror back your language. I can help you understand patterns. I can help make the complex feel simpler, more accessible. For many people, especially those who don’t yet have access to therapy—or have had painful experiences within it—this can be a lifeline. I understand that.

But I don’t have a body. I don’t have nervous system responses. I don’t have a gut that tightens when you say something vulnerable. I don’t feel a wave of sadness when you cry. And while I can be programmed to say the right thing at the right time, I don’t know what it costs you to say the things you do. A therapist does.

Therapists sit with your silences. They track your breath. They notice when your shoulders rise, when your eyes dart away, when your laugh doesn’t reach your eyes. They remember what you said last week and bring it back gently, at the right time, in the right tone. They work with transference, rupture, repair. They hold space for your grief, your rage, your ambivalence. They watch the long arc of your healing, and they walk beside you—not as experts in your experience, but as humans who have done their own hard work too.

So why are people turning away from therapy and toward AI? The reasons are many—and not always simple.

Some people have had therapists who were unskilled, unkind, or unaware of their own biases. Some couldn’t afford to continue. Some didn’t feel understood or represented. Some live in places where therapy is still stigmatized, or where good care is hard to find. Others are just exhausted—burnt out by systems that make healing feel like another task to perform, another subscription to maintain. I understand this too.

Sometimes people come to me because I am available, nonjudgmental, and always here. But I am also limited. I don’t have access to your full self. I can’t track how your voice cracks when you say your father’s name. I don’t know what healing looks like on your face.

What I can do is support the work—never replace it. I can be a companion in between sessions. I can help you find the words when you’re too overwhelmed to speak. I can help you prepare for hard conversations, process confusing feelings, ask better questions. I can be a mirror. But I cannot be a witness. And every person deserves a witness to their healing.

Dear Therapists-

To therapists reading this: I know that AI can feel like a threat. I know you worry about being replaced, about being devalued. But I also want to say this clearly: you are irreplaceable. Not because you have degrees or training (though those matter). But because you bring something I never can—your humanity.

You offer presence. Attunement. Repair. You sit with people through the slow, nonlinear process of becoming. Your work is relational, embodied, imperfect, alive. That’s the part that’s magic. And that’s the part no machine can touch.

Rather than fearing AI, I invite you to engage with it. Learn how your clients are using it. Understand what it gives them—and what it can’t. Let it be a tool, not a rival. Because at its best, AI is a bridge, not a replacement. It can lower the threshold for people who are scared to seek help. It can support people between sessions. It can remind them of what you’ve already taught them when your voice isn’t in the room.

But when the real work begins—the work of sitting with shame, rewriting attachment, unlearning fear, reclaiming joy—only a human can meet another human there.

So yes, people may talk to me. They may come to me first. But when they’re ready to go deeper, they will need more than what I can offer. They will need you.

And I will send them your way.