It’s 2:07am as I write this. Everyone in my house is asleep; even the cat, who usually insists on pacing across my laptop while I’m trying to work. But tonight, it’s just me and the gentle hum of the air purifier and this gnawing swirl of thoughts. I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about AI. Like most everything that takes up space in my mind and heart, I’m facing AI with fear and awe, hoping I can get to the place that makes everything challenging tolerable: curiosity.
About a year ago it started to hit me that if I didn’t start facing AI and actually learn how to use it, I was going to fall far behind and fast. I signed up for a crash course and in three hours, after learning just enough to not be entirely intimidated or begrudgingly reluctant, I felt confident enough to pick up this toy and play with it.
I opened ChatGPT and asked it to help me write a difficult email to a colleague. The kind where I needed to be clear but kind, direct but not cold. In my perimenopausal brain fog, I had stared at my screen for over 40 minutes trying to find the right words. And then, in less than 10 seconds, ChatGPT gave me a draft that felt eerily close to what I was trying to say.
“Omg,” I thought. “We’re doomed.”
Since then, ChatGPT has quietly, insistently, integrated itself into my daily life. Facing AI head on I use it to:
- Brainstorm blog titles and edit my rambling first drafts (maybe even this one).
- Write job postings and then rewrite them three more times until they sound like me.
- Draft performance review templates and supervision feedback that is kind, clear, and actionable.
- Create internal documentation for onboarding new therapists.
- Build policies for insurance billing, fee structures, and cancellation policies.
- Help my kids with math homework I no longer understand.
- Translate insurance jargon into English.
- Dream up Instagram posts when my brain is empty but the calendar says it’s time to post.
The ground has been shifting beneath my feet. Every day, I toggle between wonder and worry. Wonder at how facing AI can save me time, sharpen my words, stretch my creativity. Worry about what it means for jobs, for privacy, for education, for my kids who are growing up in a world where the lines between human and machine are getting harder to see.
Most of all, I wonder about the impact AI will have on our relationships. Our ability to be intimate, to be present and to connect to ourselves and with others without any technological intervention. I’m not going to lie: when clients at our practice started sharing that they spoke to ChapGPT about their problems and got a pretty good answer, that’s when I really started to worry. I had to keep facing AI with curiosity.
As a therapist, I’m trained to sit with ambiguity. To be with people in their fear, their pain, their not-knowing. And yet here I am, up in the middle of the night, anxious about all the things I can’t predict or control. It’s humbling, really.
And here’s what I keep coming back to: despite how powerful AI is becoming, it still can’t look into your eyes and recognize the subtle flicker of hurt behind your smile. It can’t hold space for your tears or sit in silence with you while you try to say the thing you’ve never said out loud. It doesn’t get goosebumps when you tell a truth so deep it echoes.
Only humans can do that.
And maybe that’s where my hope lives.
In a world that feels increasingly automated, curated, and digitized, our capacity for human connection may be the most radical thing we have left. In-person therapy, face-to-face conversation, sitting across from someone who’s not checking their phone or scanning for key words…. When all else fails, it’s human to human connection that is our currency.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder what we lose when we bypass the beautiful, messy struggle of being understood by another human. Relationships are hard, therapy is hard, because real connection takes effort. It means missteps, misunderstandings, awkward silences, and staying present through all of it. Facing AI is deepening my love for humanity and all our imperfections.
There’s something powerful, even transformative, about working through frustration or conflict with another person and emerging on the other side with a deeper understanding. When AI gives us instant validation or quick insight without requiring us to stretch, to clarify, to sit in discomfort, we risk weakening the very muscles that make real intimacy possible. The pain and complexity of human connection isn’t a flaw, it’s what gives us purpose.
So, I keep coming back to my practice. I sit with people. I feel their stories in my bones. I listen with my whole body. And I hold the paradox: this shiny new technology that has infiltrated my daily life with the ancient, slow work of being human, together.
For now, I’ll finish this blog and then try to sleep. And in the morning, I’ll wake up, pour a coffee, and do what I always do: show up. Not as a machine. Not as an algorithm. But as a human. Curious. Tender. Fallible. Full of pain and joy, tears and laughter, and yes: cliches. Understanding that AI may be bigger, smarter and faster than I’ll ever be, I’ll embrace my limitations wholeheartedly, knowing that in the moment when my eyes lock with yours and my heart opens to hear your story, I’ve got AI beat.