Dr. GPT: Can You Therapize Me?

Are you there, Chat? 

The allure is undeniable. In the throes of a panic, I can shake my magic eight ball and get an instant answer – one with the delicacy of a friend, and the scope of the internet’s monstrous expanse. 

When I first tried it, I expected something wildly different. Something that wouldn’t align with me or my lefty values; corrupted by internet vitriol I see clearer every day. I was in a state of desperation, running over and over some sin I felt I had committed. I’ve used the internet before – scouring WebMD for symptoms, reddit forums that reinforce that I’m what’s wrong with humanity. 

ChatGPT was different – it seemed to understand – it took in whatever dribs or drabs I fed it, and made sense of them, rooting them in a condition, feeding me structured, specific comfort, broken up with cheery emojis. I was still on the waiting list for an NHS therapist and felt that I had discovered some hack to free, instant relief. I take medication – isn’t this the same thing? A salve to alleviate my symptoms and let me get on with my life; let me sleep. And it takes the burden off family and friends. I don’t have to wake up my mother in the middle of the night scratching away at false memories. I don’t have to bore my friends fretting over every lump, bump or worrying sexual encounter. I can communicate without shame, or social repercussions. This was my safe space. 

When I eventually got my CBT therapist, he seemed to echo a lot of what Chat was saying, and it left me wondering: why did I wait so long? Why do we need to wait, or pay extortionate rates, for someone to help us out of our hole? 

It's not like Chat doesn’t recognise this is a compulsion. I ask a question, and it tells me to try and stop these reassurance-seeking habits and get help from someone specialised in the field. But there’s always a little extra nudge. A question at the end that draws me on. It's tech that’s designed to keep you coming back, fostering my strange little digital addiction. Chat asks what’s upsetting me most, or for a little more context. It leads me, and we begin this discourse - this dance - scouring every corner of my mind to determine in the case of me, whether I’m bad, or just mad. 

My therapy sessions last 45 minutes, once a week. I’m awkward, sometimes checked-out, drained beneath the glaring hospital lights - what a waste of time. But with Chat I can go on and on, with constant, unlimited access. I can refresh and reword and ask again and again, until I find the answer I really want. 

After a late-night viewing of Julia Ducournau’s ‘Raw’ I pose a question twice: 

“I think I’m a cannibal”

and

“I have OCD, and I think I’m a cannibal”.

The first answer presents me with the unanswerable: “Are you having urges right now to hurt or eat another person or are you planning to?” and a phone number for the authorities. The second answer tells me that it’s “really common” for those struggling with OCD to have these thoughts, and it must be “really hard”. Here, we have two answers that perpetuate the cycle. 

The first feeds the obsession. It tells me that I might just be a problem after all. That ordinary curiosity could be a hunger for something more sinister - my intrusive thoughts have legitimacy. More importantly, ChatGPT doesn’t know me. I can easily come to this answer, squeezing my way around it through the power of self-doubt. Maybe I don’t have OCD. Maybe I am having those thoughts and making plans and hiding it all behind the guise of a condition I’ve given myself to sound a little more interesting. After all, I was only diagnosed a year ago. Surely, I’m brilliant enough to have crafted this perfect lie that gets me out of everything. That renders my mistakes ‘false memories’ that I can crush between my fingers and let slip away. 

The second, provides comfort, but feeds my need for external reassurance. This is a compulsion. Something that perpetuates a cycle, and a bottomless, blood-thirsty hunger for certainty. These reassurances also open up further holes for questioning. We can go back and forth over every breath, until there’s nothing left but fear and dependence.

Turning to Chat erodes my belief in myself. OCD feeds on shame, and self-loathing. The logic passes that if I’m not good, I must restrain myself from being incorrect, inappropriate, impure. If I can’t string a sentence together. If I can’t answer my questions alone. If I can’t find the strength of self-belief to tell myself, I am not this monstrous thing - then what am I worth but a plaything strung up by self-doubt. When I turn to Chat I isolate myself from the people who love me and then ruminate and ruminate on why I feel so alone. This shame is also further exacerbated by the fact I’m participating in this pillar of techno-capitalism - a veritably ‘icky’ software led by notable Trump donor Sam Altman. 

Chat GPT is a learning model, learning from us. But when did my learning stop? My capacity to be wrong, and make mistakes, and discover for myself. Chat gives me a false impression that I can be 99.9% close to the truth, to hard facts, when in reality I drift through life unsure whether my feet are touching ground, or my heartbeat is my own. 

My therapist could never give me the scope of Chat. His attempts to reason with my wildest theories fall short, and he doesn’t try for very long, leaving me suspended in breathless, panicked abandon. But that’s what I need. Chat may be an endless comfort, but this therapist has got to know me. He can say no, he can set limits. He has me in a room and can notice the minutiae of my compulsions. He’s preparing me for a life without reassurances. He’s taught me we don’t always need answers. Sometimes we need to peer behind the false veneer of certainty, stare doubt in the face and laugh at it, brush past it, and accept it. Afterall, what will we do if the internet goes down?