Hi everyone,
Many of you are aware of ChatGPT and its usability. I’d like to introduce it as a therapeutic tool for personal work. Please finish reading until the end to consider comments on safety.
ChatGPT can be extremely helpful for exploring new directions in personal work, discovering new depths, and approaching your work from different angles. Its usefulness depends on your awareness of artificial intelligence prompts, self and environmental awareness, understanding risk, knowledge of beneficial questions, as well as awareness of safety concerns (discussed later). It’s also extremely useful for carers and parents looking for new or structured support ideas.
Example question 1
“You are a therapist using Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Ask me about my social anxiety. I’d like some strategies to help keep me grounded.”
Example question 2
“Tell me about different types of therapeutic approaches for depression. What is good self-help and self-care for depression”.
Example question 3
“You are a therapist experienced in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Ask me questions that will help me manage an urge to drink alcohol”.
Example question 4
“You are an internal family systems therapist. Ask me some questions to help me assess the fears of [protector part]”.
Example question 5
“You are a family therapist providing education to a parent. Help me come up with some ideas for a morning routine for my 15-year-old son who gets stuck using his PlayStation.”
As you can see, there’s all sorts of different ideas for using ChatGPT as a therapeutic tool. However, there are significant safety concerns that we need to be mindful of and navigate.
ChatGPT is not a replacement for a therapist. One of a therapist’s main jobs is using the therapist-client connection to create a space that supports you to feel safe, supported, dignified, inspired, and empowered. This is foundational to all good therapy. Research also suggests that up to 80% of positive outcomes in therapy are based on the relationship with the therapist.
ChatGPT is also not able to take your history, understand your triggers, assess risk, use pacing, consider family dynamics, pick up on nuance, and navigate the plethora of complexities that therapists are trained for. Even if you have some experience in personal work, there’s also a risk of activating a previously unconscious part of yourself. You could re/experience trauma, grief, and attachment injuries without the support of a qualified therapist to support you and help get you unstuck.
Asking ChatGPT questions could also provide responses that reinforce harmful ideas. For example, asking ChatGPT how to manage your anxiety might reinforce the idea that the anxiety is ‘your problem’, where it’s actually caused by coercive control and invisible entrapments of an abusive partner. Or you may ask questions focusing on managing another person’s behaviours, where it’s actually your own shame, resistance, judgements, expectations, and lack of responsibility that need work. You may also unwittingly reinforce an unconscious unhelpful belief, such looking to ‘fix’ yourself because, deep down, there’s a part of you that feels broken and not good enough.
There are many more issues and caveats not mentioned. It’s a good idea to seek a qualified therapist to discuss how you might use ChatGPT to help prompt your personal and therapeutic work.
Other recommendations:
- Begin using ChatGPT with something you are familiar with about yourself that doesn’t pose a risk of triggering you.
- Consider the environment you’re in. Is it an appropriate time and place (eg: domestic violence).
- Asking ChatGPT direct therapeutic questions is better suited to those experienced in personal work.
- People beginning their personal work journey would more safely benefit from asking ChatGPT on new directions and concepts to explore. Aim for questions that are not as direct and are more educational that therapeutic.
- Before using ChatGPT, ask yourself whether you have the willingness, ability, capacity, and supports to enter this question and face the experience that might come from it. If not, first ask questions about the willingness, ability, capacity, and supports.
- Don’t use ChatGPT for anything that carries a strong emotional charge, unless you have a strong support network, an absence of abuse and environmental triggers, and significant experience in grounding yourself and previous personal work.
- Use ChatGPT’s responses as a guide only.
- You may need to ask ChatGPT questions in a different way. Educate yourself on using ChatGPT prompts – you can find useful tutorials on YouTube.
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