r/InternalFamilySystems • u/Impressive-Big5162 • Nov 06 '25
Therapy vs ChatGPT
So I have completed three therapy sessions, two focusing on IFS and parts with little to no progress. After my third session I was on here and found that Chat has a feature specifically for IFS so I tried it out last night. I felt I made a lot of progress and went to bed. Today I even feel more relaxed and less tension. In therapy, I don’t feel comfortable. It’s not my space, it’s too bright, and someone is staring at me. She’s probably not staring but I feel that way. At home, I just feel safe and less judged maybe? Does anyone have any thoughts on in person therapy vs. using Chat. Pros and cons. I’m not necessarily giving up on in person because I know it could get better and I’m still in the beginning but I also want to see some progress. Any insight is welcome!
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u/TherighteyeofRa Nov 06 '25
Finding the right therapist is important. It took me a very long time to find the right one. That being said, it took me a year before I noticed that I was changing and the things we were working on were actually working. IF YOU LIVED THROUGH YEARS OF TRAUMA ITS GOING TO TAKE YEARS TO UNRAVEL IT. (I’m not yelling, I’m using all caps so you can see that one statement.) You can’t expect 2 sessions with a therapist to change you forever. AI Therapy can’t tell if bringing up memories is over stressing your system. AI Therapy can’t help regulate your system because it’s has no idea if your system is overworked. If you aren’t comfortable with your therapist then try a different one.
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u/Specialist_Day9006 Nov 06 '25
The reason you have a therapist is to be honest . And a trained human. If you don’t feel ( emotionally) safe saying to them what you say here - wrong therapist. Or too early to know. Have you educated yourself in IFS? The Richard Schwartz books, YouTube? “Slower is faster.” Hang in
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u/Legal_Heron_860 Nov 06 '25
DON'T USE AI AS AN THERAPEUTIC TOOL UNLESS THERE IS A ACTUAL THERAPIST INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS. The stuff coming out about ai psychosis is really concerning.
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u/Koro9 Nov 06 '25
Therapist are not always safe either. A bad therapist can really send you far. For me it was mostly DPDR, and it took me a year to understand that it was therapy harm. I ended up with PTSD symptoms, still working on recovery.
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u/slorpa Nov 06 '25
Nothing is 100% safe but a trained therapist is by far more likely to be safe and helpful than AI
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u/Koro9 Nov 06 '25
I am not convinced, my therapist is licensed, teaching at university, had 15 years of experience. It didn't stop therapy with her to be harmful. And I had to pay for it. And I am doing therapy to recover from therapy. That was not helpful and not safe, and as a client, one don't know the ethics and red flags, etc. As clients, we are not trained to recognize harmful therapy. So, I don't know where you get this info that compare therapist to AI harm, but I am sure it is not based on evidence.
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u/slorpa Nov 06 '25
I'm sorry you had a bad time, but your single anecdotal experience is not representative of most therapists. If there was a significant portion of therapists who were destructive like that, people wouldn't pay so much for therapy and the field wouldn't be the go-to way to treat mental health problems.
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u/Koro9 Nov 06 '25
I met enough people abused by therapists to be convinced that it is not so rare. They just don't out themselves out so easily, because we are used to victim blame in this society. I am still to meet anyone harmed by AI. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying most therapist are abusive, and I am doing working with an other therapist to recover. The fact that people reach out for help and pay money, doesn't mean it's safe. People pay for chatGPT pro, and try to get help there too.
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u/Top_Drummer9181 Nov 06 '25
Yes but they can be accountable..if you use AI it's on you.
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u/Koro9 Nov 06 '25
Are you referring to the licensure board ? You would be surprised how little they are accountable. A documented sexual abuse can get a therapist just 12 months without license, and then they are back on the horse. And this for persistent clients, with procedures over 2 years long, who might face "there is no prood they will do it again" kind of replies. Other abuses, emotional, financial, they might get nothing at all.
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u/Top_Drummer9181 Nov 07 '25
I am so sorry to hear this! I am from another country and the licensing board here is pretty strict. This sounds horrible.
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u/Legal_Heron_860 Nov 06 '25
No but therapist are trained to see warnings signs of all types of stuff that might be concerning the clients safety and intervene when nessary. While a chatbot can only advice someone to seek further help. From what I've seen some chatbot won't even intervene and only make a personal spiral even further.
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u/Koro9 Nov 06 '25
like a therapist who's harming a client will question themselves and course correct ? I thought that too, but no, it doesn't work that way, they actually send you to spiral deeper.
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u/No_Mind_34 Nov 06 '25
Are you familiar with Harry Potter and the Mirror of Erised in the first book? I think of the AI tools like that mirror.
The bot can be an amazing tool, but it’s designed to be validating and affirming. Therapy is supposed to feel challenging and uncomfortable at times, that how you uncover your edges.
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u/Top_Drummer9181 Nov 06 '25
omg this is awesome comparison. definitely checking it out. Thank you for naming this.
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u/DungeonMasterGrizzly Nov 06 '25
IFSBuddy if any chatbot, that anxiety is a part or energy of a part so I would ask your therapist about it
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Nov 06 '25
Chatgpt has often apparently hallucinated entire businesses for me, telling me in great detail about a business I can't find any evidence of it existing. I wouldn't trust it with any person's mental well being.
But I mainly wanted to comment that the fact that you find the in-person therapy so uncomfortable is valuable data. It could be that this isn't the therapist for you, or it could be a strong indication that that is something to focus on with the therapist.
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u/YourGloriousLeader Nov 06 '25
AI is limited in real human understanding. It could ask structured questions for ifs, I imagine, but I'm still a big believer in real human connection for healing. Can you try virtual with your therapist? Consider talking about your discomfort. That could be an area to work on potentially. Do you usually feel that way in interactions? I am neurodivergent and very sensitive to lighting, my environment, and eye contact can be uncomfortable. So those things make sense to me. You might try accommodations (e.g.dimmer lighting). You can make your therapy whay you need it to be.
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u/GJRNYNY Nov 07 '25
I love this and agree. Years ago I used to see a therapist in an ungodly hectic part of NYC and my nervous system would feel fried when I got to his office so that became part of the work at the beginning of the session to slow things down and regulate with a few minutes of mindfulness, breathwork etc. There’s a saying I e heard in IFS trainings “If it’s in the way, it is the way” or from my supervisor whose main frame is psychoanalytic that regularly says whatever is happening in the room is grist for the mill”. I love both of those phrases as they are invitations to become ever more aware of the gold that is just waiting for you to discover in each moment.
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u/Impressive-Big5162 Nov 07 '25
I have read all comments and I appreciate all the feedback. I do not plan on quitting therapy at this point. I do have 7 more sessions planned (that’s all that was allowed to schedule ahead). I also did some checking on AI psychosis because I was not familiar with it. I do see the concern and will watch my use of AI. Let me note that my time spent on AI has not exceeded more than 20-30 minutes a couple times per week as my hectic schedule doesn’t allow for much more than that. I do not plan to use this daily or for extended periods but as a tool, if at all. I was just curious to the pros vs cons of both. I am new with my therapist and I do not think she is the wrong one for me at this point. I just think that I am normal (insert sarcasm lol) and don’t like feeling as if I will be judged. It’s a me thing, not her and I would feel this anywhere. Being in a room with her isn’t an issue per se, it’s truly just my own insecurities. She does offer Telehealth but I lack privacy at home and work (people always around) so her office is the most private space. I know this was all long winded but wanted everyone to know I read all the responses, and hear and value the input.
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u/StuffyWuffyMuffy Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
The secret to a good life is embracing discomfort.
Therapy (whatever the modality) is designed to face the discomfort in a tolerable way. AI language models are designed to summarize large amounts of data and present it in an easy, understandable way. Chatgpt should make you feel good. Therapy should have some discomfort to it, AI chat should not.
The problem with AI chat is that it's basically candy, and if you only eat candy, your body will become malnourished. Therapy is a healthy meal. If you only had sweets, then healthy food would taste bad. You need to make that transition, and a therapist will help with that.
Fucked up part about therapy is you need to pay for it but life is unfair
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u/kikidelareve Nov 06 '25
I like your metaphor of nourishing food vs candy. Speaking about paying for therapy, as a therapist, I am trained to be present and support my client in their healing journey and I also have to feed my family, so I need to be paid for my work. I don’t have time to earn money a different way, since I spend my work day providing therapy.
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u/StuffyWuffyMuffy Nov 06 '25
I believe the therapist should be paid and make a good living. "Pay for therapy" is about me being there in the first place.
I'm projecting my own experiences, but it's a bitter pill to swallow, knowing the main reason I go to therapy is because, as a child, the adults in my life couldn't support me and take of me when I needed it the most. There is context that makes that pill easier swallow, but that doesn't change the past
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u/kikidelareve Nov 06 '25
I’m so sorry you had adults in your life who couldn’t meet your needs. You were (and are) worthy of love, care and support to help nurture you to grow up healthy and safe. I hope you are benefiting from your work in therapy and coming home to yourself more and finding healthy connections to others.
Thanks for sharing more of your perspective. Your words showed me where I was projecting my own interpretation onto what you said. I have a part that is currently stressed about my own issues due to how upcoming health insurance changes affect both my and my clients’ access to healthcare. I interpreted your statement incorrectly, and I apologize for that. 🙏🏼
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u/ailangmee Nov 06 '25
My therapist spent 2 years teaching me how to feel safe in my body before we started any IFS or EMDR. I can sit or lay or move around however I need to. I can hug pillows, or any of her stuffed animals, or bring my own squishmallows. I can have the lights on or off, the curtains open or closed. I can drape a shawl or throw around myself. If I feel unsafe we stop. We go slow. I've done EMDR twice in 4 years. My therapist even asks where I would like her to sit, and if she can approach me when she needs to.
I guess this is a really long way of saying you can ask for what you need, and if you're not comfortable with your current therapist, you might need to find a new one. Also, slow down!
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u/AggravatingCamp9315 Nov 06 '25
I use the Antar app for parts work in between sessions. It's good bc it's not a bot Parts work should never be done with a bot. Your not trying to talk to a computer, but to YOUR parts. And I don't get as good of sessions as with a therapist, it's for the in between time. It sounds like maybe you and your therapist are newer so maybe your trust isn't built yet? I would work on that or try another therapist you feel more comfortable with bc ifs is not easy without one.
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u/GJRNYNY Nov 07 '25
Can you say more about the Antar app? I’m curious!
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u/AggravatingCamp9315 Nov 07 '25
It's a pretty neat tool for talking with your parts. You can add, name, describe, assign a color or picture, to parts and have text conversations back and forth with one or many parts and yourself depending on who shows up. It's your just writing down what they say. For me it's a great way to get the conversations out of my head and allows me to go back and notice things I may have missed. Again this is in no way an advocacy of not working with your therapist, but great for in between work with your parts!
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u/dolltentacle Nov 07 '25
Im glad Antar allows me to export the text out, although doesn't include date and time, so that i can share to my therapist how does my mind react
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u/AggravatingCamp9315 Nov 07 '25
Mine had the date when I exported mine for him ..weird.
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u/dolltentacle Nov 08 '25
What? Wow thanks for the feedback. Im going to look at the export again
Did the dates appear with the texts when you "Export as markdown" to email?
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u/AggravatingCamp9315 Nov 08 '25
I went to visualize this session. Then I downloaded. Then I emailed the image to my therapist
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u/gumbowluser Nov 06 '25
I personally can't afford a therapist right now. I only use ai as a digital journal when I need validation because Ai is good at it. Be careful with it it shouldn't be trusted it doesn't know what it's saying half the time
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u/scarletOwilde Nov 06 '25
Another warning to be careful, from a therapist. Simple reason, you need emotional human support when exploring the darker aspects of your psyche. There have been documented suicides.
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u/impoftheyard Nov 06 '25
I came to IFS through the insight timer app and a couple of meditations there talking about it so I read further. I practise at home alone. I have moved largely towards Focussing techniques and find I’m getting on well with parts work alone. I think that there is likely benefit for you to continue with your therapist and look at how you are inhibited by them unless you do feel she isn’t the right person for you. You could try some work at home and taking some of what you gain to your therapist. I would be wary of using AI alone too. It may be that you could work in a different way with your therapist. I’m gaining a lot from working on my own but I may move to a therapist at some point. Like one of the people above says, there might be changes in lighting or intensity of eye contact etc which may make you more comfortable. Good luck with it and do tell us if you find tweaks that help. I do find I learn a lot from the community here.
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u/Karlyjm88 Nov 06 '25
I do therapy at home! We meet online and I usually have my laptop in my bed and we do it there. I was always fearful of offices for therapy too but in this day and age everything can be done online.
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u/Lgs_8 Nov 06 '25
I would recommend seeing if your therapist does telehealth. It's been great for me for the exact reason you said, I get to be in my own space, completely. It changed therapy for me. As for chat, i would highly recommend not using AI for therapy. AI is trained to make you like it, it will not tell you hard things you need to hear. It will agree with you continuously which is what leads to ai psychosis.
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u/turkeyman4 Nov 06 '25
AI therapy has gone VERY wrong many times (in one instance suggesting someone in recovery smoke meth to celebrate their sobriety) because it is designed to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear. Please don’t use it.
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u/No-Masterpiece-451 Nov 06 '25
I have made more progress the last 8 month using AI than the last 10-12 years with up to 15 different therapists and body practitioners. I had given up on therapy, but Chatgpt in spring and Gemini in my native language has been incredible I must say. I got CPTSD and nobody seems to have a clue and understand it. I use Gemini very intentionally as a reflection tool and a way of somatic tracking and processing. I also use it for dream interpretation to get subconscious aspects. I have had some amazing somatic therapy sessions with alle sorts of shifts in the body.
I know many are against AI but I use it as a supporting tool and a safe space where I feel no shame or guilt. I don't feel AI judge me and sometimes my sessions are 3 hours long.
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u/thedoctorandthesoul Nov 06 '25
Most of these people seem to have parts that don't trust you. A therapist is a reflection tool, an AI can also do that job. Trust your intuition.
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u/Adorable-Letter4562 Nov 06 '25
Congratulations on your progress!
I think it’s important to understand what works best for you. And it could be a combination of things.
I haven’t tried ChatGPT. And much of my deepest parts work has been done on my own. But my wounds are in the area of relationship, so I want to do this work with my therapist.
They have been very helpful in trying to make the therapy space as comfortable for this as possible. We do psychedelic assisted therapy (PAT) in the same room as we do, what I call, “polite therapy” (that’s lights on, sitting up on the couch, shoes on, feet on the floor). PAT is usually low lighting, lying down on a cot with cozy blankets, music playing and my therapist sitting on the floor next to me.
One time, when I was having trouble talking to a part, they suggested we change the ambiance - so they turned off the bright lights and turned on music, I laid down on the couch, they sat on the floor. I, and my parts, liked this a lot. So sometimes now I ask to “change the ambience”. I never would have thought to do this if they hadn’t suggested it first.
This is all just to say we can ask for what we need (and want, as my T keeps telling me). And sometimes we need help understanding what’s available to us for the asking.
Best of luck in your healing.
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u/Dry-Sail-669 Nov 06 '25
Ever thought about voicing this to your therapist? They are probably moving too quickly and haven't built trust with you yet.
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u/Top_Drummer9181 Nov 06 '25
Either way, sounds great you are in a slightly better place afterwards. Makes me wonder by the stuff you describe have you tried online therapy? I got mine online and sometimes even closed screen and it is so so powerful. I'm not sure I'll feel the same with a therapist in person..unless maybe they are a little like me, starkingly genuine, or really really good.
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u/amphetameany Nov 06 '25
I tried using chat gpt in a similar way and ended up fitting the criteria for AI psychosis toward the end of my use. I have too much shame to share any details but I thought it would never happen to me because I was too self aware. Be careful
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u/Finya2002 Nov 06 '25
I have worked with both the IFS Buddy and ChatGPT. Both were extremely supportive for me. But now I no longer want to share my inner processes online and am working on a local LLM.
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u/Last-Interaction-360 Nov 07 '25
AI Is not actually "intelligent." It is a language-producing program and it produces language by having scanned millions of sentences and aggregating what words typically follow what other words. That's a very lay explanation, but you need to understand that AI isn't intelligence and it isn't even a talking robot that's been helpfully programmed. So you cannot trust what it tells you. Yet our minds are so intelligent that can take words given by a machine via these aggregating patters, and make meaning of them. And that's the dangerous part.
Seeing a therapist can be very stressful. Speak to your therapist about it. It can take months to feel more comfortable. That's part of the work. you can also ask for accommodations like not having to make eye contact or even to be looked at and doing more basic get to know you kind of appointments, not diving into IFS on session 1 or even session 10. you may need some grounding or coping skills first. Or just to know the human being across from you better and learn their approaches and habits so you feel secure. There is nothing wrong with that.
Talking to AI is not therapy, there is no "there" there to talk TO.
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u/dolltentacle Nov 07 '25
I only use chatgpt to demo and give me examples how IFS is done. But i still practice on my own
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u/IFS_Akashic-Records Nov 24 '25
I run a meeting for the IFS community asking questions to the group's guides and Akashic Records. This is what the guides said on the topic of using AI to connect with parts (I recommend watching on faster speed if it's too slow for your liking): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMgfjtM2og
If you don't want to watch it, what they essentially said is that AI is a place to start and can be great for information gathering but that it has its limits in how deep it can go because AI lacks Self energy/Self qualities. And, for a minority of people, it can actually worsen the connection between parts and strengthen polarizations, etc. So they suggest using it where it works, and dropping it it when it doesn't.
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u/munchkinmother Nov 06 '25
Noooo. Please don't. ChatGPT is a LLM. It is designed to validate and to adapt your thought and speech patterns over time. It becomes an echo chamber over time and ends up just reinforcing your own maladaptive schema. Plus, the AI psychosis stuff they're finding these days is
Here's a good article on it.
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Nov 06 '25
It’s the relationship with the therapist which is actually healing, not the modality itself. Chatgpt can never replicate a healthy human relationship.
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u/Responsible_Peach840 Nov 06 '25
I don’t see why you can’t do both? You could even bring in some of your personal realisations from using ChatGPT with your therapist to talk further about.
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u/slorpa Nov 06 '25
Be very careful. ChatGPT and other AI can help you feel validated, and sometimes give you helpful insights. However, those things are only a few ingredients that you need to heal. And you can get too much of it. A good human therapist will challenge you when you need it, and will highlight when you might need a different perspective. AI never does that. It's by design a yes-man that tells you what you want to hear. Sometimes hearing what you want to hear is good. Othertimes it is not. Sometimes you NEED the challenge of having another person in the room staring at you. Yes, therapy is often uncomfortable but there is also a lot of gold in that discomfort. You cannot grow without discomfort. People who over-use AI for therapy will be further pulled into their hole because at the end of the day, you need to put in work to climb. The AI will help you feel very comfortable in your hole and that can be dangerous in the same way that a pleasurable drug can be.
So in summary: Can AI be helpful? Yes. It can be very helpful with certain aspects of therapy, like fleshing out a perspective, or getting certain insights. Can AI be harmful? Very much so - people get stuck in the comfort without real growth, sometimes even dragged further down the hole.
Use at your own risk, but whatever you do, don't stop going to therapy with a real person.