I just came back from the European Conference on Mental Health, which took place in Prague this year. I spoke on addiction as the disease of disconnection and chaired a session on the role of therapists and social workers within the greater infrastructure of our swiftly developing new world. The worry in the air was clear. Even if we, as therapists, don’t always want to admit it openly, the concern was palpable:

Will AI slowly replace therapy?

A client comes in one morning, sharing his conversation with ChatGPT, which had guided him—quite successfully!—through how to navigate a challenging relationship situation. Another client shared that ChatGPT had been very helpful in teaching her coping skills for sleep and anxiety issues. In another session, a client said that ChatGPT had helped her create a new diet and exercise plan, held her accountable, and cheerleaded her daily. It’s almost free. It’s accessible 24/7. It doesn’t judge. It answers your follow-up questions indefinitely and never says, “Okay, we’ll have to pause for today and pick this up next week.” So, what is the role of human therapists in this new age? Are we becoming obsolete? And as AI becomes more advanced and less overtly harmful, will more and more people resort to it for advice, guidance, and support? I think our field has to be ready for this inevitability. No matter how many warnings we hear about someone being dangerously guided by AI, or someone using it to create their own echo chamber, its cost-effectiveness and accessibility cannot be dismissed. And for most people, much of the time, it may be more helpful than harmful. So, what is our role then? What is a therapist to do with this new competition? No amount of training can make us smarter or more knowledgeable than a bot. No amount of reading, listening to podcasts, attending workshops, or going to conferences can compete with the amount of existing knowledge accessible to a computer within seconds. So, what then? What can we offer our clients that ChatGPT or Claude or whatever comes next cannot? If another training isn’t it, then what is? And the answer is overwhelmingly simple and yet incredibly difficult to execute:

Our own humanity.

But what does that mean? Especially in our world—the world of therapists who are supposed to sit behind a glass door: visible, but not palpable. Offering our humanity to our clients does not necessarily mean self-disclosure, and it certainly does not mean validating every behavior or choice. This is the work that cannot be faked. And it cannot simply be taught in a supervision class because, as Carl Jung noted nearly 100 years ago, we can only meet another at the depth at which we have met ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we tend to project, judge, and become defensive around the qualities we ourselves have not yet explored or fully integrated. How can we guide our clients toward a higher consciousness if our own work has become stagnant? How can we guide our clients toward genuine self-love and love for others when we ourselves are stuck at the level of our own traumas and boundaries, when we haven’t fully processed and integrated our own fear, grief, and resentment? So let’s not lament and complain about AI. Let’s realize that the existence of AI should propel us toward deeper work. It should challenge us to meet ourselves more fully. To become more whole. More beautifully human and God-like at the same time. So human that artificial intelligence does not threaten our profession. So that our clients seek us not simply because we know things, but because we can help guide them further. Because there is a genuine human being sitting across from them—one who has witnessed their own depths and therefore has the capacity to witness someone else’s. Because it is in that witnessing, and in genuine connection with another human being, that we can find something no algorithm can replicate: Deep healing. True happiness. And inner peace.