Why Your Therapist Shouldn't Be An Algorithm

We live in an age where AI can write your emails, plan your holidays, and even chat with you about your day. It's tempting to wonder: could it replace your therapist too?

The short answer is no. And here's why that matters.

The Allure of AI Support

I get it. AI chatbots are available 24/7. They don't have waiting lists. They won't judge you for reaching out at 3am when anxiety strikes. They're often free or cheap. For someone struggling and unable to access traditional therapy, that can feel like a lifeline.

And yes, some AI tools can offer psychoeducation, suggest coping strategies, or provide a space to organise your thoughts. In limited ways, they might help.

But therapy isn't just information delivery. It's something far more profound.

What Makes Therapy Actually Therapeutic

Real therapy happens in relationship. It's in the moment when your therapist notices the slight change in your voice. When they sit with you in uncomfortable silence. When they hold space for your anger, your grief, your shame - not with programmed responses, but with genuine human presence.

At Sea Change Therapies, we practice pluralistic, trauma-informed, relational therapy. That last word - relational - is crucial. The therapeutic relationship itself is often what heals. It's where you might experience, perhaps for the first time, being truly seen, accepted, and valued exactly as you are.

An algorithm can't offer you that. It can't attune to your nervous system, track the subtle shifts in your emotional state, or adjust its approach based on what you need in this moment, not what its training data suggests people generally need.

The Risks We Can't Ignore

Beyond what AI can't offer, there's what it might actively get wrong:

Safety concerns: AI can't assess suicide risk properly. It can't intervene in a crisis. It doesn't know when you need more support than words on a screen.

Ethical boundaries: Therapy requires confidentiality, professional accountability, and ethical oversight. Who's responsible when an AI gives harmful advice?

One-size-fits-all responses: Your story is unique. Your cultural context, your neurodivergence, your lived experience - these all matter profoundly in therapy. AI works from patterns, not from genuine understanding of you.

The illusion of connection: Perhaps most insidiously, AI can create a sense of being understood when you're actually quite alone. That false connection might delay you seeking the real human support you need.

When Barriers Are Real

None of this dismisses the very real barriers people face accessing therapy - cost, waiting lists, stigma, geography. These are serious problems that need addressing.

That's precisely why we created Sea Change Therapies with a sliding-scale model. Professional therapy shouldn't be a luxury good. But the solution to access problems isn't replacing therapists with algorithms. It's making human connection more accessible.

The Irreplaceable Human Element

I became a therapist because I believe in the transformative power of being truly met by another person. Every client I work with brings their whole, complex, contradictory, beautiful self into the room. My job isn't to fix them or optimize them. It's to walk alongside them, to help them navigate their own depths, to believe in their capacity for growth even when they can't.

No AI can do that. I hope none ever will.

If you're struggling and considering AI as a therapy substitute, I'd say this: you deserve more. You deserve the real thing - messy, unpredictable, profoundly human connection.

And it's worth waiting for.