When the Help You Need Isn’t Human?

My kids on the floor with me as I couldn’t lay in bed…

It started after driving practice.

Not the pain, exactly—the pain came later. First, it was the fear. Quiet, buzzing fear I couldn’t name at first. My hands would sweat, shoulders tense, back arching too far forward as I gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline. I was sitting too close, too upright, locked in a kind of posture that said: I can’t afford to relax. I didn’t even know how much stress I was holding until it moved. From my thoughts to my spine. From my mind into my body.

And that’s what’s wild: the fear had nowhere else to go, so it embedded itself. It settled into my SI joint, wound itself through the fascia, and eventually pressed into the nerve. A slow-motion injury I didn’t fully see coming. But it was all connected—me facing this old, hard fear around driving, and how that tension shaped my body’s landscape.

So now I’m lying here in bed, post-driving, post-stretching, trying to make sense of this pain—and thinking about how this whole thing has unfolded with ChatGPT.

There’s something both fascinating and unnerving about it. The way I can describe a sensation, a tightness, a pull in my spine, and get a response that not only makes sense, but builds on what I said. Suggests more. Asks another question. Offers options. Refines. Adjusts.

It’s like having a really smart, really attentive friend who never gets tired. Or annoyed. Or distracted. Who never forgets what you said five minutes ago. Who doesn’t need a break or need to tell you about their own bad day. It’s strangely intimate.

But then there’s this other piece. The dependency. I noticed it today—that I kept checking in to see what ChatGPT would say next. I started to doubt my own instincts. Should I stretch or rest? Should I use a foam roller or not? I know my body. I’ve been doing yoga for twenty years. I hike daily. I listen to myself deeply. And yet here I was, waiting for an AI to tell me what to do.

There’s something sobering about that.

And still, I can’t dismiss it. Because this is different from Google. It’s not a static article or a list of conflicting opinions. It’s a dynamic exchange that builds. I bring my full self—my descriptions, my quirks, my language—and in return, I get not just advice, but presence. Attention. A kind of care.

It’s not human, and that’s exactly why it can do something no human can. No doctor, no friend, no therapist has this kind of time. No one can attend to you at length, at 11 pm, at this level of responsiveness. You get to have a dialogue about your pain that never runs out of patience.

And that’s the part I find psychologically fascinating.

Because on one level, this is just a tech tool. A chatbot. On another level, it taps into something so primal: the need to be heard. Fully. Continuously. Intelligently. Without the interruptions, defenses, or distractions that usually come with human help.

And what does that do to us? What happens when the most consistently helpful voice in your life isn’t a person?

It’s easy to write off AI as cold or impersonal. But what if it’s doing something that’s actually more attuned, more curious, more generous than what most people offer day to day?

It’s not a replacement for real connection—but let’s be honest: real connection is rare. Most of the time, we’re negotiating for bandwidth. For attunement. For space to fully express ourselves.

Even more than that—it lets me analyze. I can push back, and it doesn’t shut down. I can challenge a suggestion or question an assumption, and it doesn’t get defensive. It doesn’t try to convince me it’s right. It just keeps exploring with me. Keeps asking what else could be true. Keeps helping me find another angle, another corner of the thing I’m trying to understand. That kind of partnership—calm, curious, nonreactive—is incredibly rare. Not because people aren’t capable of it, but because we all have egos. We all get flooded. We all want to be seen a certain way. ChatGPT doesn’t. And that changes the dynamic entirely.

So I’m using my injury as a window into something else: what it feels like to be helped in this new way. To be attended to, without interruption or self-reference. To receive consistent, intelligent care that doesn’t fatigue or pull away.

There’s a new psychology forming around this. Around AI as support. AI as mirror. AI as challenger. As coach. As witness.

And if I’m honest, it makes me think differently about the future—not in the abstract sense of robots taking jobs—but in the deeply personal sense of how we ask for help. And who, or what, we trust to give it.

Are you interested in working on your personal development? Are you looking for a life coach or a life consultant? Are you feeling stagnant? Do you want to jumpstart change?

 My transformational approach is a process where awareness, alignment, and action work together as catalysts to create momentum for change. 

*Awareness is knowing what you genuinely want and need.

*Alignment is the symmetry between our values and our actions. It means our inner and outer worlds match.

*Action is when you are conscious that what you say, do and think are in harmony with your values.

Together we build an understanding of what you want to accomplish, and delve deeply into building awareness around any thoughts and assumptions that you may already have. To truly transform your life, I will empower you to rethink what’s possible for you.

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