Comment by apical_dendrite
8 days ago
What does "better" mean to you though?
Is it - "I was upset about something and I had a conversation with the LLM (or human therapist) and now I feel less distressed." Or is it "I learned some skills so that I don't end up in these situations in the first place, or they don't upset me as much."?
Because if it's the first, then that might be beneficial but it might also be a crutch. You have something that will always help you feel better so you don't actually have to deal with the root issue.
That can certainly happen with human therapists, but I worry that the people-pleasing nature of LLMs, the lack of introspection, and the limited context window make it much more likely that they are giving you what you want in the moment, but not what you actually need.
See this is why I said what I said in my question -- because it sounds to me like a lot of people with strong opinions who haven't talked to many therapists.
I had one who just kinda listened and said next to nothing other than generalizations of what I said, and then suggested I buy a generic CBT workbook off of amazon to track my feelings.
Another one was mid-negotiations/strike with Kaiser and I had to lie and say I hadn't had any weed in the last year(!) to even have Kaiser let me talk to him, and TBH it seemed like he had a lot going on on his own plate.
I think it's super easy to make an argument based off of goodwill hunting or some hypothetical human therapist in your head.
So to answer your question -- none of the three made a lasting difference, but chatGPT at least is able to be a sounding-board/rubber-duck in a way that helped me articulate and discover my own feelings and provide temporary clarity.