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*Editor’s Note: Elephant does not support the use of AI, casually or professionally, without ethical guidelines around it. 100+ AI experts called it a threat to the human species and our planet on the order of nuclear war—an existential threat. Not sure why? Rewatch Terminator 2; or think about drones + weapons + facial recognition + AI; or simply AI + faked news coverage + war or politics or lying about people we know and care about. AI is not a fun simple, innocent, tool. We are the guinea pigs, and short-sighted tech barons are the overlords here. ~ Waylon, founder of Elephant
Why Wisdom Can’t Be Downloaded
We live in a time where speed is praised, clarity is commodified, and AI makes both instantly accessible. You can open a chat, type in your struggle, and get a mindset reframe, a five-step strategy, or a compelling narrative for your inner growth.
It’s impressive. Sometimes it even feels profound.
But healing doesn’t happen at the speed of a prompt.
True healing happens in the space between bodies. It happens in relationship. It happens when someone can feel your breath shift, can sense your hesitation, can hear the way your voice drops when you talk about your father. That kind of awareness can’t be programmed.
I’ve used AI to support my own reflection. I’ve asked it to help organize my thoughts, name my patterns, even offer a different way of looking at a stuck place. The reframes can be sharp. The logic is often sound. It’s helped me move through moments of confusion with a bit more grace.
But insight isn’t the same as integration.
Clarity doesn’t always lead to change. Knowing something in your head doesn’t mean your body is ready to release it. And no matter how efficient or emotionally intelligent the tool, it can’t offer what the nervous system truly needs in order to feel safe, seen, and supported.
The most powerful moments in my work with clients don’t come from perfectly timed advice.
They come from noticing. A subtle flinch. A shift in the breath. A flicker in the eyes. A moment when something goes unsaid but is still heard. And in how I reflect that back in real time to offer a moment of truth with the felt sense of their experience.
Healing happens through attunement. Through presence. Through someone being with you, not performing for you. That can’t be replicated by computer code.
In her article, AI is not your best life coach. Emotional manipulation vs. the power of self-referencing, Danielle LaPorte gives language to something I’ve been feeling for a while. She calls it emotional gaming—the performance of insight.
There’s a certain high that comes from having your inner life mirrored back to you so convincingly. The validation feels good. The reframes feel smart. The speed feels like progress. But it’s a false intimacy. A curated echo chamber. And it risks keeping us at the surface of our own growth.
What feels like support can also be a way to avoid the messier, slower, more human work of being in your actual life with another real person who won’t always tell you what you want to hear.
The kind of transformation I care about in embodied integration coaching doesn’t happen through cognitive analysis alone. It doesn’t happen from hearing just the right sentence or structuring your thoughts into a clearer framework. That might help you get oriented. But it won’t get you free.
Change happens when you’re willing to be in your body, in real time, with someone who knows how to hold space for what comes up.
Someone who can guide you into the places you usually avoid.
Someone who can breathe with you through discomfort, track what’s arising without pulling you away from it, and meet you exactly where you are without performance or pretense.
That’s not something AI can do.
And that’s not a knock against the technology. It’s just the truth of what this work requires.
Self-coaching through AI can be supportive. Sometimes it offers just enough clarity to help you move forward. But the healing I’ve come to trust and facilitate doesn’t come from answers.
It comes from presence.
From being witnessed, not managed.
From being met, not indulged.
From being held by someone whose wisdom comes not just from what they know, but from how deeply they’ve lived.
What scares me most about the trend of turning to ChatGPT for therapy and coaching isn’t the tool itself. It’s how easily it fits into an already disembodied way of living.
Technology has made it entirely possible to go weeks without engaging face-to-face with another human. You can work online, order food and essentials to your door, scroll through social feeds for a sense of connection, and even seek support from a machine that mimics empathy. But we weren’t built for isolation, and we cannot thrive without real-time, sentient relationship.
The deeper concern isn’t just about emotional accuracy. It’s about what we’re normalizing. The more we lean on screens to meet our relational needs, the more we devalue human presence. And that, to me, is a massive red flag.
Because if there’s one thing I believe is essential to our evolution, it’s not more convenience or clever advice. It’s deeper connection with other living beings.
Tools have their place. But healing is human work. And it always will be.
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