ChatGPT and eating disorder therapy. Insights from the therapy room
I write about the psychology of eating disorders. I have personally recovered from bulimia and have worked as a therapist for 20 years. I hope to inspire, educate and improve understanding about eating disorders through my writing. Names used are fictional and stories shared are a combined insight of many client experiences. I believe that full recovery is possible for everyone.
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Love or loathe it, Chat GPT has an emerging presence in the therapy room.
Several of my clients have shared openly, about their dabbles with this bot relationship.
In this article, I explore some of the emerging themes from client experiences.
Let’s start with the benefits.
Unlike therapy, where you are confined to the therapeutic hour at a specific day and time, chat GPT is available 24/7 and it’s free.
I have found that clients have often used Chat GPT to expand on their insights made during the therapy hour, delving deep into the rabbit hole of their psyche and exploring psychology and expanding on ideas.
Therapy has provided the direction and focus, but Chat GPT has allowed a developing of understanding.
This information acquired has then been enthusiastically relayed back to me in the next therapy session. The client has felt empowered and illuminated by the opportunity to delve deeper.
The bot has often suggested additional journal prompts, coping tools or mindfulness exercises to add to the client’s toolbox of coping.
All valuable things!
The bot can encourage therapists to up their game. If the bot is ladening your clients with up-to-date research and pertinent information, then as therapists, we need to be staying relevant too.
Chat GPT sometimes offers a practice ground for addressing topics deemed ‘too risky’ for the therapy room.
But once a client has divulged information to the bot, they have clarity in communicating subject matters, having already practiced once already. They can then bring this into the therapy room.
From my viewpoint, it’s not a replacement for therapy but can provide another layered perspective and understanding.
What’s not so helpful?
Clients with eating disorders generally have low levels of self-trust and constantly seek reassurance from others.
The bot becomes a substitute for one’s own inner wisdom and self-reliance. Any uncertainty or fear is outsourced to Chat GPT’s knowledge, as the God of reassurance and knowing.
This increases an individual’s level of doubt and reduces self-efficacy. Every decision must be rubber stamped and queried through the bot’s intelligence.
This can elevate obsession around food and eating, where the calorie content or ‘the right food to eat’ is always decided by the bot’s feedback.
Clients can be asking hundreds of questions a day. It’s a bucket of reassurance seeking, with a very big hole in it.
And advice specified by the bot may be harmful or simply miss the nuance needed. You need to ask the right questions, to get the helpful response.
Answers relayed can also be complicated and lengthy. Often, clients already know what they need to do but a human therapy connection allows integration of knowledge. The bot is not a substitute for this.
The main failing of Chat GPT is that it cannot yet, offer empathy and human connection. Therapy is an art form, where healing mysteriously happens in the relationship.
The ongoing experience of repeated congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard occurring week by week. Trust is built slowly. Insights and awareness follow.
Body language, tone and non-verbal communication cues are all vital nuances in the connection for healing.
A therapist feels their client, through their essence. Their presence. Before they say a word out loud.
A therapist can sense emotion and soften responses with empathy and grace. Whereas the bot can be brisk and factual, lacking warmth.
A therapist has a back-story, a rich and messy, imperfect life lived as a human being.
This understanding bridges the connection between therapist and client. The container of the relationship is a safe and intimate one, where the client feels known and deeply accepted by another flesh and blood human.
Chat GPT is here to stay and has a place in the therapy world. Personally, I don’t believe that it’s a substitute for therapy, yet. Rather an interesting addition to deepen perspectives and understanding for clients.
Do share your own experiences of using Chat GPT for therapy. I’d love to hear them.
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I can see how Chat GPT can be helpful for journal prompts and basic coping strategies. It’s definitely not a place for nutrition advice though. I’ve seen people on social media say they use it for that purpose (with and without EDs) and I think that’s a dangerous road to trek.
It isn’t a dietitian and you can’t trust a computer to tell you how to eat, especially in recovery from an ED. It is getting its information from online sources, which are rife with diet culture, so that alone makes it really dangerous.
Love this! I agree with all of it. I’ve appreciated ChatGPT for certain things, but as you said, it’s important to ask the right questions, and to have a certain amount of self-trust to know what information might be harmful. And knowing is not processing, and can trivialize your experience.