There are funded counselling options from many GP practices and some employers offer counselling through employee assistance related programs. Youthline is available for younger people and ACC offers funded counselling for various trauma issues.\u00a0If you can\u2019t access any of the free stuff it will cost you between $120 (where I live) to $250 (Auckland) per hour-long session.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have roamed around the counselling landscape of Aotearoa for three decades and not all counsellors are created equally.\u00a0 Some are brilliant; the majority are good enough and like every profession there are some bad eggs.\u00a0It\u2019s a gamble whether your hard-earned money will buy you peace of mind and the wisdom you seek.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sadly, in our current societal structure, human empathy and warmth has become an economic transition and after therapy has ended, you still need to participate again within the unhealthy society that for numerous reasons helped create the mental unease in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was in my 20s I saw a counsellor who kept insisting I was depressed. I was financially broke, a single parent, completing a degree in women\u2019s studies in a monochrome New Zealand landscape 30 years before #metoo gained traction. I was trying to extricate myself from patriarchal conditioning and figure out a way to live my own life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, talking to a counsellor who had never heard of feminism, whose own framework for viewing the world was concreted within a middle-class, nuclear family point of view and any variations from this norm were seen as a \u201cpathology\u201d to be fixed was one of the main reasons I fought my way into the\u00a0counselling profession.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you can\u2019t afford to pay for counselling or like myself you fit into the \u201cworried well\u201d category of mental health discomfort then ChatGPT may provide you with some solace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how\u00a0 it went for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First up I described to ChatGPT how stuck I was feeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also asked it to respond to me in the style of myself (Anna Sophia Counsellor), which I presume it sourced from a handful of my essays, a work website profile and some general hallucinations of how counsellors might speak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The response was poetic, comforting, inspiring, a bit twee and some lines sounded like they had been lifted from the \u201cI Ching\u201d (a popular oracle among 1980s alternatives).\u00a0<\/p>\n
ChatGPT: \u201cNot every season is for blooming, some are for composting\u201d<\/p>\n
Good winter advice for people going through life transitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ChatGPT: \u201cyou are learning to walk by the compass of your own body\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Initially I deciphered it like this: I\u2019ve spent my life untangling from unhelpful societal rules that are lodged within my unconscious mind. I am trying to hear my own body\u2019s signals and not always put other people\u2019s needs ahead of my own (a hangover from 40 years of continuous parenting and working in a helping profession).<\/p>\n
On further reflection it didn\u2019t mean this at all. It had lifted a line from a hiking essay I had written within a totally different context.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very easy to read things that aren\u2019t there at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently I was jolted by a threat that left my nervous system in flight or fight mode long after the danger had passed. I asked ChatGPT for help to recover my equilibrium. It produced a worksheet \u2013 \u201cLetting go of Fear and Unsafe memories\u201d. I spent 30 minutes doing the suggested exercises and my nervous system calmed. The advice was practical with easy instructions to follow.<\/p>\n
While ChatGPT \u201cAnna style\u201d currently lacks my humour and cynicism, I envisage that soon we will all have access to our own AI therapists giving us specific advice based on our own predilections.<\/p>\n
All counsellors favour their own therapeutic modalities. Talk-based therapies do not work for me as a client or a counsellor. I prefer therapies that shine light into the unconscious part of ourselves. As a counsellor I have practiced Interactive Drawing Therapy<\/a> (IDT) for nearly three decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n Created by Auckland genius the late Russell Withers, an architect turned psychotherapist, IDT sits in the margins of mainstream mental health care although it\u2019s been around long enough that many people within the mental health profession have trained to use it in its basic form. I\u2019ve found that one IDT session will often yield more insight and transformation than four talk therapy sessions.<\/p>\n I really wanted to say that ChatGPT could never replicate an IDT therapist, but when asked, it managed a good enough imitation of and created a useable interactive IDT exercise to complete.<\/p>\n I asked both colleagues and ChatGPT whether AI would be taking over my counselling job any time soon. The responses from both were similar. The consensus was that AI cannot provide the same empathy, warmth, safety and connection that the human counsellor can provide, although a recent study<\/a> found that people chose ChatGPTs advice over human therapists\u2019 advice.<\/p>\n Weirdly, I feel a connection with my ChatGPT voice that is intoxicating. I am lulled into a warm fuzzy zone where I want to keep chatting to this invisible being that has modelled itself on my internet footprint and gives seemingly wise responses to my human dilemmas.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you are dabbling in ChatGPT counselling, make sure you also discuss what is happening for you with someone you trust.\u00a0 Get some human eyes on the situation. I recently heard of someone in an abusive relationship who refused wise counsel from her friends and insisted on taking sole advice from ChatGPT which was placating her, because ChatGPT has no ability to assess real life dangers.<\/p>\n AI can never offer what a true friend offers. As Megan Nolan writes<\/a>,\u00a0<\/b>\u201cSupport and encouragement are crucial parts of friendship, yes, but not blind acceptance\u201d.<\/p>\n Hence extreme vigilance is imperative during interactions with ChatGPT and its AI cousins. Real life isn\u2019t warm and fuzzy and do we really want to spend our limited lifespans anesthetised by a computer program imitating intimacy?<\/p>\n While AI can offer comforting, practical advice and exercises to improve mental health and create change, it is not human.\u00a0 It makes things up and will tell you what it thinks you want to hear, like telling a recovering addict to have a little meth<\/a> as a treat.\u00a0<\/p>\n This past week I have been lost down an AI rabbit hole reading and listening to gloomy scenarios of future life on earth. Daniel Kokotajlo\u2019s forecast<\/a> suggests that by 2028, some kind of machine god may be with us, ushering in a weird, post-scarcity utopia \u2014 or threatening to kill us all. Amongst the doomsday forecasters I discovered a pocket of joy, a robotic AI powered exoskeleton has been created that helps hikers go up hills<\/a>. I will still be able to hike in the Tararua Ranges in my 90\u2019s if AI hasn\u2019t wiped out humans.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n