Is My AI Therapist Doing a Good Job?
Ten years ago, we turned to Google whenever we had questions: What should I do when I'm feeling upset? What can I do about my insomnia? What are some strategies for managing work stress? A decade later, not much has changed — if anything, the habit has only intensified. With the rise of AI in recent years, it has become completely normal to pull out your phone, open an AI app, and type in questions like: How should I reply to this text from a friend I'm still holding a grudge against? My ex just texted me — what do I do? How do I deal with my imposter syndrome? — and so much more.
We can now download apps like Wysa, Headspace, or Woebot and carry our "therapist" everywhere we go. If my AI therapist can help me process my feelings, work through problems, and guide me through coping skills — all for free — do I really still need to pay for a real therapist I'm already seeing via telehealth?
And honestly? That's a fair thought to have — why should I trust an article about AI written by a therapist who might lose clients to it? Of course she'd have something to say against it.
But here's what I'll promise you: this isn't that kind of article. I'm not here to scare you away from AI tools or pretend they have nothing to offer. The truth is, AI mental health apps do have real value, and I'd be doing you a disservice to ignore that. What I want to do instead is offer you a more complete picture — the kind that's harder to get from an app, a search engine, or even a well meaning algorithm.
To me, the question is not Can an AI therapist do a great job? The more important question is: Why do I feel the need to turn to an AI therapist in the first place?
The convenience of AI has made it incredibly easy to seek answers from outside sources — sometimes so easy that we skip past a more valuable step entirely. Before reaching for our phones, there is a quieter question worth sitting with: What do I actually want? What am I feeling right now, and what does that tell me about myself? When we bypass that inward turn, we don't just miss an answer — we miss an opportunity to build trust in our own inner voice.
The more we outsource that process, the more unfamiliar and even uncomfortable that inner voice becomes. This is where something deeper starts to show: a gradual loss of trust in ourselves. Imagine a part of us becoming like a timid child, constantly seeking permission from the outside world. Is it okay if I say no? Is it okay to feel upset? Is it normal to feel hurt when someone breaks a promise? These are not bad questions. But when we cannot sit with them long enough to find our own answers, when we immediately hand them off to Google, or a friend, or an AI, it may be a sign that we have lost confidence in our own emotional judgment.
And here is the harder truth: rebuilding that confidence requires risk. The risk of being wrong. The risk of feeling something uncomfortable without immediately soothing it away. The risk of discovering what we actually think and need, and then having to act on it. That kind of risk is not a threat to our wellbeing. More often than not, it is the very thing that makes growth possible.
And this is where it all circles back to one of the most fundamental lessons in therapy — the one you might have rolled your eyes at, the one that made you think please, not this again.
Acceptance.
Not acceptance as resignation, or as giving up, but acceptance as a willingness to sit with what is uncertain and uncomfortable without immediately reaching for a way to make it stop. To accept that we cannot know every outcome in advance. To accept that some feelings will be messy and inconvenient and without a clean resolution. This is something no app, however advanced, can truly do for us. Acceptance is not a piece of information to be looked up or a solution to be generated. It is a practice — something that has to be experienced, sat with, and slowly integrated into how we live.
And from that place of acceptance comes something quietly powerful: agency. The recognition that while we cannot control everything that happens to us, we do get to decide how we respond. We get to ask ourselves, not Google or an AI, what action here feels most true to who I am? That is not a small thing. In a world that constantly offers us faster, easier, and more convenient answers, choosing to come back to yourself — to trust your own judgment, sit with your own discomfort, and act from your own values — might just be the most radical thing you can do.
Yi-Lun Chiu, LICSW
About The Therapist
Yi-Lun (she/her) is an independently licensed social worker at Lost and Found Therapy. She is passionate about working with immigrant populations and those navigating depression, anxiety, and trauma. She has a waitlist for new Telehealth clients (18+).
