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A patient recently consulted me after an argument with his girlfriend. Before deciding whether to apologize, he had already copied their entire text exchange into ChatGPT. He asked whether she was being manipulative, whether his reaction was justified and what he should say next. By the time he sat down with me, he was no longer wrestling with uncertainty. Instead, he had a carefully organized case explaining why he was right and why she was wrong.
I’m seeing this more often. Patients now bring ChatGPT conversations into therapy much the way people once quoted a trusted friend or family member. They ask it to interpret text messages, explain an awkward exchange with a coworker, tell them whether a spouse is gaslighting them, or help decide whether a friendship has run its course.
The importance of thinking things through ourselves
Many are asking ChatGPT to make sense of life’s conflicts before they’ve taken the time to make sense of them themselves.
As a psychotherapist, I don’t spend my days deciding who’s right. I help people think more clearly.
That represents a quiet but important change. For most of human history, uncertainty forced us to reflect. We replayed conversations in our heads, asked a friend what they thought or simply slept on it. Sometimes we realized we’d been unfair. Sometimes we became more convinced we were right. Either way, judgment developed through the process of thinking things through.
There’s nothing wrong with using ChatGPT. It can be a useful tool. It can explain complicated ideas, organize information and expose us to perspectives we might not have considered. My concern isn’t the technology. It’s the temptation to hand it work that has traditionally helped us develop judgment.
As a psychotherapist, I don’t spend my days deciding who’s right. I help people think more clearly. One patient is convinced his wife no longer respects him. Another believes her boss is trying to undermine her. Someone else is certain a friendship is over because of one painful conversation. Sometimes those conclusions hold up. Often they don’t.
Good therapy slows the conversation down. It encourages people to consider explanations they hadn’t thought about, recognize where emotion may be clouding their judgment and admit they may not yet have the full story. It asks people to tolerate uncertainty a little longer instead of rushing to a conclusion. That process isn’t comfortable, but discomfort is often what separates insight from impulse.
ChatGPT works differently. It takes a confusing situation and quickly turns it into a coherent explanation. That explanation may be sensible. It may even be right. But once an uncertain situation has been packaged into a persuasive narrative, it’s easy to stop asking questions. Instead of wondering whether we’ve overlooked something, we begin looking for reasons our first conclusion was correct.
Most of us know what it’s like to change our minds after a little time has passed. We remember something we’d forgotten. We begin to understand why another person reacted the way they did. We recognize that our own frustration, fear or pride shaped the story we told ourselves. That isn’t a weakness in human thinking. It’s one of its strengths.
Certainty closes the door too quickly
The problem is that we’re becoming less willing to tolerate that period of uncertainty. When every disagreement can be analyzed in seconds, the temptation is to mistake speed for wisdom. We get an answer before we’ve done the harder work of questioning our assumptions.
The questions that shape our relationships often become clearer only after we’ve resisted the urge to settle them too quickly.
The consequences extend beyond our conversations with ChatGPT. Once people become convinced they know another person’s motives, they’re less likely to ask another question or have another conversation.
Certainty has a way of closing doors. We stop wondering what else might explain someone’s behavior. We stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. We stop leaving room for the possibility that we misunderstood what happened. Misunderstandings harden into certainty. Conflicts that might have been resolved become evidence that a relationship is broken. The goal quietly shifts from understanding another person to defending our own version of events.
I think of this as a kind of cognitive atrophy. I don’t mean that as a medical diagnosis. I mean it as a way of describing what happens when we stop exercising the habits that produce good judgment. Like a muscle that weakens when it isn’t used, judgment weakens when we become too dependent on someone else or something else to make sense of life’s ambiguities.
Artificial intelligence will continue to become more capable, and that’s something to welcome. It will help us work faster, learn more and solve problems that once consumed hours. But not every problem should be solved immediately. Some disagreements deserve another conversation. Some decisions deserve another day. The questions that shape our relationships often become clearer only after we’ve resisted the urge to settle them too quickly.
The patient who came to see me that day didn’t need another explanation. He already had one. What he needed was the willingness to question it. Technology can help us gather information, organize ideas and even challenge our assumptions. But it can’t replace the slow, sometimes uncomfortable work of developing judgment. That’s still our job.
