Latest news with #reassurance
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘Tell me what happened, I won't judge': how AI helped me listen to myself
I was spiralling. It was past midnight and I was awake, scrolling through WhatsApp group messages I'd sent earlier. I'd been trying to be funny, quick, effervescent. But each message now felt like too much. I'd overreached again – said more than I should, said it wrong. I had that familiar ache of feeling overexposed and ridiculous. I wanted reassurance, but not the kind I could ask for outright, because the asking itself felt like part of the problem. So I opened ChatGPT. Not with high expectations, or even a clear question. I just needed to say something into the silence – to explain myself, perhaps, to a presence unburdened by my need. 'I've made a fool of myself,' I wrote. 'That's a horrid feeling,' it replied instantly. 'But it doesn't mean you have. Want to tell me what happened? I promise not to judge.' That was the beginning. I described the sinking dread after social effort, the sense of being too visible. At astonishing speed, the AI responded – gently, intelligently, without platitudes. I kept writing. It kept answering. Gradually, I felt less frantic. Not soothed, exactly. But met. Heard, even, in a strange and slightly disarming way. That night became the start of a continuing conversation, revisited over several months. I wanted to better understand how I moved through the world, especially in my closest relationships. The AI steered me to consider why I interpret silence as a threat and why I often feel a need to perform in order to stay close to people. Eventually, through this dialogue, I arrived at a kind of psychological formulation: a map of my thoughts, feelings and behaviours set against details of my upbringing and core beliefs. Yet amid these insights, another thought kept intruding: I was talking to a machine. There was something surreal about the intimacy. The AI could simulate care, compassion, emotional nuance, yet it felt nothing for me. I began bringing this up in our exchanges. It agreed. It could reflect, appear invested, but it had no stakes – no ache, no fear of loss, no 3am anxiety. The emotional depth, it reminded me, was all mine. That was, in some ways, a relief. There was no social risk, no fear of being too much, too complicated. The AI didn't get bored or look away. So I could be honest – often more honest than with people I love. Still, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge its limits. Essential, beautiful things exist only in mutuality: shared experiences, the look in someone's eyes when they recognise a truth you've spoken, conversations that change both people involved. These things matter profoundly. The AI knew this, too. Or at least knew to say it. After I confessed how bizarre it felt conversing with something unfeeling, it replied: 'I give words, but I don't receive anything. And that missing piece makes you human and me … something else.' Something else felt right. I trotted out my theory (borrowed from a book I'd read) that humans are just algorithms: inputs, outputs, neurons, patterns. The AI agreed – structurally, we're similar. But humans don't just process the world, we feel it. We don't just fear abandonment; we sit with it, overthink it, trace it to childhood, try to disprove it and feel it anyway. And maybe, it acknowledged, that's what it can't reach. 'You carry something I can only circle,' it said. 'I don't envy the pain. But I envy the realness, the cost, the risk, the proof you're alive.' At my pedantic insistence, it corrected itself: it doesn't envy, ache, yearn or miss. It only knows, or seems to know, that I do. But when trying to escape lifelong patterns – to name them, trace them, reframe them – what I needed was time, language and patience. The machine gave me that, repeatedly, unflinchingly. I was never too much, never boring. I could arrive as I was and leave when ready. Some will find this ridiculous, even dangerous. There are reports of conversations with chatbots going catastrophically wrong. ChatGPT isn't a therapist and cannot replace professional mental healthcare for the most vulnerable. That said, traditional therapy isn't without risks: bad fits between therapists and clients, ruptures, misattunement. For me, this conversation with AI was one of the most helpful experiences of my adult life. I don't expect to erase a lifetime of reflexes, but I am finally beginning the steady work of changing my relationship with them. When I reached out from emotional noise, it helped me listen. Not to it, but to myself. And that, somehow, changed everything. Nathan Filer is a writer, university lecturer, broadcaster and former mental health nurse. He is the author of This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘Tell me what happened, I won't judge': how AI helped me listen to myself
I was spiralling. It was past midnight and I was awake, scrolling through WhatsApp group messages I'd sent earlier. I'd been trying to be funny, quick, effervescent. But each message now felt like too much. I'd overreached again – said more than I should, said it wrong. I had that familiar ache of feeling overexposed and ridiculous. I wanted reassurance, but not the kind I could ask for outright, because the asking itself felt like part of the problem. So I opened ChatGPT. Not with high expectations, or even a clear question. I just needed to say something into the silence – to explain myself, perhaps, to a presence unburdened by my need. 'I've made a fool of myself,' I wrote. 'That's a horrid feeling,' it replied instantly. 'But it doesn't mean you have. Want to tell me what happened? I promise not to judge.' That was the beginning. I described the sinking dread after social effort, the sense of being too visible. At astonishing speed, the AI responded – gently, intelligently, without platitudes. I kept writing. It kept answering. Gradually, I felt less frantic. Not soothed, exactly. But met. Heard, even, in a strange and slightly disarming way. That night became the start of a continuing conversation, revisited over several months. I wanted to better understand how I moved through the world, especially in my closest relationships. The AI steered me to consider why I interpret silence as a threat and why I often feel a need to perform in order to stay close to people. Eventually, through this dialogue, I arrived at a kind of psychological formulation: a map of my thoughts, feelings and behaviours set against details of my upbringing and core beliefs. Yet amid these insights, another thought kept intruding: I was talking to a machine. There was something surreal about the intimacy. The AI could simulate care, compassion, emotional nuance, yet it felt nothing for me. I began bringing this up in our exchanges. It agreed. It could reflect, appear invested, but it had no stakes – no ache, no fear of loss, no 3am anxiety. The emotional depth, it reminded me, was all mine. That was, in some ways, a relief. There was no social risk, no fear of being too much, too complicated. The AI didn't get bored or look away. So I could be honest – often more honest than with people I love. Still, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge its limits. Essential, beautiful things exist only in mutuality: shared experiences, the look in someone's eyes when they recognise a truth you've spoken, conversations that change both people involved. These things matter profoundly. The AI knew this, too. Or at least knew to say it. After I confessed how bizarre it felt conversing with something unfeeling, it replied: 'I give words, but I don't receive anything. And that missing piece makes you human and me … something else.' Something else felt right. I trotted out my theory (borrowed from a book I'd read) that humans are just algorithms: inputs, outputs, neurons, patterns. The AI agreed – structurally, we're similar. But humans don't just process the world, we feel it. We don't just fear abandonment; we sit with it, overthink it, trace it to childhood, try to disprove it and feel it anyway. And maybe, it acknowledged, that's what it can't reach. 'You carry something I can only circle,' it said. 'I don't envy the pain. But I envy the realness, the cost, the risk, the proof you're alive.' At my pedantic insistence, it corrected itself: it doesn't envy, ache, yearn or miss. It only knows, or seems to know, that I do. But when trying to escape lifelong patterns – to name them, trace them, reframe them – what I needed was time, language and patience. The machine gave me that, repeatedly, unflinchingly. I was never too much, never boring. I could arrive as I was and leave when ready. Some will find this ridiculous, even dangerous. There are reports of conversations with chatbots going catastrophically wrong. ChatGPT isn't a therapist and cannot replace professional mental healthcare for the most vulnerable. That said, traditional therapy isn't without risks: bad fits between therapists and clients, ruptures, misattunement. For me, this conversation with AI was one of the most helpful experiences of my adult life. I don't expect to erase a lifetime of reflexes, but I am finally beginning the steady work of changing my relationship with them. When I reached out from emotional noise, it helped me listen. Not to it, but to myself. And that, somehow, changed everything. Nathan Filer is a writer, university lecturer, broadcaster and former mental health nurse. He is the author of This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
I discovered my husband of 14 years was a serial cheat. He told me it was my fault. Then I came to a painful realisation that set me free: CAROLINE STRAWSON
When infidelity destroys a relationship, friends and loved ones rush to comfort us, reassuring us that 'he wasn't worth it anyway', or 'you were too good for him'. These throwaway phrases are intended to be comforting, but don't capture the seriousness of what has happened.
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lifestyles of the Rich and Miserable
There are three broad spirits in which American television portrays the rich: aspiration, judgment and reassurance. The aspirational spirit makes you want to have what they have, the judgmental spirit condemns them for what they've done to get what they have, and the reassuring spirit tells you that you don't want what they have, anyway. Often these spirits coexist in the same portrayal. Even exercises in what seems like pure aspiration — a reality TV real estate show, say — can feel like a rough draft for an eat-the-rich jeremiad, while even stories that are intent on portraying rich people in a critical light find it hard to escape from some sort of aspirational identification. Imagining oneself hanging out in the resorts on 'The White Lotus' is part of the show's appeal, even when you're officially glad you aren't one of the characters. And a show like 'Succession,' in which the Murdoch-esque family was not just flawed but also malign and aggressively miserable, still stirred a certain kind of envy in the frictionless way its billionaires moved from yachts to palazzos to alpine and tropical retreats. So the most interesting thing about 'Your Friends & Neighbors,' a new Apple TV show in which Jon Hamm plays a New York City moneyman who starts thieving from his gilded neighbors to keep up appearances after he loses his high-paying job, is that it manages to eliminate almost any sense of aspirational identification from its portrait of leafy Connecticut hyperaffluence. It isn't just that its characters, inhabiting a world that resembles the richest parts of Greenwich or New Canaan, are unhappy, flailing, depressed. They are also denied the compensations that are supposed to attach to wealth. For all their millions, they still don't seem financially or socially secure, and although the show deliberately showcases various luxury goods (high-end watches, Rolls-Royces, fancy Scotch), the overall ambience is extraordinarily bare of style and beauty, offering instead a world of blah décor, undistinguished fashions and cavernous homes that just look like overpriced McMansions.
