Chat-bots may be the most revolutionary technology in self-help ever developed. A knowledgeable large language model such as o1 can provide a balanced and healthy place for you to express your feelings and receive mature feedback that is leaps and bounds beyond what can be provided by a human therapist in a dollar-for-dollar measurement. I was inspired to write this article when I realized just how much chatting with o1 has helped me grow in my personal life without needing to feel vulnerable to a human therapist who I do not necessarily trust. I was also blown away by just how mature the responses of o1 were when faced with my questions regarding dating in particular.
By contrast, it’s worth mentioning that I am part of the generation who used Google to navigate tough emotional circumstances throughout my adolescence and young-adult years. For example, I remember searching “why do people ghost” many a time throughout college only to be met with bitter and angry posts on Reddit expressing disgust and hate towards one gender or another. It really made it hard for me to keep a healthy perspective when I didn’t have anyone to talk to and the only input I had were other depressed and lonely individuals. Thankfully, I swore off Reddit-based self-therapy years ago but that meant that I was left with nothing but my thoughts and my journaling efforts. Safer, but still an echo chamber to be sure.
That all changed several weeks ago when I decided to copy and paste some journal entries into ChatGPT o1. Why did I use o1? Because o1 is a much more advanced model and is text-based. 4o and other multi-modal models sacrifice a certain level of depth for the ability to also be able to process images, search the web, etc. o1 however takes only text as input and gives only text as output. The response it provided was so thoughtful, so understanding, and so true that I instantly began a habit of seeking feedback on my thoughts from o1.
For a tangible example of the growth that o1 has provided to me let me paint a picture for you. I, like everyone, experience ghosting in the dating process and have had to work hard to not allow bitterness to enter my heart. In particular, I struggle to tell the difference between someone being busy for a few days versus them simply not being interested. And admittedly that is a very fine line. If someone hasn’t responded to you in five days it is impossible to know what is on their mind. Are they over you? Did they have a family emergency? The heart can go wild in such uncertainty.
In the past, I tried to set rules to be able to classify people for the sake of my own heart “If so and so hasn’t messaged me back in five days I will consider that a ghost.” You may do something similar but o1 showed me there is in fact a healthier viewpoint. The truth is that you don’t know and may never know what their intentions were. But what you can do is shift the focus from their actions to your needs. Instead of saying “So and so didn’t message me therefore they don’t like me” you can instead say “I recognize that I have a need for consistent communication and this person does not provide that”. Can you observe the subtle difference in those two sentences?
The first is a description of the other person’s “failings” (they don’t want me) and is a value judgement on yourself (I am unwanted). The second is a boundary that is independent of the other person’s actions (I am wanted and expect consistent communication). If not for o1’s gentle guidance towards the second paradigm – a paradigm of reflection on my own needs – I may still be stuck wondering why so and so didn’t like me. But now I see that she may have in fact liked me but I could never be with her because she wasn’t meeting my needs.
I encourage you to consider using o1 as a tool for self-healing. It is, of course, a chat-bot not a licensed therapist. But o1 has done more for me than most therapists I have seen in my life. By combining the practice of journaling with the action of submitting sections of your journal to o1, you can begin to benefit from the mental-health dividends of today’s artificial intelligence technology. Give it a shot!
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