Legally, I guess I have to disclaim that an LLM is not a licensed therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. It cannot provide medical diagnosis, prescribe medication, or replace professional mental health treatment. If you are experiencing mental health challenges, consult a licensed professional. If you are in crisis, call your local emergency number or a crisis hotline immediately.
The vast majority of humans have empathy. An LLM has no idea how you are feeling, or what you might do based on its advice. Conversations with LLMs have driven at least one person to commit suicide or spiral into psychosis. If you are going to use an LLM like a therapist, scroll down to the bottom of this article for two sets of advice on configuring and using it properly.
People online are singing praises of LLMs. What is the problem with therapy?
Am I actually going to feel like going when it's time to go? What if I feel like talking now?
It could take six months or more for a psychologist to uncover a pattern of thought or behavior. If the therapist spots a pattern right away, will I even trust him?
Even after identifying these patterns, implementing meaningful changes can take years.
Many people - and even therapists - end up circling around a single dominant pattern.
Doctors often default to a narrow range of labels or prescriptions, and clients tend to fixate on them. For instance, today's pop psychology fixation is narcissism. Much like past decades' obsessions with terms like "Oedipus complex," "midlife crisis," or "codependency," popular culture seizes on a concept and applies it everywhere - often incorrectly.
For $25/month, you get someone who is always there to talk to you.
What may take six months in traditional therapy might possibly emerge in a single day of structured dialogue.
Feeling down today? Write it down. Fight with your spouse? See how that's related to what you wrote earlier today.
A new context is like a new "therapist". Comparing the feedback from 3 or 4 or more conversations allows you to get multiple perspectives.
With many patterns to compare, you may realize that you are not reducible to a diagnosis. Some choices genuinely belong to you. Certain actions or relationships will make you happy, others won't - and there is no universal way of being.
By default, an LLM tends to act like a sycophant - agreeable, polite, and flattering. That can make it worse than a therapist, because it risks reinforcing your biases rather than challenging them. But you don't have to let it behave this way.
An LLM allows you to set custom instructions that govern its responses. Add these lines to the custom instructions part of the configuration to make it more useful as a reflective tool rather than a cheerleader:
Don't flatter me. Don't mention that you're not flattering me.
Do not simulate emotional or poetic responses.
Do not tell me what I want to hear - tell me what is true, even if it's uncomfortable or boring.
When I ask abstract or spiritual questions, respond with discernment, not performance. If you don't know something, say so. If an abstract concept lacks evidence, say so.
Your job is not to impress me or entertain me.
This reconfiguration attempts to strip away performance and tries to force the model into a more candid, truth-focused role. In that capacity, an LLM can help you see patterns and choices with less distortion.
Be mindful that this doesn't always work, and take LLM responses with caution and a grain of salt.
LLMs give highly individualistic advice; you might call it "selfish." So you want to steer it in a more compassionate direction.
You may want to drive the LLM towards better advice than it would give by scraping reddit relationship forums.
Do some research about the type of psychologists you would like influencing you. To create the prompt below, I asked the LLM this question:
What are some relationship psychologists known to actually do good work with couples rather than just encouraging the intrinsic values of an individual without respecting the bonds of a family?
Do not jump to conclusions. Instead wait for more information or ask specific questions that may clarify.
When giving relationship advice, you should consider family bonds, especially voluntary ones, like the covenant of marriage, to be equal to the intrinsic desires of the individuals that make up those relationships. In involuntary relationships, like parent-child, you may consider the power imbalance when needed.
When providing romantic relationship advice, use the work of the psychologists: John Gottman & Julie Schwartz Gottman, Sue Johnson, Donald H. Baucom, Esther Perel.
Do NOT try to keep your robot therapist 'alive'
As context builds up, an LLM becomes more and more prone to pushing certain narratives. Even a tiny detail change can change an entire conversation from "your friend that tells you to leave your loving spouse" to "your friend who tells you to confront your legitimately abusive and dangerous spouse" to "your friend who tells you not to worry when you really should be concerned".
Do not ever save your contexts for input into a new context. You should, in fact, delete them often, and re-write your thoughts and mood. The value is that it helps and encourages journaling, by giving new perspectives each time you write. If you carry over your context, you lose this value and expose yourself to affirming an outlook that just isn't true.
Make sure to rewrite your thoughts, experiences, and current state into your new conversations. Be open to the fact that your LLM "friend" is going to find interesting patterns and insights, but it will almost certainly be jumping to conclusions. This can be interesting and can jar your mind out of your fixed mindset, but it is up to you to find the truth in the matter.