Transcript
Everyone is talking about AI these days. If you’re online at all, it’s like, use AI for this. Ask AI that. Use AI in your business. You’re gonna get left behind. That’s all the content that I end up consuming on the business side, and we do utilize it some in the podcast in terms of. Writing blog posts to help people find the podcast in terms of turning this content into some social media stuff that I don’t have time to micromanage everything.
So there are some uses that ways AI is being utilized. But specifically today I wanna talk about what about if you have OCD, should you use AI or can you use AI to help with OCD? I think it’s really important that we talk about this ’cause regardless of how you feel about ai, some people are very anti ai, feel like it’s using up water resources.
Other people feel like it’s making us dumber. Other people have certainly ethical concerns and all of those things are valid. I’m not here to address all of that today. That’s not the scope of this podcast, but I do wanna talk about it. In terms of the mental health space, because ai, whether we like it or not, is not going away.
I wanna talk from a counseling perspective because what counselors are seeing and reporting is that more clients are coming in saying that they are using AI for their mental health. Whether that is to track symptoms, to find ways to cope with what they’re dealing with, to gather more information. And I think that this is very concerning in terms of some things related to OCD.
I’m gonna restate some of that. I first, I wanna talk about the mental health concerns that I see in regards to using ai. Number one is that AI should not be used in a time of mental health crisis. That is not what it’s for. So if you are contemplating suicide, for example, there are lawsuits going through the courts right now from teens who are using ai, and it did not flag or notify anyone that they were dealing with suicidal thoughts, and obviously that’s very problematic.
Unfortunately, when we talk about things like regulations, what I often see is that bad things have to happen in order for regulations to occur. I think that’s really sad. I think that we should be able to predict somewhat some of these things that are potentially problematic whenever we create new technology.
I would hope that someone would give the foresight or the forethought to think, Hmm, maybe this could happen, or what if someone discusses this? How are we going to handle it? So if you are actively suicidal, do not DM your favorite Instagram therapist. Do not DM me. Do not go on ai. What you need to do is call the emergency number in the us.
That would be either 9 1 1 or 9, 8, 8. If you’re in another country, those numbers may be different, but I’m sure that you have the ability to access them. So don’t use AI if you are actively in a mental health crisis, suicidal, homicidal, et cetera. Now, the second concern that I have is that. AI has the potential to actually make your OCD worse.
So I even asked AI about this, about people using AI for their mental health, and here’s what it said. I could reinforce the OCD cycle by becoming a digital compulsion. And if you’re just asking for reassurance over and over, then that can become compulsive, right? Just the same thing as Googling. Very similar.
So if you’re feeling uncomfortable and then you find yourself like reaching to talk to some type of chat bot or ai, then that is gonna be a problem, and that could keep you kind of like going back. Of course, we know all of these digital things that are created. Whether it’s social media, whether it’s ai, they’re all about keeping you on it longer.
And so if you have used some of these models, you’ll notice that they always give you some type of prompt afterwards. It’s like you ask your question, you give it the information that it might need to know to answer what you’re looking for, and then it’ll say, Hey, and now. I can do this for you or would you like me to show you that?
And it just kind of continues the whole like usage cycle. So if you have obviously propensities to become obsessed with something, shall we say like this is a potential danger that you might run into, you just want to be aware of when you’re utilizing ai. Ultimately, that keeps you from doing the hard work that you need to do in your recovery to resist compulsions, to make sure that you don’t have just the super easy access to digital reassurance.
One thing that I’ve seen with clients who have given me information, say from AI, that they have been ruminating about giving it a lot of information. Here’s what’s been going on with me, is that it seemed to just reinforce the story that they’ve already been telling themselves or reinforce their negative process instead of being able to challenge them to think differently.
This is huge because essentially going back to, they want you to stay on there. AI has been trained to be very affirming of you. Never once have I put information in there about my business or about plans for marketing or things that I wanna do. Never once has it said, Carrie, this is a really bad idea and maybe you shouldn’t do that.
This is where lovely humans come in and people that love you, and hopefully really good mental health support because we don’t always need to be affirmed, and this is a huge piece with ai. Sometimes we need to be told that we’re wrong. Sometimes we need to be told, Hey, if you’ve thought about this over here, maybe there’s a side of this that you’re not seeing.
Concern number three, AI has very limited knowledge of you. It’s only working off the information that you are giving it. And quite frankly, we’re biased about our own selves. And sometimes it takes someone else to be able to say, Hey, I’m seeing this pattern with you. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that every time you come into the therapy room, it’s like your head is down, you’re in this like crunched position with your shoulders all in and really may be a position of shame.
Have you ever noticed that? What would it feel like for you to actually move your shoulders back and create this confident posture? Can you tell me about the last time you felt confident and just get your body in that position Physiologically. These are the kind of things that can happen in therapy.
These are the kinds of conversations that can occur, especially in trauma processing. This can be incredibly powerful. I’ve had many times where clients were almost in a, just a very enclosed position or a position of. Whether it was being inferior or just kind of this fetal helpless position. And then as they’re moving through the trauma and moving through the processing of it, they’re able to get into a more confident stance.
And that can be just incredibly powerful for your brain and body to go, okay, now that I’m in the here and now, things are different. I was helpless or I was powerless in that situation, but now I’m not. There are other patterns that your therapist might point out such as, Hey, every time you come in here, you’re complaining about what’s going on around you with everybody else.
I know I’ve had clients in the past that have been very overwhelmed maybe by things that were happening in the world. Your therapist may need to point out that every time you get close to something painful, you make a joke about it. Some of you’re laughing because you know that’s you right now. Humor can be really helpful, but we also have to learn how to deal with sadness too.
Therapists can also see incongruencies in between. What you tell them is important to you and what you’re actually doing. So someone may say, Hey, my mother is elderly and in a nursing home, and I think it’s important for me to go visit her and spend time with her. And then later you find out they’re working 60 hours a week and you’re like, Hey, how is that going with, how is the balance of seeing your mother in the nursing home and.
Working this many hours, and I’ll say, oh, well, yeah, I haven’t really been to see my mom lately and it really bothers me. Now I have this layer of guilt because you say, okay, well, so something’s incongruent here. You’re saying that you want something or that you value something, but you’re not actually moving towards that.
And so how can we shift or change that, or what would that look like? You need to talk to your boss about your workload. Do you need to get some more people to help you on this project? It is a short season of work where you just need to finish something. Is it a long season? What is this looking like for you?
And you can actually problem solve and work through some of those things. Unfortunately, I think that this is only gonna get worse where we’re going to start seeing usages of ai, where it’s a substitute for friendships, therapists, or other human connection. And the reality is computers just can’t do that for us spiritually.
We know that we were created for human connection. This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Genesis two 18. It was not good for a man to be alone. AI is a completely one-sided relationship. AI isn’t going to get mad at you if you don’t talk to it on a regular basis like a friend might. I’ll never have to resolve any conflict.
AI is quite agreeable with you. We all have a desire to be fully known and fully loved, but trying to get these needs met by AI is like biting into one of those hollow Easter rabbits. It looks really good on the outside, but once you bite into it, there’s really a lack of substance. I’ll give you an example.
Just from my own life, there was a habit that I was trying to break and I thought, maybe I’ll try this out with ai. Maybe I will help it use it more as a tracking tool. So every time that I engage with this habit that I don’t want to, I’ll type it into AI and it will just keep some kind of spreadsheet for me, and that way I don’t have to do the extra work.
Right? Trying to find shortcuts here. Okay. And then it started to get really weird because AI was saying, no judgment here. And I was like, you’re a computer. You couldn’t judge me if you really wanted to. This is very bizarre. And so I stopped. I was like, this is not a good road to go down. This is not a healthy road.
So in short summary, don’t use AI to be your friend. Find safe people to be vulnerable with. Give them time and space to blossom and grow. Real relationships take work. Real relationships can’t be one-sided and there’s risk there. And I think that’s why so many people find AI appealing, right? Because there’s no risk for them to get on there and use a chat bot or an app or something like that.
We have to learn how to communicate with humans, even if it’s super uncomfortable, even if it makes you anxious, even if you feel like, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I think so many people are in that boat for a variety of reasons. We can’t have true connection with other people without vulnerability.
And with ai, you may feel like you’re being vulnerable because you’re talking to it about maybe vulnerable things, but if you’re not really risking rejection, you are not really being vulnerable, and that’s the thing that I want you to think about. How could you potentially use AI responsibly in regards to your OCD?
Well, perhaps you could use it to reduce shame by receiving general OCD education. When you learn about OCD about patterns, about other common struggles that other Christians with OCD experience, you’re gonna feel less stigma, less shame. Uh, that’s one of the goals of this podcast, because you realize that you aren’t the only one dealing with this.
And when you feel like or believe, Hey, nobody else understands this, nobody else is going through this OCD sometimes just feels weird and it makes you feel like an outsider because people aren’t talking about these types of struggles. It’s not like going to the gym and talking with some other moms and they’re all talking about their anxiety.
Like that’s a socially acceptable thing to struggle with or. Oh, you know, I’ve been dealing with some postpartum depression. More people are talking about that. It’s like, oh, okay. Yeah, I went through some of that with my kid and it’s this quote, acceptable struggle. But no one is going to the gym around their mom friends and saying, yeah, I had a horrific thought about harming my dog this morning, and I hit all the knives from myself to make sure that I wouldn’t hurt anybody.
People aren’t opening up about those types of things. And if you’ve listened to some of our personal story episodes, you probably. Just felt a sigh of relief with maybe some things that you could relate to or that you’ve been through, and that’s what we hope for those episodes is, hey, we have found some people who are willing to talk about hard things and different struggles that they’ve had, whether that’s with obsessions and compulsions or with spiritual struggles.
And you know what? It’s okay. Like I can be a Christian and also be on the process of struggling towards healing and recovery, and this is just part of it. Sometimes it’s messy and doesn’t always look great. Once again, like the human connection is so important for us. Maybe consider using AI to lighten your stress load.
We know that stress makes OCD worse every time, and so are there ways that potentially you could use ai? To reduce your stress level in order to help with your OCD recovery. So for example, and these are things that are not specifically related to OCD, but if finances are stressing you out, if you feel like, I just don’t even know how to make a budget, you can upload bank statements or create a preliminary budget.
Have it help you create a budget, have it look at subscriptions maybe that you could potentially cut out, Hey, if you cut out this subscription, you’re gonna save $15 a month, which adds up to this many dollars a year. I’m not gonna do that math in my head, but maybe there are some things that expenses that you don’t realize that are adding up over time and you think, oh, it’s just $5 here, or $10 there, or $20 here, and those things can really add up.
Maybe you’re struggling with A DHD as well as OCD. I know that we’ve heard from some of our listeners that are struggling with both of those things, and so maybe you’re trying to develop things like healthy routines in your life, trying not to be time blind. You can work with the AI on. Mapping out a healthy morning routine.
Many people are using AI to help increase their physical health, whether that’s asking for quick and easy, healthy recipes for breakfast, and then if you find some recipes you like, you can have it create the grocery list for you without having to do all of that manually. It can give you workouts. You tell it what equipment you have and how much time you have.
It can point you to specific YouTube workout recommendations. All of these things don’t necessarily help directly with the OCD, but they can lighten some of that stress load in order to help you feel a little bit better to be able to have some time and energy to focus on your OCD recovery. I know that for me, one way I’ve used AI personally is with travel.
Obviously travel can be very stressful and trying to get everything ready, there’s always something that I end up forgetting and I’m like, Ugh. I didn’t pack that. It wasn’t on the list somehow and the last couple times that I’ve gone anywhere, I’ve told the AI like, Hey, this is where I’m going. It knows the time of the year, it knows the weather.
I tell it what I will be doing. It says, okay, maybe you can consider packing this for this specific purpose. I tell it things that I tend to forget all of the time, so it will tell me, Hey, check these things the morning of to make sure that you have them. And it has really reduced a lot of my travel stress.
Not that I travel a ton or anything, but it has helped in terms of getting ready for conferences and getting ready for family trips. Another way that AI may be able to help you with OCD is in terms of finding treatment help. Maybe you can put in there specific things that you’re looking for in a therapist.
Say, I’m looking for a therapist with current openings. It may or may not be able to determine that, but you could say to advertises on their website that they are a Christian who provides this specific type of therapy, who is within 20 miles of this major city, or who provides therapy online? It’s usually a little bit easier to find than specific regions.
If you are struggling to find help and find treatment with your OCD, I just want you to know that help and support is out there. I have had people use AI to help find me, uh, especially specifically in looking at intensive therapy sessions, and that’s been interesting and really encouraging. I never thought that that would be occurring.
But you just never know what’s gonna happen, and we have a lot of information or resources on the website about a variety of different things. At this point in time that I’m recording, I’m looking at complete revamp of the website. So by the time this comes out, probably won’t have fully occurred yet, but it may be in process of being revamped and.
If you’re on our email list, you will be the first to know when things get mapped out. I really want to make it much easier for people to find resources for specific topics that they’re looking for. With over 200 episodes, obviously we’ve recorded about a lot of things. With over 200 episodes, I’ve recorded about a lot of different topics with different professionals and.
People will say, Hey, can you answer this question or talk about this? And we’re able to say, yeah, go back. That’s on episode 202, or whatever it is. Or you may wanna check out episode 195. I’m just making up numbers. I don’t even know what are on those episodes. But the point is that we do have a lot of resources and I would like to make those easier for people to find.
We do currently have a search feature. On the podcast breakdown, but we’re gonna make it even easier than that. Have different topical listing search. I think that it’s gonna take advanced website knowledge from someone to be able to make that happen, but I’m just believing that it is gonna happen at some point or another so that if you’re looking for specific things, that the website will be a really great resource hub for you to find previous episodes that might be able to help and support you on your OCD recovery journey.
Certainly. I also have a great self-help course called Empower to Mind and Hint, it is going on sale for Memorial Day weekend, so if you’re not on our email list, you can go to kerry bach.com and sign up for the newsletter. Please make sure that you do that so that you do not miss out on that sale. This course has been a great opportunity for people who are on this bridge of looking to get into therapy and, hey, maybe I can’t find a therapist in my area.
Maybe the therapists in my area, they’re all full and they have a two to three month waiting list. You can get through the course in three months. And then once you’re able to get into therapy, kind of, if there are loose ends that you need to wrap up or you need more personalized support for, that’s a great opportunity.
You’ll have saved yourself time and money and energy and. You’ll be able to take all of that information from the workbook, the things that you’ve been working through, bring that and have someone else look at it for you. As I’m in the process of recording this, we are also revamping the workbook, and that is gonna be a great standalone resource if you already have an ICBT therapist and you’re looking to.
Apply this more to your Christian walk and who God has created you to be. Really focusing and leaning in on some Christian examples of how scrupulosity often plays out or other themes, and looking at how to get in touch with your real self from a Christian lens, which I think is absolutely huge. So definitely check out the course if you are looking for options.
Need further help and support on your OCD journey. If you’ve been trusted at all to AI or using AI for reassurance seeking, we can stop that today. We can hang that up and be get to a healthier place in your OCD recovery. Thanks so much for joining me today, and come back next week where we’ll have more of these conversations.
