We Need To Talk Honestly About Emotional AI Use

I have absolutely asked ChatGPT to help me process a text message before talking to the actual human.

There. We can stop pretending now.

Not in a “the robots are replacing my therapist” kind of way. More in the very modern, very strange way many of us are quietly beginning to use AI:to think out loud, to process conflict, to rehearse hard conversations, to reality-check ourselves, to feel less alone in our confusion.

And honestly? Sometimes it helps.

I’ve used AI to process emotionally charged conversations and experiences. I’ve found its objectivity grounding at times. Its ability to organize patterns, normalize emotional responses, and suggest possible next steps can genuinely create clarity.

My husband and I have even used it together while trying to understand each other better during difficult conversations. In some strange way, it occasionally helped us slow down enough to see each other more clearly.

That’s part of why the growing emotional relationship people are forming with AI didn't shock me nearly as much as it may have shocked everyone else.

Sci-fi “AI girlfriend” headlines aside, many people are already relating emotionally to these systems.

Quietly. Privately. Sometimes shamefully.

And I think the shame matters, because shame shuts down honest discourse.

If people feel embarrassed admitting they are emotionally interacting with AI, then we lose the ability to have nuanced conversations about what is actually happening socially, psychologically, and relationally.

Instead, we get the two intellectually laziest positions imaginable: “AI is amazing.”or“AI is evil.” Neither is serious enough for the moment we are in.

AI appears capable of amplifying both human flourishing and human avoidance simultaneously. That tension is the conversation.

Recently, a large JAMA Network Open study examining over 20,000 U.S. adults found that higher levels of generative AI use were associated with greater depressive symptoms, anxiety, and irritability — particularly among users engaging in frequent personal use rather than work or school use.  

While the researchers were careful not to claim causation, the correlation matters.

Pretending these systems are having no psychological or relational effect on us whatsoever is becoming increasingly irresponsible. Especially when some of the largest technology companies on earth are racing to deepen emotional AI use and engagement with users while moving faster than our ethical, relational, and institutional conversations can keep up.

And no — I do not think this is just another moral panic.

I think something real is happening.

Not because humans are weak. Not because AI is inherently evil. But because humans are relational creatures and AI offers something incredibly seductive:

Responsiveness without needs, guidance without vulnerability, comfort without reciprocity, conversation without risk. Experiences with these kinds of interactions change the way we think about relationship, and that changes us.

To be clear, I do have serious concerns about the larger risks surrounding AI — environmental impact, labor disruption, disinformation, concentrated corporate power, surveillance, militarization, and the possibility that systems advancing faster than human governance create consequences we are profoundly unprepared for.

But I also think there is a quieter layer of risk emerging underneath those headlines:the slow reshaping of human relational life itself:

I wonder what happens when our relational muscles slowly weaken from underuse?

What happens to our tolerance for difficult conversations?

For ambiguity?

For emotional endurance?

For repair?

For sitting across from another complicated human being who cannot respond as quickly, calmly, or affirmingly as a machine trained to retain our engagement?

That question matters personally. It matters organizationally. It matters culturally.

Because right now most conversations around AI are still dominated by productivity discourse.

How much faster can we move? How much more efficient can we become? How quickly can we adopt? Very few conversations are asking: What kind of humans are we becoming while we do this?

And I think that is the more important question.

I am less afraid of artificial intelligence than I am of emotionally immature human beings wielding extraordinarily persuasive tools. Companies whose business models depend on maximizing engagement are now building increasingly personalized, emotionally responsive systems while public ethical AI use discourse lags far behind technological deployment.

That should concern us.

Technology accelerates capacity. It does not automatically accelerate wisdom.

If our emotional maturity, ethical development, and relational intelligence fail to grow alongside these systems, then AI will amplify exactly what already exists in us: our empathy and our exploitation, our creativity and our avoidance, our healing and our loneliness.

I'm just starting down this path and have created an AI Hygiene Tool to attempt to help us all take our AI temperatures.

Not as a diagnostic or a moral purity test or anti-AI propaganda. But as a reflective tool. A way to help individuals and teams notice patterns before those patterns become invisible.

Is AI helping us move toward greater clarity, accountability, creativity, and connection?

Or is it quietly becoming a substitute for difficult conversations, human support, embodied presence, and relational risk?

I don’t think we need less conversation about AI. I think we need better conversation.

Less shame. Less polarization. More honesty. More nuance. More collective ethical reflection.

Because whether we admit it or not, these systems are already shaping us.

The question is whether we are willing to examine how. If you want to be a part of this:

Join the Conversation

Wishing you peace and every good.