Your AI Is a Great Hype-Man - A Therapist Has a Few Notes (Plus Live QA)

Using AI as a therapist? Your chatbot might be building a great plan for the person you’re hoping to become.

When a client’s chatbot asked if he was an extroverted go-getter, he answered as the man he’s working toward, and the AI wrote him a solid plan he couldn’t stick to. Tony explores why AI tools tend to agree with us, what that has in common with the people-pleasers in our own lives, and what you can learn from reading your side of the conversation out loud. Then he and his daughter Sydney take your questions in a late-night TikTok Live Q&A.

Episode highlights:

Understand why chatbots lean sycophantic, and what a Stanford study found when it ran 11 AI models through real interpersonal conflicts

Recognize the three layers of sycophancy in The Emperor’s New Clothes, from the swindlers to the people-pleasing ministers to the crowd

Learn the difference between self-explaining and self-examining, and how a 90% solid, 10% flexible sense of self leaves room to grow

Get answers on when it’s time to stop therapy, whether true crime affects your mental health, the anxious-avoidant loop, and why ACT calls the brain a “don’t get killed device”

Hear Tony’s five rules for interacting with someone emotionally immature or narcissistic, plus how a trauma bond can affect your memory

Tony Overbay is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has worked with more than 1,500 couples over 20+ years and builds AI tools for his own practice.

If you have a chatbot thread on your phone, try reading your side of it out loud and asking who was answering: the person who shows up every day or the person you’re working toward. Then send Tony your questions for the next Live.

Please follow Tony on Instagram @virtual.couch, on TikTok @virtualcouch, on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tonyoverbaylmft and on Substack https://thevirtualcouch.substack.com/ You can reach out to Tony through his website tonyoverbay.com or by emailing contact @ tonyoverbay.com

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