Why is having therapy helpful?

There is a lot going on in the world at the moment. While we seem to have more ways than ever to be in connection, we seem to be becoming more and more separate. I know that a lot of us are struggling, having demanding jobs, also a lot of job insecurity, trying to look after ourselves and quite often other people, burnout, chronic illness, the unfolding polycrisis, having our attention/energy stolen by distracting apps and more and more I am hearing ‘I don’t have capacity’. Being human right now is not easy.

Another thing that is scaring me right now is hearing that people are turning to AI for connection & therapy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there could be some benefits here. This could be an accessible way for people to have questions answered around their nervous systems, suggestions for supportive practices and perhaps a space to be able to offload and feel something of a connection. But this can never replace the real thing. And it absolutely should not. I feel we will be in a very desperate and terrible place when we are turning to AI for connection and fully avoiding the real world of flesh, bone and aliveness. Not to mention the ecological impact and I would encourage all of us to pause and feel into that cost before we interact with it.

So I wanted to write this to advocate for therapy and also for human connection.

Because ultimately therapy is the supportive container that helps you reconnect with the world and fellow humans.
And on a collective level, I think we need that now more than ever.

In a world where relational skills are on the decline, this is the work that can help us heal relational wounds and increase our capacity for the delightful messiness of being human.
I am beginning to feel like AI is becoming a way for us to avoid that reality and what we don’t seem to realise is that by avoiding the messiness we also don’t get the joy of connection either.

An AI can’t love you.

So why is therapy helpful?
Lets begin with when & why might you might realise that you need therapeutic support?

When people initially reach out to me, it can be for lots of reasons. And more often than not, it’s because they are on a threshold.

A threshold is when our life is changing or evolving, sometimes by a big event, like a loss or diagnosis. Or it might be a change that someone is consciously choosing to make. It could be to support you while letting go of an addiction. Or perhaps you have noticed a relational pattern that isn’t serving you or you might have gained some awareness around trauma and how it might be impacting you now.

Some people come to me for just a few weeks.
Others stay for months and some clients have been with me for over a year.

Quite often the thresholds we meet open portals to a deeper way of knowing ourselves and it’s my job as a therapist to be your guide.

Many of my clients have never experienced someone giving them their full attention. Deep listening, fully witnessing and present.
This is quite often life changing for a lot of people, just having someone fully in loving presence with them.
No judgement, just curiosity.

And this is something that AI can’t offer. AI as helpful as it is, is not a body and does not have a nervous system.
In therapy we call this co-resourcing. Many of us grew up in homes of chaos, where there was a lack of somatic awareness and parents sadly had quite jangled nervous systems. In nervous system theory (Stephen Porges) it is believed that we are unable to tend to our own nervous system until we are 7yrs old and our nervous system learns from the nervous system of our parents or care givers.

This means that many of us have never experienced a relaxed, spacious, open body & heart.

And because we are human bodies that are designed to be in connection with one another this means that when it comes to therapy and especially somatic therapy it will be the relational container that will be the most healing element.

A space where rupture and repair can be explored fully.
A space where you can experience healthy attunement with another human.
A space where another body can support you in feeling the big feelings.
A space where loving presence can be felt.

The other important part of therapy, or at least in holistic or integrative therapy, is that we often be held by someone who has lived through what we are currently experiencing. This can be deeply validating and supportive. For example, a lot of my lived experience has been through the lens of C-PTSD, chronic illness, being a queer & non-binary body and a survivor of abuse. Quite often my clients are also moving through these things and my experience can support theirs. An AI can’t offer this perspective or level of compassion.

It’s also about accountability. Quite often my clients are responding or behaving from parts of themselves that are rooted in oppression and internalised harm. The inner critic, the part that might be rooted in disordered eating because of how much the west values thinness or perhaps the part that makes you overwork yourself to burnout because our ‘value’ is determined by our productivity or success. These are just some examples of many ways we harm ourselves because of various beliefs and burdens and as a therapist it’s my job to question these parts, get to know them and get help you get to what is underneath, not align myself with them.

From what I am understanding with AI it’s been reinforcing these oppressive parts, even to the point that people have wound up dying by suicide.

I also really want to honour that I know that therapy is not always accessible to so many people who need this support because of finances or even time commitments. For this reason I can completely understand why AI might feel like the only option people have. I would still encourage people to try and seek real human connection or even nature over something created to further extract from us. I have lots of further blogs on here with practices and tools that can help support someone even if they can’t currently access therapy. This is also why I offer an accessible rate for low income and I am so happy to see more and more therapists starting to offer this.

Here are some blogs posts you might find helpful to support yourself through challenging times…

Working with the Fascia for healing https://thewolfandthewildthing.com/blog/2025/4/2/the-fascia-creative-movement-for-healing
Nature as the original therapist https://thewolfandthewildthing.com/blog/2025/9/6/nature-is-the-original-therapist-guide
Some notes and practices around grief https://thewolfandthewildthing.com/blog/2025/9/22/living-with-our-grief
How we can resource ourselves through difficult times https://thewolfandthewildthing.com/blog/2025/10/6/nervous-system-regulation-helpful-or-oppressive

I hope you have found this helpful, please reach out if you have any questions and you can find out more about working with me for Somatic Therapy on the button below.

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