AI, Therapy Influencers, and the Death of the Blank Screen

AI Therapy Influencers and the Death of the Blank Screen

Recently, I taught a class that had a paper as the final assignment. As I read through the papers, I noticed a few seemed a little off. They were close to making sense; the elements were there, but they just sort of didn't make sense. It almost felt as if I was reading a paper about one thing with the theory from my class superimposed, but not quite connected to the examples.

Now of course, this wasn't all of the papers. Some were completely contextual and adequate. Some were even extraordinary, weaving in their own hypotheses to stretch at the edges of what we believe, creating new possibilities and frames that challenged what I had generally accepted as fact. And then there were the ones I'm speaking about in this essay that were, I imagine, generated by a combination of a paper written for another class, with the theory from our class artificially woven in via ChatGPT, and furthermore, the unpaid version.

Now I'm not a stranger to using AI to edit my writing. In fact, I'll include a snapshot of what my writing looks like before AI's magic touch, and you will clearly see how much I've benefited (grammar has never been my strong suit), but I do not use it as a substitute for my own thoughts. In fact, this is what terrifies me the most about AI: the idea that it will make me think less for myself. But in this situation, in a class that was set up to engage students' critical thinking, examine their own identity, the identity of their clients, their countertransference, and the field, it was disorienting to read through loosely associated theory void of impact or care.

bell hooks wrote, "To think critically, we must be willing to surrender our attachment to any idea, belief, or practice that does not serve us." But what happens when we surrender the practice of critical thinking itself? When we outsource the thinking to AI and become so attached to the ease of generated answers that we forget how to sit in the discomfort of not-knowing?

I'm not blaming the students here. Post-graduate trainings are long, tedious, and often come as an addition to an already busy professional schedule. I get it. What disturbs me is not about this class or the ethics of turning in work not fully your own. What disturbs me is the outsourcing of your ability to look at a client, look at yourself, and conceptualize what is happening between you.

The profession of therapy is about sensing, feeling, and yes, analyzing, but analysis about humans' emotions and behaviors, analysis about a real-time relationship, cannot be outsourced. Attachment cannot be outsourced. We can be told to love something or someone, but that doesn't mean when we look into their eyes, we will feel it. So, what then do we do when critical thinking is given to someone other than ourselves?

I used to think AI was a scary substitute for the work of therapy, that the clients would suffer because of the lack of real relational work. Now I am less scared about what happens for clients if they go to ChatGPT versus a real therapist, and I am frightened of what happens when we as therapists allow our minds to be co-opted by an external source. When we don't use AI tools as a way to think deeper, be more productive, see our blind spots, but when we use it as a bypass to doing the challenging work of thinking for ourselves.

What does it mean when, as a therapist, you produce endless content that is remixed AI-generated jargon? When our recommendations to clients, maybe not in real time (yet), but on social media, are not actually coming from us but rather from a computer searching other computer-generated content to produce more content. The words are all there. It makes sense…but it's also sort of off.

Again, this is not a piece about taking some sort of moral high ground. I use Claude often. In fact, I really value that program; it has helped me in so many areas as a business owner, a writer, and yes, even a therapist. It sure as hell beats going to the library and taking out 10 books on theory to find one quote you think you heard one time that perfectly makes your point.

The problem isn't the tool. It's the same outsourcing of thought happening in those student papers that is now happening in how therapists present themselves to the world, not just what we post, but who we become when we build a following.

And all of this is scratching at another idea that has been percolating for me: therapists as influencers. How do we engage in social media marketing while protecting what I would consider a sacred practice of decentering ourselves in the therapy space?

The "blank screen" comes from classical psychoanalysis, Freud's idea that the therapist should remain opaque so the client can project their own material onto them. We've mostly moved away from this. Relational approaches and Gestalt therapy have taught us that we are real objects, not neutral ones. Our clients need us to be present, responsive, human. But there was something valuable in that opacity: when a client doesn't know everything about me, there's space for them to bring their own material. The question becomes: How much of myself do I bring into the room? When does my realness serve the work, and when does it foreclose the client's ability to project their own stuff onto me?

And now, in the age of social media, the question isn't just what I reveal in session, it's what I reveal to the world. Because once it's online, it's no longer strategic. It's just...there.

As a therapist who trained over 20 years ago, before Facebook, before Instagram, before smartphones, I was introjected with the tenets of our practice: unconditional positive regard, rigorous analysis, boundaries, curiosity. I would have whole supervision sessions in grad school painstakingly going over my verbatim process recordings, highlighting any personal disclosure that might have affected (infected?) the work. And these "disclosures" were often seemingly benign: "Where are you from? Do you have any pets? Are you a Yankees fan?" And yet when I would tell someone some small thing about myself, it was often to alleviate the excruciating pain of sitting in uncomfortable silence while denying someone a seemingly basic social nicety. But that was my pain, my discomfort with the client's discomfort, which led to a life's work of looking at my pathological caretaking/confluence, where it stemmed from, and in service of whom it was for. Now, before a client ever enters the room, they can read about their therapist's divorce, their sobriety, their spiritual awakening, their childhood trauma. They arrive already knowing, or thinking they know, who you are. The blank screen has been replaced by a curated feed. And in that inversion, something structurally significant has shifted: the client becomes the analyst, sorting through your material before the first session even begins, while the therapist has become the analysand.

But even I now publish a monthly newsletter where I share things from my personal life. I don't advertise it to my clients, but they occasionally sign up or see something I post. As a Gestalt therapist, I believe in the power of real-time responses and use of self. If a client says something that makes me cry, I just might cry right there in session. But that's different than writing in my newsletter about an ex who brought me dead flowers on Valentine's Day. Or is it? I know, I'm telling you to be strategic about disclosure while literally linking you to my personal essays. The irony isn't lost on me. This is the tightrope.

I remind my clinicians (and myself) that anything we post, we would have to feel comfortable talking about in session with a client in case it ever comes up. While I feel confident in our intention, it is imperfect. I am also aware that as we grow and get more visibility (a requirement for any business growth these days), we risk becoming more concerned with our audience than our clients. That we start writing for followers instead of for truth.

But there's something even more insidious happening in therapy influencer culture than just AI-generated affirmations and trending audio.

I see therapists calling people out publicly. Holding them "accountable" for behavior the therapist has decided is toxic or problematic. Making fun, even lightly, of the things their clients say in session. It's dressed up as education, as advocacy, as "raising awareness." But underneath, it's performing at the expense of the people we're meant to serve.

I've watched therapists mock "that client who..." and frame it as relatable content. I've seen therapists publicly drag other practitioners for clinical approaches they disagree with. I've watched the language of accountability, which in therapy means taking responsibility for impact, become weaponized as a way to gain followers by tearing others down.

And here's what terrifies me: this isn't benign. This isn't just dancing to trending audio or posting generic self-care tips. This is the erosion of the fundamental ethic of our work, that the therapy space is sacred, that we hold what happens there with care, that we don't use our clients' pain as content, that we don't position ourselves as arbiters of who's doing it right and who deserves to be shamed.

When we perform righteousness, when we call out and mock and "hold accountable" in public, we're not educating. We're building a following. And we're teaching people that therapy is a place where you might be judged, analyzed, laughed at, not by your therapist directly, but by the version of your therapist who performs for an audience.

The blank screen might be dead, but at least it protected something: the idea that what happens between therapist and client stays there. That we don't take what you give us and remix it into content. That our allegiance is to you, not to our followers.

We're producing endless content without asking: Is this nourishing? Are we feeding people fast food, easy, digestible, immediately satisfying but ultimately empty? Or are we offering something that takes time to digest, that challenges, that actually sustains?

And more than that: Are we consuming our own content? Are we thinking about what we post, or are we letting AI generate it while we scroll to the next thing? Are we digesting what we read, or just regurgitating it with different words?

The blank screen is dead. And maybe it needed to die.

But in its place, we've built something else: the therapist as content creator, the clinician as brand, the practitioner as influencer. We've traded opacity for performance. We've traded not-knowing for AI-generated certainty. We've traded the discomfort of sitting with a client's projection for the dopamine hit of being seen, liked, followed.

What comes after the blank screen? I don't know. But I know it's not this.

I often tell clients: "The goal isn't to live life according to me, but for me to help you figure out what life according to you is."

That's my goal here too. Because the easy way out has never been the work. The work is sitting in the not-knowing without reaching for an answer. Testing a hypothesis that is truly our question. Holding space instead of filling it. Letting what's unresolved stay unresolved long enough for something real to emerge, in the room, in your writing, in your thinking. AI will fill in the blanks if you let it. We fill in the blanks for our clients because it's easier than dealing with their projections. But that's not therapy. And, I think we all deserve better than our shortcuts.