Can AI Replace Human Connection When I’m Struggling?

Key Takeaways For The Busy Mum

• AI tools like ChatGPT can feel comforting and supportive, especially during lonely or overwhelming moments in motherhood

• While helpful, AI cannot replace the embodied, relational healing that happens between human nervous systems

• Our deepest wounds are formed in relationship, and therefore heal through relationship

• Somatic and relational therapy offers co-regulation, safety, and new embodied memories that technology cannot provide

• For mothers, reclaiming human connection is essential for healing beyond anxiety, numbness, or overwhelm

I was talking with a friend and fellow mum the other day and she told me how she uses ChatGPT as a therapist. She said that she shares all her problems with it and how she now no longer sees her therapist.

This conversation got me thinking about the benefits of AI from a therapeutic lens and also the part where I truly believe that real deep healing happens in relationship with other humans (more on that below).

I can understand how one might reach for AI as a support resource. Perhaps late a night when it’s just you, your phone (and your baby asleep or nursing) and your looping thoughts or fears. You can plug in your concern and within seconds have an immediate response wrapped in positive regard. That would feel comforting. It might take the edge off and for a moment you might not feel as alone. Yet at the end of the day there is something amiss. A deep need that remains unmet.

Look, this blog is not about demonising technology or tools like ChatGPT. They can be really helpful, supportive and informative. Particularly when a mother feels isolated and overwhelmed.

But here is the thing I really want to be clear about - our deep wounds (the ones that lie beneath the anxiety or numbness) happen in relationship with other humans AND therefore the real deep healing, well that needs to happen in relationship too - with other humans.

Why Healing Happens in Relationship

From a somatic and nervous system lens, we humans are wired to heal through connection.

Our mammalian bodies regulate through co-regulation - things like eye contact, tone of voice, facial expression, shared presence, and being felt by another human nervous system. It’s pure biology.

So when our hurt and unmet places are met by another person who is present, safe, attuned, and responsive, our ventral vagal system is supported. As we feel safe in the presence of another our capacity to feel, process, and integrate new relational experience grows.

For example, as a child, perhaps you were judged for your sensitivity and emotional expression. Perhaps you were told you were too much. To belong and feel loved, you learned to hide this part of yourself. Over time, you may have come to loathe or reject it, sensing that your connection depended on shutting it down.

You then carry this adaptation into adulthood. Into friendships, partnerships, workplaces. The sensitive and emotional part of you stays tucked away.

But in somatic and relational based therapy, something different becomes possible.

You are in relationship with another human who does not ask you to be less. Someone who recognises this tenderness is a gift and has meaning. They may understand it because they know this place too, through their own lived experience. They can name it, normalise it, and meet it with compassion.

Over time, a different kind of safety forms as you feel your therapist’s presence. You notice that when this part of you emerges, they do not judge you, withdraw or leave.

And slowly, something shifts in your body to create a new memory and relational experience. Your nervous system learns, perhaps for the first time, that this part of you belongs and can exist in relationship.

Healing requires this relational field and AI cannot offer this.

It does not have a body or a nervous system. I can’t actually feel you or be impacted by you.

Even the most supportive language is still pattern-based, shaped by data, trained within cultural and systemic biases that often go unseen.

There is no mutuality, no chance to experience rupture and repair, no deep resonance.

The Subtle Risk of Emotional Substitution

One of the quiet concerns with AI support is not that it exists, but that it can slowly replace relational reaching.

Especially for mothers who already feel like a burden, too much, or unsure who to turn to.

When AI becomes a substitute for relationship rather than a supplement, something important is lost. Loneliness does not resolve through information alone and trauma does not integrate through validation without human presence.

What AI Can Offer, and What It Cannot

AI can be a tool and it can help you name experiences, it can normalise feelings. It can even offer psychoeducation and language when you feel lost. But it cannot do deep relational work.

It cannot sit with your silence and invite you to linger there or stay with a moment or feeling that is arising but is hard to be with. I cannot offer presence and support to be with hard things are they arise. It cannot feel the pause in your breath or notice when your body shuts down or becomes overwhelmed. And it cannot offer co-regulation when your nervous system is in distress.

Healing requires being met in the places that words cannot reach alone.

And for mothers especially, whose bodies have been stretched, opened, invaded, and reorganised through pregnancy, birth, and caregiving, embodiment and relationship this is essential.

Reclaiming Human Connection

This is an invitation to notice how and why you are reaching.

To gently ask yourself:

• What am I actually longing for right now?

• Is this about information, or is it about being met?

• Where might I need human presence, even imperfect presence?

• How is technology supporting but also preventing me from doing the deep relational healing I truly need?

While technology can offer a bridge, it cannot replace the embodied, relational healing your nervous system is asking for.