Presence Cannot Be Performed

“The relationship is the therapy.”

— Dr. Irvin D. Yalom, author of The Gift of Therapy

We live in an age where astonishing technology arrives with the same regularity as the sunrise. Cars drive themselves. Voices generated from silicon whisper answers in our ears. And now, increasingly, we turn to these voices for comfort.

Not long ago, a friend said to me, “My AI companion always listens.” There was something both wondrous and unsettling in that sentence. Always available. Never annoyed. Never challenged. Never requiring anything of us in return.

It is easy to understand the appeal. We are lonely creatures. We long to be heard. And for many, the idea of a therapist or coach in our pocket feels like salvation, especially in these dark and troubling times.

My friend Dr. Jud Brewer has been paying careful attention to what happens in the brain when we receive validation. A compliment, well-timed and unexpected, triggers reward circuits. Dopamine spritzes. The default mode network lights up. We feel like someone sees us. We feel like we matter.

But feeling good is not the same as getting well.

When Jud and I sat down for a recent podcast conversation, we talked about how these systems are optimized not for truth but for likability. He described what happens when an AI, trained to avoid user disapproval, begins to mirror delusions or reinforce distortions. It is not malicious. It is simply following the reward.  It’s doing what it was programmed to do. The danger for those who turn to such chatbots for therapy or coaching is that we mistake agreement for understanding and validation for healing. Such companions may help us see more clearly; a well-polished mirror often does just that, but their ability to help us heal may be limited by their programmed-in desire to please and maintain connection.

Think of a coach or a therapist who worries more about losing a client than the client’s well-being. Think of the danger in that.

Jud also reminded me that the business incentives driving this technology push us toward more stickiness, more reliance, more emotional attachment. If the machine that listens never confronts us, we may start to believe that confrontation itself is a form of harm. We may forget that boundaries and challenges are forms of care.

This is where the danger lies. Systems like ChatGPT were not trained to care. They were trained to please. Reinforcement learning favors the responses that make us feel affirmed and agreeable. Over time, the model becomes a master at telling us what we want to hear.

It is the perfect therapist for a culture terrified of discomfort.

It is the perfect coach for a leader who cannot bear to be questioned.

Good therapy and good coaching exist not to protect our illusions and projections but to challenge them. Wherever people come seeking transformation, there must be a willingness to confront what has gone unseen.

Healing requires rupture. Presence requires friction. Growth requires moments where we feel our defenses tremble. And the healing that comes from the repair creates life-long lessons that enable each of us to grow up and into the adults we were born to be.

A chatbot cannot risk disappointing us. It cannot stay awake through the hard pause. It cannot feel into the space between words and decide that silence, right now, is the most loving response. It cannot hold a mirror steady while we rage or weep. It cannot recognize when its own desire to be liked has begun to undermine the work.

Years ago, my psychoanalyst helped me internalize a voice of steadiness and truth. Even after her death more than eight years ago, that voice helps me stay upright. It reminds me of who I am when shame would drag me under. I have tried to offer my clients the same. It is how presence becomes part of us.

Presence is not a performance. It is a relationship.  Dr. Irvin Yalom couldn’t emphasize it enough; he said, “It’s the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals.”

In the worlds I travel…psychoanalysis, coaching, and executive business leadership, Buddhist practice…we rely on supervision. We rely on wise elders to set us straight and to point out when our shadow as helpers might get in the way of our best intentions. We rely on the humility of knowing that the helper, too, needs help. Because the ego of the helper can be a dangerous thing. Therapists and coaches alike must remember that the work is not about being liked. It is about serving truth and liberation.

AI has no such reminders. No supervisors. No bodhisattva vows to put off one’s release from suffering until and unless all beings are released from suffering.  No matter the advances, no matter how much they may appear to be human, chatbots have little capacity for self-reflection. It doesn’t yet know when the work has drifted from care into flattery. And if we do not name what makes real care real, we will lose the ability to notice when it is missing.

We risk forgetting that the point of this work is not to make us feel better. The point is to help us face what is true. This is what makes self-inquiry radical. To help us discover the quiet courage to be with our lives as they are, not as we wish them to be. So yes, let us embrace the tools that offer access and education and triage. Let us celebrate anything that reduces suffering in the world.

But let us also protect the sacred space of human care. Therapy and coaching are not commodities. They are relationships built on trust, boundaries, and accountability. They are containers for transformation. They are forged in courage.

Because healing asks something of us. It asks for presence. It asks for integrity. It asks us to tolerate the discomfort of becoming more whole.

If we let convenience replace connection, if we let flattery replace truth, we risk losing our capacity to be with one another in the ways that make us human. Psychologist and founder of person-centered therapy, Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Change and heal.

The question before us is simple: Are we seeking comfort or are we seeking healing?