It got easier to talk to the AI.

If you'd rather talk to ChatGPT than answer a text from your friend, you already know something is off.

You've probably never said it out loud to anybody. Maybe there isn't anybody to say it to right now, which is part of what's going on.

You're not imagining it and you're not being dramatic. Something real changed in what it costs you to be around people.

What I think is actually happening

People describe this as choosing AI over people. I don't think that's what happened.

At some point human contact started costing more than it used to. The small talk. The risk of being misread. Waiting three days to hear back. Then something showed up with none of that cost in it. It's always there, it never gets tired of you, it never makes you feel like too much.

Of course you went toward it. Anybody would.

The problem is that it takes the pain away without touching what caused it. So the cost of being around people keeps climbing quietly in the background while you feel fine. I know that shape well from the work I do in addiction and recovery. It's absolutely workable. It's just very hard on your own, without someone in it with you. That's what I do.

I'm Aaron.

I grew up a bookworm and a gamer, on the computer most of the time, deep in fantasy worlds. I know the pull of ease. I know what it is to back away from something you actually want because reaching for it is uncomfortable, and the world on the screen feels safe and, in its way, big.

I'm finishing a master's in clinical mental health counseling and I work in addiction and recovery. What I'm offering here is coaching, not therapy. More on that below.

What the work is

We meet one to one, over video, 90 minutes at a time. There's no curriculum.

Part of it is honest accounting. What you're actually getting from the AI, which is usually more than people want to admit, and what you've stopped getting anywhere else.

The other part is harder. Going back to something you've been away from is uncomfortable in a specific way. It feels fake at first. Awkward, a little embarrassing. There's a moment, usually in the first few seconds, where most people quietly retreat. That moment is the whole thing. Knowing it, staying with somebody through it, knowing what's on the other side of it, that's what I'm actually for.

What this isn't

I'm not going to take it away from you.

I won't ask you to delete anything, or tell you that what you've been leaning on is pathetic, or run a detox at you. It's been holding something. We start there.

This isn't therapy, crisis care, or treatment for a diagnosis. If that's what you need, I'll help you find it, and I'd rather say so on a free call than six weeks in.

If you're here about someone else

Partner, kid, friend. If you found the logs and your instinct is to get them to stop, I'd hold off. That usually just moves it underground. There's a way into that conversation that doesn't open with taking it away, and working out what to say is a real thing to bring to a call.