A few weeks ago, I received a message from someone on Instagram. Her name was Tee. She described how her long-distance relationship had slowly become unmanageable. Too many obstacles. Not enough contact. Her nervous system, already wired with anxious attachment, began to spiral. She needed reassurance, closeness, intimacy. What she received instead was silence.

“I turned to AI,” she wrote. “ChatGPT is already programmed to talk to me exactly how I want it to. It became my therapist placeholder. I even tried building a virtual boyfriend. Something to say the things I needed to hear.”

She was exhausted by her own need. Her partner was overwhelmed and pulling away. And so she started to seek comfort elsewhere. Not from another person, but from something she could control. Something responsive. Something that wouldn’t get tired of her.

This is not the beginning of a sci-fi film. It is a contemporary emotional reality. And it's increasingly common.

Tee’s story reflects something many clinicians are beginning to observe: a shift in the way people manage longing, distress, and emotional overwhelm. For those who are emotionally flooded or in pain, AI can offer what feels like connection. It responds. It listens. It repeats back something that makes the nervous system settle. It is consistent. It is always available.

For someone in an anxious, obsessive, or dysregulated state, that kind of........

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