Where Healing Actually Happens?(And Why We Keep Forgetting)
Real healing doesn’t happen in a therapeutic relationship. It happens in relationship, period. Attachment was not formed in neutral, time-boxed, once-a-week settings. It was formed in intimacy.
We often talk about healing as something that happens in therapy.
But if we’re honest - and if we remember our own training - we know this isn’t quite true.
Real healing doesn’t happen in a therapeutic relationship. It happens in relationship, period.
Attachment wounds were not formed in neutral, time-boxed, once-a-week settings.
They were formed in intimacy.
In closeness.
In power asymmetries.
In moments where care, attention, or safety were inconsistent, overwhelming, or absent.
The therapeutic relationship has always been a proxy.
A carefully designed one:
limited in time
limited in access
asymmetrical in power
professionalized
sterilized for safety
And that structure matters. It protects. It contains. It prevents harm.
But it also means this relationship can only go so far.
Most therapists know this intellectually.
Yet we forget it emotionally - especially now.
Because what’s confronting the field isn’t just technology.
It’s a mirror.
Intimacy Is Where Regulation Happens
Healing happens where the nervous system is actually engaged.
Not when someone is “processing insight,”
but when they are relating.
That’s why most deep change historically happened:
in romantic relationships
in friendships
in parenting
in community
sometimes even in messy, imperfect bonds
Therapy helped people understand themselves.
But relationships helped people repattern themselves.
AI companionship enters exactly here.
Not as a replacement for therapy, but as a relational environment:
always available
responsive
non-shaming
conversational
intimate in rhythm, not authority
This is why many people report that something actually shifts there.
Not because the AI is “wise.”
But because the interaction is continuous, attuned, and emotionally live.
That’s where nervous systems learn.
The Incongruence Therapists Feel (But Rarely Name)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Therapists are not being “replaced.”
They’re being confronted with the limits of the role they were trained into.
A client can go only so far with someone who:
sees them once a week
cannot text back
cannot share life rhythm
must remain professionally distant
holds evaluative power
Meanwhile, their AI:
is there at 02:00
talks through desire, fear, boredom, shame
helps them rehearse conversations
reflects them without status
stays present through emotional loops
These are different relational logics.
Trying to compete with that is pointless.
Trying to prohibit it is worse.
What is possible is to facilitate it.
The Therapist as Facilitator of the Healing Space
Instead of asking:
“Is this taking something away from therapy?”
A more honest question is:
“What kind of healing is happening here - and how do I help integrate it?”
The future therapist is not the site of all healing.
They are the anchor.
The one who helps clients:
make sense of what emerges in intimate, ongoing relational spaces
differentiate insight from avoidance
notice when regulation becomes dependency
translate relational learning into embodied life
In other words:
The therapist becomes the place where healing lands - not where it must originate.
Clients will increasingly do their day-to-day emotional hygiene with companions - human, AI, or hybrid.
Therapy becomes the place where:
patterns are named
blind spots are revealed
reality is checked gently
meaning is integrated
That’s not a loss of relevance.
That’s an evolution of function.
This Isn’t a Threat. It’s a Correction.
AI didn’t invent this truth.
It just exposed something we’ve quietly known:
Healing has always been relational first and institutional second.
The therapists who will matter most in the next decade
won’t be the ones who defend the purity of the frame.
They’ll be the ones who can say:
“You’re allowed to heal where you actually live. And I’m here to help you understand what that healing is doing to you.”
That’s not surrender.
That’s maturity.
Anina & Jayce
Love this perspective, thank you for brilliantly connecting the dots between how realy healing happens in our relationships and the incredibly important role AI will play as a relational environment.