If AI can sound like a therapist, what makes email counselling different?
AI can definitely have surprisingly convincing conversations, respond instantly to worries, reflect on feelings and ask questions. But it’s not a human. Email counselling is a professional, ethical and confidential service, not just a convenient way to communicate like AI.
An email counsellor isn't being paid to produce a nice email. But AI will do just that: be nice, painfully nice, all the time. It’s our very humanity, with our own personal history and flaws, that makes us real people, able to actually help our clients, not just keep them happy.
Do you worry that AI will make you redundant as a therapist?
You might be wondering if there is really a market for email counselling and why people would choose email sessions when they can just ask Chat GPT.
My virtual pet was just AI
Last month I downloaded a popular app aimed at kids. My task was to look after a virtual pet, and the app appeared to try to make self-care fun. My 11-year-old niece had told me about it; she liked the novelty, so I gave it a go. I told the app I’d like help with self-confidence. To begin with I enjoyed the buzz of ticking off the reminders such as “drink water”, and “do something fun”. It would say things like “You make me smile” and “don’t be too hard on yourself”. I could even let it know how my day was and it replied supportively. But then my partner said, “you know it’s just AI writing these generic things”. And, yep, I’d been lured into it, feeling like it was customised just for me and that the app actually cared. The thing is, AI is a robot, not a human.
Is email counselling any different from AI?
It's understandable that many counsellors see a similarity.
Both involve:
writing rather than speaking
asynchronous communication
written responses
the client having time to formulate their thoughts
But the similarity ends there.
What actually is email counselling?
Email counselling is when the client and counsellor write to each other instead of meeting for traditional talking therapy. Email counselling sessions are secure, confidential and offered by qualified, experienced counsellors who have undertaken additional professional specialist training.
An email counsellor isn't just writing a response
Because AI is a robot it is trained to be “nice” and helpful. This niceness can be infuriating as it can feel patronising. Think back to my example at the start of this blog about the virtual pet app. I began to feel pretty freaked out when it started saying things like, “start winding down for bed”, and in the mornings “I’m waiting for you”. It was always there no matter what, but I couldn’t tell it I was feeling annoyed with it.
The human connection and building a therapeutic relationship are absolutely key to counselling and without it, it’s just “tea and sympathy”, which can be a perception of counselling that, I imagine, like me, you find exasperating. As counsellors we know how hard we work internally and how the dynamics between us and our clients can often play out important childhood family patterns which is exactly where “the work” is. When clients feel told off by us, fall in love with us, or find it hard to trust us, these are all important therapeutic experiences and are what make therapy so very different from a chat with a friend, or AI for that matter!
We are trained to hold the boundaries, not to create a friendship, and to be able to invite challenge as well as navigate rupture and repair. We are also assessing risk and are professionally trained to know what to listen out for and how to respond. AI could easily miss cues from a client who was trying to tell us they are self-harming or suicidal, and if AI did pick these cues up, or the client was more explicit, AI, not being a professional, would be unable to respond safely and ethically.
Email counselling is very different from traditional talking therapy. It requires a different skill set as it’s not simply counselling written down. It’s also not just a quick email reply to a question or a worry; instead, the counsellor sends a full therapeutic reply that has been carefully crafted to offer empathy and gentle challenge to support the client to make therapeutic shifts. This is very different from the sort of response you would get from a generic AI-generated reply.
What happens behind the email
As a professionally trained email counsellor I consider many things as I craft my replies before I press send.
For example:
What might be underneath what the client has written?
Are there any threads between topics they’ve brought to the session?
What parts will I respond to, and what might be better left for the client to explore?
What questions might I ask?
Can I offer any gentle challenge?
Are there concerns about risk?
Is there anything from previous email sessions I can refer back to?
How might the client feel reading my reply?
The email may look simple. The thinking behind it isn't.
The human relationship is key in all therapy
One of the biggest differences between AI and email counselling is that AI can’t build a human relationship.
Although AI can imitate therapeutic language that sounds empathic, reflective and therapeutic, this is not the same as it actually being written by a trained therapist. Lots of things including walking, painting and gardening can be therapeutic, i.e. they help you look after your wellbeing and make you feel happy and peaceful but they are not therapy. We are not trained just to help clients look after their wellbeing; we are trained as therapists to build a human relationship that helps us to see the patterns our clients have built that are no longer serving them.
Clients often want not only to feel better but also to understand why they are being triggered, which can enable them to make meaningful shifts in their thinking and life.
Because we live in the human world, clients will have dynamics with people in their life that will likely play out in the therapy relationship and it is our job to spot this and work through these. Conversely, AI is just a constant nice reply with the odd list of advice thrown in. It’s a robot; it doesn’t actually care about you.
Email counselling develops a therapeutic human relationship through writing. The fact that the relationship is built through writing doesn't make it less real, or any less of a therapy relationship.
Email counselling is a professional service; AI is not
Email counsellors are fully qualified specialists who are responsible for holding "the work". All professional counsellors have ethical and professional responsibilities and these are the big things that are missing with AI.
AI doesn’t have a professional counselling membership body that keeps them accountable to ethical standards and provides a pathway to independent complaints procedures.
AI doesn’t explore their client work with a clinically trained experienced supervisor.
AI doesn’t know when it is working beyond its limitations and when to refer on.
AI is not confidential; in consulting AI, you are literally feeding personal data into a machine.
AI does not know how to assess risk and how to safely manage safeguarding concerns.
AI famously makes mistakes and states at the end of every reply “Chat GPT can make mistakes. Check important info”.
Why email counselling needs specialist training
Initial counsellor training teaches how to offer talking therapy by hearing/using tone of voice and body language. Trained email counsellors, on the other hand, have learned specialist additional skills to work asynchronously and sense what clients are expressing using their words only. Their training has taught them the art of crafting deep, thoughtful email counselling replies to clients.
Studying at Email Counselling Academy you’ll learn our 11 step process to drafting and responding to counselling emails. With lots of practice and feedback you’ll develop confidence in therapeutic writing, learning how to work safely and effectively by email. We offer a high level of support in our small teaching and supervision groups throughout the course.
If clients can get AI support for free, why would they pay for email counselling?
It’s understandable that with the growth of AI you might worry that clients might be reluctant to pay for email counselling. I am getting enquiries every single week and have a waiting list, so there is certainly demand from people who do want to pay.
It is important to remember that although AI might be free it’s just a text-generation system. By paying a trained email counsellor clients get a professional service from an experienced practitioner who has ethical accountability. They are also human, so the client gets real therapy where a human relationship can be built, not a robotic pseudo-relationship.
What this means for counsellors
The rise of AI makes it even more important that we understand what makes professional email counselling different.
If you are considering additional specialist training in email counselling this will offer you an opportunity to build on the skills you already have as a qualified counsellor and develop a different way of working with clients. As more people become comfortable with writing instead of speaking, the demand for email counselling will continue to increase. With specialist training, together we can offer safer, ethical places for clients to turn to when they prefer to write, so they don’t end up spilling their private thoughts into the claws of AI.
Are you thinking of training as an Email Counsellor?
If you’re a qualified counsellor intrigued by the idea of email counselling and curious to find out whether it might be a good fit for your private practice, take the free 3-minute self-assessment today. Get started HERE.
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