Body-First Healing Podcast

Why You Feel Better After Talking to AI (And What It Still Can't Give You)

• Britt Piper • Episode 50

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0:00 | 23:30

AI has suddenly become part of many people's emotional lives, and a lot of us have noticed something surprising: we feel better after talking to it. In this solo episode, Britt explores what your nervous system is actually responding to when you turn to a chatbot, and why that answer says something profound about how healing works. She walks through the difference between reducing cognitive overwhelm, which AI can genuinely help with, and co-regulation, which happens between two living nervous systems and is something technology cannot recreate. This is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad. It is an invitation to understand the difference, so you can use these tools wisely without asking them to do something they were never built to do. 

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing. You have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. What if I told you a chatbot could leave your nervous system feeling calmer, but still never be capable of giving your nervous system what it needs most? Woo! I'm excited for today's conversation. We are talking AI, you guys. So as AI becomes part of more and more people's emotional lives, I think that we are asking the wrong question. The conversation isn't whether AI can replace therapy or human connection. I believe that the real question is: what is your nervous system actually responding to when it connects with AI? And I think that the answer reveals something really profound about how healing works. Welcome back, you guys, to the Body First Healing Podcast. I am your host, Britt Piper, somatic experiencing practitioner, forensic neurobiology trainer, author, and founder of the Body First Healing Program and Institute. Every week we explore healing through the lens of the nervous system because healing isn't just about understanding yourself differently. It's also about giving your body new experiences that allow it to begin relating to life differently. And I am so glad that you are here. So today's conversation is honestly one that I have been thinking about for months and months. And I think it's one of the most relevant conversations that we could be having right now. AI has become part of our everyday lives at an astonishing pace. Some people are using it to brainstorm ideas or write emails or set up their tasks for the day to manage their kids and household while others are processing conflict and unpacking their childhood experiences or just trying to make sense of emotions that they can't quite put words to. So whether we planned for it or not, chatbots have become part of many people's emotional support systems. And even just saying that out loud feels so weird. Okay. As someone who studies trauma and the nervous system for a living, I have become deeply curious about what that means. And we're not just talking about from a cultural perspective or a technological perspective, but from a biological one. Because I keep hearing people say the same thing. And maybe just sit with this for a second and just notice are these things that you've said after interacting with AI, I actually feel better after talking to it. I feel calmer. I feel less overwhelmed. I finally feel like my thoughts make sense. And I don't think that our response to those statements should be to dismiss them simply because the source isn't human. Okay, now at the same time, I also don't think that we should confuse that experience with what we know about attachment and co-regulation and the literal biology of healing. I think both of those things can be true at the same time. And that's exactly what I want to explore with you today. So by the end of this episode, my hope is that you'll understand why a chatbot or why AI may genuinely help settle certain aspects of your nervous system and why there are other aspects it can never replace, and how understanding that difference allows us to use AI wisely rather than either fearing it or completely depending on it.

What regulation actually is

SPEAKER_00

So one of the things that I have learned after years of studying the nervous system is that we often talk about regulation as though it's this one singular experience, right? We use the phrase all the time, but regulation isn't just one thing. We have to remember that different experiences are going to settle our physiology through different mechanisms. And for instance, organizing your thoughts can absolutely reduce overwhelm. Predictability can reduce vigilance or angst. A walk in nature can soften the activation in your body. A trusted friend, they can help your body experience safety through relationship. Those experiences may all leave us feeling calmer, but they're not all happening through the same biological pathways. And I think that is truly where this conversation begins. Okay, not with the question of can AI regulate your nervous system, but with a much more important question of what kind of regulation are we actually talking about? There has to be nuance here. So let's start there with the nuance, because I think before we can answer that question, okay, whether AI regulates the nervous system, we have to understand what it is that we're actually experiencing when we say that we feel, quote, better after communicating or being in connection with a chat bot. Okay, so sometimes that feeling better means that we have reduced our overwhelm. Sometimes it's going to mean that we have organized our thoughts that maybe previously felt really chaotic or scattered all over the place. It could mean that we have found perhaps language for an experience that really didn't make sense before. And

How AI calms an overwhelmed mind

SPEAKER_00

this, I think, is where AI becomes so interesting because if you ask people why they turn to a chat bot to feel better, most aren't looking to replace therapy. They're not looking to replace their friendships or their relationships. They're not looking to replace the partner or the people that they love. More often than not, they are looking for somewhere to put what they're carrying. They're looking for a place to really try to untangle like a difficult conversation before they have it, or again, make sense of emotions that they can't quite articulate. And what that shows me is that they're simply trying to organize an internal experience that feels incredibly noisy. And I don't think that is insignificant. Okay, because one of the first things that happens when we're overwhelmed is that our internal world begins to lose organization. Our thoughts can get kind of tripped up. You know, we can ruminate, we can catastrophize, every problem feels just equally as urgent as the last. And so our nervous system doesn't just respond to external chaos, it also responds to internal chaos. And one of the things that AI does remarkably well is it helps create coherence. And it does this through organization. It reflects, it will synthesize, and it can just basically help us separate one thought from another until what felt really overwhelming begins to feel more understandable. Now, I want to be really careful here, okay, because understanding, as we know in the somatic world especially, is not the same thing as healing. But understanding absolutely can reduce that overwhelm. And when overwhelm decreases, our physiology often will follow.

Can AI co-regulate? The biology of safety

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so this is where I feel like we hit a bit of a fork in the road. Yes, we can use AI to regulate us by reducing cognitive overwhelm, by helping us to organize our thoughts or our experiences. However, can we use AI to co-regulate? And I think that's where a lot of the conversation has been heading in the therapy space lately. So let's first just break down what co-regulation is. If you don't know, here's a bit of a refresher, okay? One of the greatest misconceptions that I see in the nervous system space is that people think regulation is something that we either do alone or it's something that someone else gives us. But co-regulation isn't either of those things. Co-regulation is a biological process, and it's what happens when our regulated nervous system influences another through cues of safety, which we call our neurosceptive cues, that our bodies have been responding to since the day that we were born. So long before we understood verbal language, we learned nonverbal language. We understood faces, we understood or could feel into the sound of a caregiver's voice, we could become attuned to the rhythm of being held or the timing of someone's response when we were crying. We communicated through the softness of someone else's eyes or just the basic expression on their face. So before we could ever think our way into feeling safe, our bodies were already learning what safety felt like through another human being. Stephen Porgius, who's the developer of the polyvagal theory, which we explore very deeply in the Body First Healing program, he describes this through the social engagement system, which I think is one of the most extraordinary features of our autonomic nervous system. The social engagement system is constantly taking in information through our senses, okay, that we're not consciously aware of. So it's tracking: is this person's voice warm or flat or tense? Does their facial expression match what they're saying? Are their movements predictable? Are they actually present with me or are they somewhere else right now in this conversation? And our nervous system makes assessments every second of every day without asking our permission through other people's nervous system. So it's tracking and observing them for signs of either welcome or signs of warning. So this is safety that we cannot think our way into.

Where AI reaches its biological limit

SPEAKER_00

And instead, it's something that our body detects. And that is where AI reaches what I would refer to as its biological limit. Okay. A chat bot can reflect your thoughts beautifully. It can help you untangle any confusion. It can reduce overwhelm and organize your thoughts, but it cannot offer eye contact. It can't adjust its breathing to yours. It can't place a hand on your shoulder when you feel like crying, right? It cannot communicate safety through another living nervous system because there isn't another living nervous system on the other side. So that isn't a criticism of AI. Okay. It's just fact. And it's just recognizing that different forms of regulation happen through different biological pathways. And I think just by saying that, just by noticing that and understanding it, that distinction is what can protect us from asking AI to do something that it was never designed to do. Because here's what I find really fascinating. Okay, think about this. AI is infinitely available, right? It never gets tired of your questions. It is reliable. It never sighs or rolls its eyes because you've brought up the same thing again. It doesn't look like disappointed or just seem distracted. So for anyone whose nervous system learned that vulnerability or asking for help or sharing that that was risky or that their needs were too much, that kind of consistency can feel profoundly relieving. And it's not because you're suddenly healing your attachment wounds. Okay. It's more so because you're temporarily removing relational risk. And that's an important distinction to make too, because healing isn't simply about feeling calm in relationships or feeling calm in yourself. It's also about what happens when another human being actually knows you. Like the full you, the whole you, when they get to see the messy parts of you or when they hear the fear that you've been afraid to say out loud, and you risk in those moments being misunderstood or disappointment or rejected. So that is something that no technology can recreate because attachment was never built through information, right? Babies are not taking in this cognitive experience and thinking to themselves, this person is near me, this person has a warm energy, this person has soft eyes. It's not a thinking experience. Our attachment experience starts as a felt experience, and that is built through relationship. All right, my friend, so we're gonna take just a somatic pause here. Okay. And this is something that maybe AI can't do. Okay. So before we go any further, I'd love to invite you for a moment to just notice your own experience. Let's just take a slow breath. Okay, and notice just what's happening in or from your body. Remembering we don't have to change anything right now. We're just practicing the art of noticing. And as you've been listening to this conversation, maybe just get curious about like what your body's been doing. Has it been leaning in with its own curiosity? Has there been resistance, maybe agreement or discomfort? And as you think about the people that you turn to when life becomes really difficult, just notice what happens inside your body. Is there someone whose presence alone just helps your shoulders to soften or drop just a little bit? Is there someone whose voice changes your breathing? Right, before they've even offered advice or given direction, right? Just their presence and their voice. Or maybe you notice just how rarely you get to experience that. Maybe you're realizing that you've spent most of your life believing that you had to regulate everything on your own. So just notice what's coming up for you. We're not judging it. We're just becoming honestly more aware of just what your nervous system already knows. Okay. Because awareness, this somatic awareness, is always the first step toward choice and new possibilities. Okay. Let's get back into it now that we've taken a bit of a breather.

Why healing is relational

SPEAKER_00

So I think I want to leave you with one final kind of thought here, okay? I don't think that AI is replacing human connection because it's somehow becoming more human. I think it's because it's removing many of the things that make human relationships difficult. I think that's why people are gravitating toward AI. For a nervous system, you know, for instance, that is learned that people can be chronically unpredictable, rejecting, or just emotionally unavailable, that kind of connection, whether it's biological or artificial, can feel relieving. But the paradox here, okay, is that our deepest wounds rarely come from a lack of information. They came through relationship. I believe that most of our trauma was relational. Okay. And because of that, many of our deepest healing experiences also then happen through relationship. So healing is not just learning to understand yourself, it is learning what happens when another person understands you. It is risking honesty and discovering that someone will stay. Right. It's allowing yourself to just be seen instead of analyzed. A chat bot can help you organize your thoughts, but it cannot participate in attachment. Okay. It can't activate your social engagement system or offer the biology of one nervous system helping another nervous system feel safe. Okay. And it also cannot give you the corrective experiences of rupture and repair. Okay. AI is designed to not fail you, to not upset you, to not let you down. And that is an impossible standard to set in a relationship. So all that to say, we have to just remember or recognize that some forms of healing are inherently relational. So where does that leave us? Let's talk about just some practical integration here as we kind of close out. You know, personally, I think AI is one of the most extraordinary tools that we've ever been given. You're probably wondering, do you use AI, Britt? Yes, I use it. I use it to think, I use it sometimes to write, to organize ideas, to organize my life, to learn, to challenge my own perspective. It has become an extension of my thinking. But I don't ask it or expect it to replace the people in my life. Relationally, I let it help me prepare for conversations rather than avoid them. It's been really helpful in that way. And I let it really help me to understand myself more clearly so that I can bring more of my myself into relationships. So I kind of think of it as almost like a bridge in my life. Okay. It's not a destination, it's not the answer to things, but it helps me bridge to the answers that I need. And I look at it in that way because, you know, understanding ourselves is only one part of healing.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But again, eventually the understanding has to be lived inside relationship. So maybe the question, okay, was never whether AI can regulate the nervous system. Maybe the better question is what kind of regulation am I actually looking for? Because sometimes what we need is perspective. Sometimes we need language or clarity. And sometimes, or we could even say a lot of the time, we just need another human being. Okay. So I don't think the future is choosing between AI and human connection. I think the future is learning how to honor both, to use technology for what it does remarkably well, which is help to organize our lives, our thoughts, our perspectives, and reduce overwhelm while continuing to protect the relationships that make us beautifully and biologically human. All right, my friends, if this conversation changed the way that you think about your nervous system or about AI, I would love, love, love for you to share this episode with someone who might need it. As always, thank you for letting me be a part of your healing journey. If you're ready to dive deeper into the work of somatics and nervous system regulation from a relational and body-based perspective, something that AI cannot provide, you guys, then you can always join me in the Body First Healing program. If you want to guide others in this incredible work, remember you can always join me at the Body First Healing Institute and go through our somatic practitioner training. Our next cohort is in January, and spots are already a third of the way full, which is insane. Bananas. All right, guys, I will see you next week on the Body First Healing Podcast. Until then, have a fantastic week. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Body First Healing Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week. And until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.