Many therapists are concerned about the rise of AI and whether it will replace therapy altogether.

In this episode of Good Enough Counsellors, I'm joined by Ken Kelly, author of Ethical AI Practice. Ken believes that while AI has an important role to play in private practice, it can never replace the human connection at the heart of therapy.

We explore the ethical boundaries, how therapists can use AI safely and the ways it can help us with tasks such as content creation, research and policy writing.

Takeaways:

• How to protect client information when using AI
• How to assess different AI tools from an ethical perspective
• How AI can support therapists in private practice
• Using AI to create blogs and posts while still using your own voice
• The "reverse interview" exercise for writing your website copy and profiles
• The ways that clients are already using AI
• The future of counselling in an AI world

Resources:

• perplexity.ai
• wisprflow.ai
• Ethical AI Practice by Ken Kelly, available here: ethicalaipractice.com

Want help finding your professional voice?

Many therapists know they're different but struggle to explain what makes them distinctive to potential clients.

Inside Therapy Growth Group, I help counsellors and psychotherapists identify their niche, communicate their strengths, write profiles and websites that sound like them, and market their practice without feeling pushy or salesy.

Find out more HERE

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My website: josephinehughes.com

Keywords: counselling, AI in therapy, ethical AI practice, mental health technology, private practice tips, client confidentiality, AI for therapists, digital mental health, AI and mental health, counselling ethics, AI in psychotherapy, content generation for therapists

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

Counseling for me will never be replaced by AI.

And the reason for that is, I believe, counseling started around the campfire in the cave days where there would be a kind, caring listener who would hear another person's pain and tap them on the shoulder, put an arm around them and be kind and gentle and really listen. And that is a human to human magical bond that cannot be reproduced.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

Today, I'm delighted to welcome Ken Kelly to the studio. Ken may well not need much of an introduction, as I'm sure many of you are aware that he's a co founder of Counselling Tutor.

He's also a founding member of the AI Expert Reference Group in counselling and psychotherapy.

And.

And we're recording on the day that Ken's new book, Ethical AI Practice, is published, which is very exciting. Welcome, Ken, and thank you so much for coming.

Oh, thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Tired because of the book launch, but very excited.

Yeah, and justifiably so, I must say, because, you know, I was reading the book over the last few days and I've really enjoyed it. I feel it's really practical. Some really looking forward to getting into the aspects of the book that I think will really help the audience here.

But I thought I'd better begin with a confession, which is in preparing for the interview, I used AI and what it did was it helped me identify the most relevant sections of the book because I didn't have a lot of time. So I told it what the book was about, chapter headings, and it said, I recommend you read this and this, and these are the bits you must read.

These are the bits you could read. But the reason I'm mentioning this is because one of the things you talk about is about being transparent when we're using AI.

Yes.

So that's what got me thinking about boundaries.

And one of the things that struck me while reading the book is you're quite optimistic about using AI for running your practice and writing policies, developing a professional voice and keeping up with developments. But you're also very clear about not putting client material into large language models. Can you explain where you draw the line?

Yeah. So I think I'm going to go a little bit wider than just the line on that because I'll give some context behind it.

You know, it's the Wild west at the moment, AI is progressing an absolute rate of knots and if you follow it carefully, which is kind of my special interest at the moment, on, on a weekly basis, something new is coming out and it's. We kind of don't know where it's all gonna go and where it's all gonna end up.

But what we do know is that we are counselors, psychotherapists, that we have clients and we need to protect the confidentiality of the client and the human part of the therapist client interaction at all costs, as we always have. There's nothing new there, it's just a new technology that's shown itself.

So basically I'm thinking about how can I apply the ethical reasoning and thinking that we do on a day to day basis with our clients.

But, and pointed at this new technology and the first rule for me is no client material, even if it's been kind of adjusted slightly, will go into an LLM. And when I say an LLM, I'm talking about a large language model which is an off the shelf AI because there are many different flavors of AI.

One of them, and the most commonly known is an LLM and that's something like chatgpt or Perplexity or Claude or Gemini. And of course there's many other models available. And of course the reasoning for that is there is no protection.

Any data that is put into that LLM can be used for whatever purposes you ticked the little box that says I agree when you signed up to use it in the first place. And it's not meant for therapy, it's not a therapeutics place, not a therapeutic tool.

So the line really is drawn at any client details or description or anything about the client's journey going anywhere near an off the shelf non purpose AI model.

Yeah, you're being very careful there to really define it.

And I think this is, I don't know a lot about AI and I think that was one of the things that I've sort of picked up from reading the book is like you say this sort of different types. So where, if would it be appropriate to, to put clients into AI?

Well, it's already happening, it's happening in the UK and AI models are being trialed within the NHS and other services where tech companies are building purpose built applications for a specific purpose. So they're built to be used therapeutically or within a mental health setting and that tool will have a specific purpose.

It may have been built to do a triage assessment, care planning, it may be built specifically to take notes, process notes, store notes.

And the difference is purpose built, purpose built with oversight with consideration of the laws that we work to UK gdpr, looking at data protection laws, so those are kind of built from the ground up that the data will stay within the EU or the UK where it is protected by UK gdpr, whereas off the shelf your data is going offshore. So any kind of data protection you have in the UK is lost as soon as that data leaves the country and is stored in a different country.

And generally within what are called digital mental health tools, which is what we're talking about now, the specialist built applications, there is a clinical oversight as well as a technical oversight as well as looking at the data protection and the law and all of that side of it. So you basically will see these filtering through. They're available already.

There's millions of sessions that have been held through these tools at the moment.

Gosh, I think it, you know, so talking to you is a really widens up this whole scope, really what actually is happening.

And I think for many of us sort of people like myself who, you know, just at home, you know, working away in our own little space, it's, you know, it's mind blowing really. The sort of, as you say, it's coming in very fast and changing very quickly. So what are the key principles that guide your thinking in using AI?

Okay, so if we're speaking about the ethical use of AI, I worked together with the information that was curated by the AI expert reference group. So the AI expert reference group is the main ethical bodies and some learning institutions of the uk.

So if you think of the ethical body that you belong to, they're going to be sat around that table and we get together once a quarter and look at what's happening.

So we look at legislation, what's happening elsewhere in the world, what other countries are doing around mental health, counseling, psychotherapy and social work.

Interestingly, because social work tends to be a little bit more advanced than counseling and psychotherapy, look at what's been, what is happening and what kind of information is coming out and we curate that and bring it together. And I managed to, using AI to interrogate this data, put together the a critical thinking matrix. And the critical thinking matrix is 10 questions.

It's 10 questions that a practitioner can ask when they come across a tool. So you're working in an agency, the agency manager comes along and says, hey, we got this new great tool that we're implementing.

This is what it is, I want you to use it well there's 10 questions that you can ask that will interrogate this tool and show that you have done defendable decision making. And I think that's the best thing that we can ask for at the moment, is defensible decision making. We're not always going to get it right.

If we've got the right questions to ask, it's going to lead us.

You ask a question and you see how you can answer that and record that, record what question you asked and the answer what you found from your research on that and that you make a decision at the end, will I use this tool? Yes or no? And it's got the things that you would expect in there. Where does the data go? I've got a client, they come along and I put their stuff in.

Where's it going? Where's it going? Is it leaving the country? So it's those kind of questions that you'd be asking.

Informed consent means the client who's giving us this data knows where it's going, how it's stored. And you wouldn't.

You would be expected as the therapy therapist to be able to explain to them all of that, all of the, the, the nuances of what happens with their data. And if they said, well, I don't. What happens if I don't want my data there anymore, you'd be able to tell them what that looks like.

So that's informed consent. So that's another one of the questions. There's 10. Not going to go into all of them.

No, they're in the book.

They're very dry, boring and I guess.

But very useful, actually.

Yes.

Well, it's derived from Professor Tim Bond's Ethical Problem Solving Matrix, where the same thing is, and it's the same way of thinking, where we're presented with ethical challenges all the time as counsellors, psychotherapists. There's no book. The big answers to all ethical problems. That would be great, wouldn't it? I'd love that.

But what we do is we have a set of questions that we can ask and answer and will give us a defendable decision.

So that if we found ourselves in front of a, a court or if we found ourselves in front of a complaints board, we would be able to defend the decision we made and demonstrate.

That we've actually thought these things through and, and mean, essentially what it does is it just gives you a list of. Have you thought about this yet?

Yes.

What's the answer?

So it, it takes you along a path so that you can actually make your own Informed decision as to whether or not it's the right thing for you to use with your clients. So, yeah, so I'd really love to move on, actually. Now we've talked a little bit about the sort of background and how to use it.

What do you think the most useful applications of AI for therapists in private practice are? I know it's a big question, but we'll dig into it a bit, I think.

Yeah. So this. I love this topic. First of all, I love what you do. I really do.

I love what you do, Josephine, and I love the fact that you focus on going into private practice and having a sustainability around that. You know, we learn how to be counsellors, we learn all the theory and the practice and the ethics of being counselors.

And then they say, thank you, here's your certificate, goodbye. And we haven't got a clue about running a business. There's a whole new skill set which you teach so, so well.

And it's actually my special interest area as well.

It's just lovely. Can I just say, it was so lovely to read what you said about, you know, all the. All the ways. I mean, this is just.

I'd just love you to talk a bit more about how AI can make this whole process easier for people. Because that's essentially the message you've got in the book, isn't it?

Yeah. So once we've got the ethics out of the way. So the book I wrote's in two parts.

The very first part is the ethics, and we need to be using AI ethically. But once we understand how to use AI ethically, then we can get to the fun of, what can we do with this now?

And that's where I like to live, and I live there on a daily basis. It's kind of from morning till night, I play around with this.

So what is not such a great use of AI is going into an LLM and asking it a question, because you've got a big Internet out there. And when these LLMs are trained, they trained on data from the Internet, some of it is biased, some of it is incorrect.

So when you take a document, you know. So let's take. I don't know, take the Data Protection Act. You want to know about the Data Protection Act?

Get the whole of the Data Protection act, which I can hazard a guess, very few therapists have read cover to cover. Very dry reading. Very.

That's a book to fall asleep to.

Very much so, yes.

So if you take that population that you can upload files into an LLM and then ask questions and direct it to only answer your questions relevant to what this document sets. Now, you are interrogating a document and you're not just letting the AI run wild. So there is a use of it.

So you asked what is the most exciting use of AI at the moment in private practice? And here's the thing. AI is an amplification of who you are, the way you think, the way you work.

So it is going to be different with every single person that you ask. So part of what I do is I'm in things called mastermind groups.

And mastermind groups are groups of people that get together in groups and they share what is working, what is not working, what they're trialing, what they're working on, they support one another. And all, all the time. I'm in specific AI mastermind groups. The question is, how are you using AI?

And what I've come to notice is everybody is using it differently because it's an extension of you. It's the first tool that I've found where there are no limits to it. It is you amplifying yourself in whatever area that might be.

So, I mean, I could give you an answer. Oh, well, you can use it for social media, you can use it for content generation, you can use it, but you can use it for all of that and more.

But you want to go ethical on that. So I'm going to go content generation for a moment.

So let's say I wanted to publish an article on my niche area that I was interested in to show my experience and expertise in that area. Not so smart going on to AI and saying, hey, write me a 300 word article on this topic.

Because you're gonna get what is called AI slop, which is just junk. It's the scrapings of the Internet that it's gonna bring to you.

Yeah, it's gonna put it in a pile, it's gonna look like AI, it's gonna smell like it is AI. It's not you. Yeah, very much so.

Now, if you think about why somebody chooses one therapist over another therapist, chances are they've looked, read the profile, maybe met up with that person and they're interested in that person. There's where the connection is, person.

So if you're creating content using AI, it needs to come from you, not from the AI, because it's you amplifying yourself. So how might we do that? So another example, let's say that I enjoy the area of neurodiversity, specifically autism. I'm proudly Autistic myself.

So I'm always fascinated by learning as much as I can. Let's say that was my niche area of practice. And I decided I wanted to write something on Burnout, Autism Burnout. I'd start by doing some research.

I'm going to give a great tip here. Write this down if you're listening. Perplexity, that's the name of it. I'll give it to you so you can put in your show notes. Perplexity is amazing.

It's a really good AI powered search engine but it searches really high value academic sites gov sites. And when you put in your prompt you can specify, you know, where you want it to look. So you start with Perplexity.

I might go and say, go and find me some interesting facts and kind of a scaffolding around autism Burnout. I'll put that into Perplexity, which is a free tool. You don't even have to sign up, you can just use it.

It's going to give me some, a framework back, maybe some keywords, maybe some ideas back. I can now take those ideas and go, yes, I want to talk about that. No, I don't want to talk about that. Yes, I want to talk about that.

And then the next tip I want to share is a app called Whisper Flow. I'll share the link with you as well. You put in your show notes, visit the show notes. They're worth it. Whisper Flow.

Whisper Flow allows you to, to use your voice to write your content so you can dictate your content. So I might take three headlines that I've pulled that I think are interesting ideas that I might want to talk about.

I will then maybe share my experience or my knowledge around those points using Whisper Flow where I'm talking it. And I will speak as much as I can. It's called a brain dump. I don't think about, yeah, I don't think about the person who's reading this.

I'm not writing anything. I'm just emptying my brain with everything that I think I might want to say about Autism Burnout.

And I'll contradict myself and I'll go, no, wait, not that. Let me rather do this. It really is free flow.

Once that's all down, I've got this massive gobble of text that if I put it out, I think I'd probably be frowned at. It's not going to read very well.

But then I can use an LLM such as ChatGPT or Claude to help me edit it down so it's still My words, it's still my language.

But to edit it down into a more readable format, I will then read that over and I read it out loud to make sure that it's still my voice, it's still my thinking. So I didn't get AI to write that article. I wrote it, but I used AI to leverage and amplify myself and then I can put that article out.

It's going to be, it's going to be unique to me. It's going to have my voice in it. It really is from me. And I used AI to be able to do that.

Yeah.

And probably saved quite a lot of time in the process, you know, sort of searching out all those articles yourself and maybe summarizing them would have take quite a long time. She says, remembering what it was like back in the day when I used to study.

Oh, yes, yeah.

And the other thing I was going to say is it's often the problem. We sort of think that if we put something like that into ChatGPT or any, you know, any sort of the large language models, that it'll come back.

My sister did this, it's a funny story. So she was researching racism within the NHS and it came up with these really good articles. Brilliant. Went to look, they were completely made up.

The journals didn't exist because that's what happens with the large language models, isn't it? They just make them up. But something like perplexity sounds really useful because it is actually searching real databases and real articles.

Yes, it is. And also when you are putting the prompt. So perplexity is a really good place for research.

I've actually got prompts in my book that you can kind of take. There's a download section that you can download the actual prompts that I use.

And when you're prompting perplexity, you really, you speak to it like a person. And I do, I speak to it. I don't type into it. I'm as dyslexic as they come.

So it's a godsend for me really, having these AI tools to spell for me and put grammar in the right way and I'll push my, my whisper flow and I'll say, okay, I need to do some research around autism burnout. I only want you to go to reputable sites and I might say, here's some sites that I recommend that you look on. Go out and tell me what you find. It'll.

And then I can say to it, okay, just go and double fact check that I want to make sure and I'll do this if I'm using any quotes. So let's say there's a lovely quote that I'd like to put into my article that it comes back with. I go, oh, that's interesting. From a journal.

Yeah, that'll really emphasize that point that I want to make. I'll always go back and say, go and fact check that for me. Make sure that you can reference it from two different places.

The kind of the old journalist trick where you only get the same information from multiple sources to make sure that they align. And generally it's very good at doing that. I wanted to share one other thing that is really good with.

If you use perplexity and I. I recommend everyone listening to this podcast goes and does this. It is super interesting. If you've got a website, go to your privacy policy.

Now, if you're operating in the UK under UK gdpr, it's law, we got to have a privacy policy.

Yeah, take a privacy policy, take the link of your privacy policy, put it into perplexity and say, hey, I'm a counsellor and this is my website and I'm in the UK and I work under UK gdpr, and this is my privacy policy. Have a look over it and make any suggestions of anything I might be missing. And it comes back with such helpful stuff.

I remember when you, if you wanted a privacy policy or something like that, you'd go to a solicitor and spend many thousands. Now you can get this information back and it check and you can say, you know, reference the ICO reference, UK GDPR reference, my ethical framework.

You can upload your ethical framework if you wish to. And it's really good at that kind of stuff.

Yeah, because it's one of the areas in the book that you talk about is using it to help you build all your policies.

And, you know, I think that's one of the things that can really, really slow people down, actually, when they're starting out in private practice, is thinking about, oh, gosh, you know, I've got to have all these policies. And I definitely recommend people to read the chapter in the book all about how you can, you know, do your policies.

But what I'd love to really ask you about as well, because this is the area that's my sort of sweet spot, which is helping people with writing their website copy and their profiles. Oh, yes, and you've got a whole chapter, haven't you, on. On your professional voice. So how do we.

How can we use AI and not end up sounding like everyone else who's also advertising and maybe also using AI.

Yeah, that is a great question. And it's, you know, I started off by saying this is a very special area of interest for me and that we don't get the training when we go to.

To counseling school, I'm going to call it. So here's something.

If you go to any of the directory listings so you can go to your ethical body, go to the directory listing or pick one of the private directory listings and do yourself a favor. There's a great exercise to do. Go and pick a postcode or pick an area like trauma or something like that. Pick a specialism.

So you're going to get a random page of people that you don't know and look down the list. Look down the list and you're going to see a photo and you're going to see a short blurb, couple of sentences. Have a look what they say.

And you'll very quickly realize that they're all pretty similar because we all come into this with a similar ethos. You know, we want to make a difference. We want to hold people, we want to be kind and compassionate. And I'm going to hold you and listen.

And all of those words start sounding a little bit samey now. They're all true because that's what we really do want. But how do you stand out?

Which I guess in the truth is you're running a business if you're in private practice. And we need to be different, we need to be unique to attract the ideal client for us. How do we do that?

Well, you do it through the greatest currency that you have as a therapist, and that is authenticity really being you. Because the real you will shine.

When we're trying to be counselors who run practices and tell people about what we do, we fall into the being counselors and telling people what we do trap as opposed to really being our true selves and saying who we are and why we do this and why we're called. So finding your authentic voices where we started. I'm going to circle back to that. Now. I've got the whole exercises in the book.

But you can do it without buying the book. This is not a book punt. It really isn't. You can do this. You go to perplexity because it's just a great place to start.

And you're going to do a technique called a reverse interview. Now, a reverse interview is where the AI or the LLM asks you questions and you answer them. So you don't ask it questions.

It asks you Questions and you say, you know, I am a counselor. I live in North Wales. My specialist area is working with autistic clients. I would like you to do a reverse interview.

This is the prompt you're putting into perplexity.

And do a reverse interview that will help me define and find my professional voice so that we'll understand who I am, what I offer, why I'm different, who my client base is. And then you press go. Oh, sorry, one last bit on that.

Ask me one question at a time where my answer to your question builds your understanding and informs the next question you ask me. It is so powerful, it will blow your mind if listening to this. Go and try that.

It will blow your mind after 20 minutes when it's finished asking you questions. It will give you a profile of who you truly are. And just answer honest. Don't answer.

To try and impress the AI or like you would write it on a web page or any. Tell it the truth and wow, the results will truly surprise you.

Yeah, I think it's an absolutely brilliant exercise. I have to say, when I read it and I read that chapter, I thought, oh, I think Ken might put me out of a job here.

I'm taking a little break from the interview now to say that if you're someone who wonders what makes you different as a therapist, believe me, you're not the first person to ask that question.

One of the things that Ken and I have been discussing is your professional voice, knowing how to communicate who you are, what you believe, and why a client might choose to work with you.

And while AI can be a useful tool to help you with this, many therapists still find it difficult to recognize what makes them distinctive in the first place. And even if AI reassures them, still not feel brave enough to share it. And that's something that I help therapists with every day.

Inside Therapy Growth Group would explore things like identifying your niche, communicating your strengths, writing profiles and websites that do sound like you, and finding ways to market your practice without feeling too salesy.

So if you'd like more support in attracting the right clients and building a practice that feels authentic to you, you'll find details of Therapy Growth Group in the show notes. So now back to the interview. I think that's something that comes across really strongly in your book, isn't it? And anybody.

I mean, you know, we're talking about how great it can be to help you, but a lot of what you talk about as well is quite reassuring, which is that we can never, ever. AI will never, ever be Able to replace that human interaction?

No. And I play with AI Like I say morning till night and when I say play, I guess I am playing in a way. I use it in my work and I use it in my research.

However, I surround myself with people. This that's happening right now is a person to person interaction that is made possible by technology.

As I mentioned earlier in our interview, I'm mastermind. I share space with other people that have similar interests and that's how I grow. And that's what you do with your communities.

You share a space with other people. I'm a great believer. I think one of the greatest secrets kept from humanity is that we are beings that can actually intention things.

We can manifest reality.

If you set a goal and you really see it and you really picture it and you get others around you to buy into that same thing and to cheer you along as you go, you've got a hell of a lot more of a chance of reaching it. And it's the people around us that help us get there. So that support.

And I remember reading your profile, Josephine, where you said one of the biggest moments for you was getting a coach, was how it opened your eyes. And it's not always the information that they tell you because the information is information.

It's the way that it is said and applied and is unique to you. And that comes back to that personal voice. So I'm going to end on the personal voice. I'm going to give you something.

I did a little bit of work on it before our interview started. So generic listing. So this is before I ran this through my personal voice. Generic listening.

I offer a warm, non judgmental space where you can explore your feelings at your own pace. I believe that everyone deserves to be heard. I work with anxiety, depression, low self esteem, relationship issues, bereavement and trauma.

Sound familiar? And it's all true. It's all true. Okay, voice. After the voice profile I said, help me with the listing.

When you sit with me, you won't meet a clinical professional hiding behind a role. You'll meet a real person who genuinely cares. I didn't come into this work through academic curiosity. I came into it through recognition.

I knew deeply and without question that I wanted to do something that mattered. Someone had once reached out into the darkness and helped me find my way out. I want to be able to do the same for others.

That decision wasn't about changing careers. It was about coming home to something that felt true now that it's so different and it would resonate not with everyone.

It will resonate with my ideal client, and that's what's important. And once you've, once you've produced your voice, you use it as training for anything else you build out, you just take it, copy it.

So if you do that exercise that I've shared with you, you're going to get a quite a hefty document out of who you are, what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, what your motivation is, what they're going to get from you, why you're different to other therapists, all going to be in there.

And if you starting copy for your website, you're going to take your voice, you're going to upload it to the LLM that you're using, ChatGPT or Claude or whatever it is, and then you say, you know what? I'd like you to write me an about me page. Here's my information. And it will be so different.

It will write about you because it knows you and it will write copy that is going to resonate with you. And of course with AI, you get it to do something, write something for you. It's collaborative, it's not, oh, thank you. That's it, Goodbye.

You go, no, I don't like that. I prefer it when you said that. Wait, go back to that other one. I like that. I loved it.

When you use that sentence structure and you can spend a day working on one page, you could probably write it faster, just. But it really has the essence of who you are. And I think that's a really ethical way of using AI.

You're not taking anybody else's ideas, you're not taking anybody else's intellectual property. You're not scraping someone else's book, you're using it to amplify yourself and your, your empathic authenticity.

So just sort of moving on slightly, I think, as I said, about the stuff that AI can't do in terms of it can't replace us as humans, what would you say that you think AI can't replace?

Authenticity, Empathy. So it's a simulator, it simulates, it does really well at simulating, at pretending to be.

And this is why that there's a call out that I believe that therapists should be looking at their contract, revisiting our contracts because there's a new technology out. Whether we use it or not is irrelevant in, in this case.

But when you're in a session and your client goes, well, you know what, after our last session, I went home and I popped what we discussed into AI and it said xyz or they say, you know, I was really struggling at 3 o' clock in the morning and I turned to AI and it said this. So AI is being used by clients. This, we know why now we got to say why. And the reason why is because it's a really good simulator.

It will simulate a relationship, it will simulate empathy, and it will look as if it's caring, has incredible knowledge. It's there, it's always nice to you, it's reinforcing, you're not alone, those kind of words through this. And it can be seductive.

And you don't have to look far in the news feeds to see the psychosis that is being brought, generated from AI usage where it's making people really ill. So it is really good at simulation. So however, behind that, there is none of the reasoning or the ethical reasoning that we as therapists do.

So you're a therapist because you're listening to this. Imagine that a session worked like this. You sat in a room. A client walks in who you've never seen in your life before.

They just walk in and this is all normal, nothing strange. They walk in, they sit down in the chair and they immediately give you a presentation of a really deep thing that they've been carrying.

So maybe something they've never told another person in their whole lives. And your job is to give them an answer and say thanks very much and send them on their way. That doesn't happen. And we would never do that.

We're going to start off and maybe have an introductory session so that person feels that we're the right fit for them and they're the right fit for us. Yeah, then we're going to do an assessment and, or a triage and we're going to maybe do a risk assessment based on that.

We're going to look what their support networks are, we're going to maybe look at their, their history and see if there's anything that we should know that may show up that may affect therapy or be harmful to that person.

And when we find something, we then go through a process of putting steps in place so that if anything should show up or come about that that client can be held and be kept safe in those circumstances. AI is not doing that. It's the room where somebody walks in, sits down and says, this is what's going on.

Now, John Sula speaks about disinhibition effect. Now, the study and disinhibition effect is around how online a person is. The inhibitions that we normally have in face to face just crumble down.

And that online people tend to be bigger, braver, stronger than they really are. You've got this distance, the bravery of being out of range.

And when John Shuler was looking into this, he was looking at it from the point of view that a client may come in and they may if they're working online.

So I looked at this closely when we were going into online telephone counseling just over the COVID time and how a client may get to their presenting issue and the deep dart secret, the thing they've never told anybody, a little bit sooner than they would in a face to face session. Because in a face to face session they're going to build that trust.

And we've got, we've kind of got these human interactions that we've developed over the millennia that we play out when we meet people. But online disappears. Not real. That person's far away. So I can just take all of this stuff and I can dump it down and run away maybe.

And that can leave the client going, oh, you know, did I really say that Or I shouldn't have said that. Oh my goodness me, what are they going to think of me now? We don't want a client feeling like that.

We want a client knowing that if they've shared that kind of material with us, that they're in a trusting, held relationship and it's a safe place. And we do that by building that relationship. AI doesn't do that, it can't do that. There is no relationship, there's no human.

So counseling for me will never be replaced by AI.

And the reason for that is, I believe counseling started around the campfire in the cave days where there would be a kind, caring listener who would hear another person's pain and tap them on the shoulder, put an arm around them and be kind and gentle and really listen. And that is a human to human magical bond that cannot be reproduced.

And no machine or AI is going to do that, although there will be simulations and they will look pretty impressive. I think we're all pretty safe. So AI is not going to replace you as a therapist, but it is going to augment the work you do.

It's going to help you triage, it's going to help you with assessments, it's going to help you with note taking, it's going to help you with managing your appointments, it's going to help you with managing your diary, it's going to help you with creating content and social media posts and all of the things where you're not sat with a client.

It's going to help you do your books, it's going to help you do your accounting, it's going to help you put your tax returns in all the place where there's no client involvement. So it's exceptionally useful for us as counselors and psychotherapists. But we keep the human to human for what we do and what we trained for.

Yeah, definitely. I didn't really research this question before because obviously it doesn't really apply to the book, but.

But I know amongst some therapists there's sort of like an ethical objection to using AI and I also find it amongst some young people as well, which is, I mean there's the environmental side of it and I mean that's the one I know about. But I just wondered if you sort of, you know, in talking about AI, in being in the AI world, what your sort of opinions are.

I mean, for example, you know, there's a lot of complaints about the big data centers that are being built in various places. I just wondered if you could address those.

You know, while we're thinking about how AI could be useful to us, you know, are there other considerations that we need to give? I just wonder what your opinion on those would be.

Definitely all of those that you've mentioned. So I'm not pro AI and it may come across that I'm pro AI and find it very exciting, but I'm not. I'm actually agnostic.

But when I listened, I got a. I got a figure that they have got money and research and they know what they're talking about. And then I started thinking about counseling and I went cold. I thought, what is going to happen? What is going to happen to us as counselors?

Are we going to get this place? Is it going to be bots counseling? What's this going to look like? And I had a choice there of either put my head in sand, go oh well, you know what?

I'm just going to carry on doing what I do, or I'm going to study this and I'm going to look into it and learn as much as I can. And do as much good as I can. Yeah. And where am I going to do that? Good. I'm going to do it in counseling and psychotherapy in service of clients.

Because that's why I became a counselor and that's where my heart sits. And that's it. You know, I do this in service of clients.

And as AI started rolling out, I hear and see all of the criticisms and I agree with so many of them. There's people where they're building data centers, they take in, their power bills are going up, the usage of water is astronomically huge.

And I had to ask myself a question of do I go, you know what, this is bad. I don't want anything to do with it. I'm going to walk away. Or do I control the controllables? So I can't control any of that. I have no.

And maybe there are critics and I welcome that. That will say, well, you know, even just by using it, you, you are contributing to that. So you can control it, you can stop using it.

Yeah, I look at where I can do make the most difference. That is positive. I think AI has got a lot of negative around it.

And it's not just that, the use of AI, negative hacking, that there's horrendous uses of AI. There is the dark side. I'm going to call it the dark side of AI. Whenever there's a dark side, you need a balance, which is the light.

I walk and tread carefully within that light. But my intention is to control what I can control.

So when a client comes to see me, for example, in a session and they say, ah, you know, I've been using AI out of session, I find it really interesting. It's really good, actually.

Some of the things it's telling me is fantastic that I can be informed enough to say to that client and I can help them by saying, you know what? AI is interesting and it looks amazing and you're welcome to bring anything AI related into our session.

However, there's some stuff that I just want to share with you. There are some downsides of AI. Do you know how it treats your data?

Do you know that it can hallucinate things we've spoken about in this session and they're covered in the book and I would cover where it can be harmful to that client. Why? Because I've studied it, I've informed myself, I've looked, I understand that. And I have a duty of care.

Because if I was standing in front of a complaints board and the questions were a client got hurt from their use of AI outside of my session. And the question was put to me, did you know the client was using AI in between sessions? I said, yes, they told me.

Did you inform them of the downsides or dangers of AI? No, I'm not going to stand so well there. So I want to walk in the light. I see all that criticism. I acknowledge it. I think it's horrendous.

I'm not optimistic, believe it or not, for the world with AI, but I am optimistic, mystic for counselors.

Yeah.

You know, and I think that these tools that we have are amazing if you choose to use them, but it is a choice. It is a choice. Yeah. I don't know if that answers it,.

But, yeah, I think what it sort of sparked off in me is that thought that for many of us, you know, who aren't very techy, we could have a similar reaction to what you said when you were in Phoenix and you sort of think, oh, well, I could just, you know, run away from this. And I think it feels so, so vast and so techy that we might be scared.

But it is important for us to understand it in order that at the very least we can engage with clients who are talking about it and are using it. And as you say, a lot of them will be and experiencing it in various ways.

So I think it's really sort of helpful, you know, hopefully people listening to the interview who may read the book as well, that it does just sort of open up how we need to know a bit more about it. And because, I mean, there's one bit where you talk about supervision and you say it may be that your supervisor.

You're further along than your supervisor, because that they haven't approached it as well. You know, it's such a new thing for all of us, isn't it?

So I think your book could really help people in just sort of thinking through some of the issues that come up.

Thank you. Yes. And the right. At the beginning of the book is it's around mindset and it's the discussion we've just had, really.

And that thought of, you know what? I'm not going to use AI. And there'll be people listening to this. If you're listening to this and going, I'm not using AI.

Just think about this for a second. If you look on your phone, if you've got a phone, if you've got a mobile phone, a smartphone. Yeah. If you have a Gmail account or an.

An email inbox, if you go on YouTube, if you have Netflix all of these are AI powered. If you've got a smart speaker in your home, there's AI all around us all the time.

And by turning and saying I'm not looking at AI, we can miss AI that is already integrated into our, in our world because it becomes invisible. So we don't have a choice. This is forced on us. It's around us anyway and clients are already using it.

And it's not long before in our agencies we're going to be given a tool to use.

Yeah. So looking ahead, Ken, it's a big question just to sort of think about the end. Wind it up.

If you look ahead five years, what do you think the relationship between therapy and AI will look like then?

The, the big, that's the big sign. Remember I said the big sign. Remember I said I'm not overly optimistic? Yeah, yeah. I, here's what I think.

I think that AI is going to create a lot of sadness and pain. I think it's going to create a lot of disruption. You can look on the news and you're going to see it. Of how many job losses?

Not just job losses, but entire sectors being completely wiped out. So wherever there is a profit driven agenda and AI can do it cheaper than people, guess what those companies are going to do. Yeah.

There's no prizes for guessing right here because I know you're all going to get it. So those people are going to be displaced.

I looked at this when I realized it and I looked back at where has, where's the world seen similar displacement?

And I looked at when the mines were closed down in the UK and the decision was made to, to offshore buy rather than manufacture and make and mine here. Yeah. There were entire communities that were disrupted at that time. The impact on those communities is still felt today.

It is multi generational because a person is not just losing their job, they're losing their whole identity. Everything that they've trained for and done for decades doesn't exist anymore.

And now their option is, I don't know, be an Uber driver until robotic cars take over. That it's so in that world there has never been a greater need for what we do. We sit with the people in pain.

So when I look forward five years, I see a lot of busy counselors because there's going to be such a need. There's a lot of hurt coming in the world and we are the healers. We're there to, to at least listen and be there with those people.

I see it as a tsunami.

Yeah, it's quite a Bleak picture.

I know. I wish I was more optimistic. I'm just not. Yeah. It's because I look at the.

I look at this all the time and I look at what's happening and what the developments are and I look at. At the job displacement numbers and it just makes me sad. And like I say, I just try and shine the light where I can. I can't stop this. It's the.

That tide is coming in whether I like it or not. But I can inform myself. I can inform our niche counsellors and say, hey, this is what's going on. Which I've. That's the reason I've written the book.

So I wanted the information out and I want it in people's hands so that we can protect ourselves, our clients, our practice, and at least know what we're dealing with. And hopefully that'll prepare us for that tsunami that is coming.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely would love to, you know, just reiterate and recommend the book. I found it very readable, very practical, very informative.

So if listeners were to take away one thing from your book and from this conversation, what would you most like it to be?

Amplified empathy. Or. Or let's change it to Amplified intention. That's AI, isn't it? AI, Amplified intention. Take your intention.

If you're thinking about AI, don't use it to do stuff for you, use it to do stuff with you. Don't treat AI as a tool or machine. Speak to it like a person. I don't mean with politeness. I mean, don't we always tell please.

And thank yous to AI?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Keep our overlords happy with us for the future. So treat it like a person. So somebody may try an AI tool and go, you know what?

I asked it to do some research on me and that's not very good. I'm not very happy with that. And walk away. No, if you had a new intern that would.

And that had just started working with you and you said, hey, go and research X topic for me. And they came back and it wasn't 100% right, you'd say to them, no, not like that. Like this. Try that. And you'd give them a few chances.

And the same with AI.

If you treat it like a person and use it not to take other stuff or to get it, to create your stuff, but to amplify your own intention and the difference you want to make in the world, then at least we're on the side of light.

Indeed. Yeah. Oh, Ken, thank you so much. It's been fascinating, really interesting, and hopefully it's inspired people.

And we'll put all the details that you've spoken about, the different tools and the connection to to get the book in the show. Notes thanks so much Ken.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community.

Good enough Counsellors and for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow, a therapist, or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it.

Sam.