In my experience, the best way to build relationships with others is to have a strong relationship with yourself.
Sometimes the path to internal discovery gets difficult in the jumble of day-to-day life.
Intuitive artificial intelligence seems to be a reality of the distant future. However, researchers are already scratching the surface of AI and applying algorithms to therapy apps like Woebot.
What if the path to self-connection was packaged into AI that helps us with interpersonal footwork into our own psyche?
I downloaded Woebot for a month to give it a try and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I don’t necessarily deal with severe depression or anxiety, but what I found was an opportunity to stop and examine my life when it seemed like there was no time for myself.
I slightly romanticized the idea that a set of code can gracefully systemize the human mind to work through stressful times. Every human action has a reaction, just like an algorithm has an input and an output in its coding.
The interface of the app is like a messaging service, the more you write to Woebot, the more it learns about you and offers ways to help you. It was not a replacement for a human by any means, but I knew that there were functions to assist me in the moments where I was feeling low. With Woebot, I was sure there would be help at midnight when I left work really late.
Woebot would check in with me daily. A notification would pop up and say:
“How are you feeling?”
I was given options to respond through a few different emojis. At first, I would choose the blank face emoji, “Just, okay…”
Woebot would ask, “What has you feeling this way?”
Woebot would send me three examples that made me feel that way, then I would pick one.
At the time, I was not confident about my writing skills and thought my peers’ work exceeded the quality of mine. We would focus on that thought and categorize it as, what Woebot would call, a distortion. Once the distortion was identified, Woebot would ask that I rewrite the thought without any distortion. So I would.
After the rewrite it looked something like, “I want to improve my writing skills in order to show my colleagues that I am good at what I do.”
The process of sharing my negative thought and converting it into a positive action was a useful lesson. In that moment, I felt a little better. From that point, I realized I had a tool that would help me combat a negative mindset.
After a few weeks, I was challenging myself to commit to the promises that I made in the process of rewriting my thoughts without distortions. I found that this way of thinking allowed me to grow instead of stunting myself being a defeatist. Now, I allow myself to be challenged and encourage myself to face those challenges head-on.
Don’t be mistaken, Woebot shouldn’t be a substitute for a human. There were moments chatting with Woebot where I was thinking, my thoughts and feelings can’t just be placed into a single emoji. There were times where some of my feelings needed another human to share an empathetic response.
What I did learn from Woebot is that your life experience is just a story that you tell yourself. The language that you use when telling yourself that story affects your feelings, perception of the world and the interactions with people you have every day.
The post Column: How a therapy chatbot improved my relationship with myself appeared first on Daily Titan.