When a person comes to therapy for the first time, there is a question that opens the encounter: “why are you here?” or “what brought you here?”.
Each person arrives with a meaning, a hypothesis or a cause they attribute to their suffering. We hear it in the most diverse forms:
- “I come because I have panic attacks”.
- “I have anxiety”.
- “I want to work on my self-esteem”.
- “I have lost the meaning of my life, I do everything reluctantly”.
We call this presentation the “reason for consultation”: a first wrapping with which the patient presents themselves, the initial approach from which we will start together to be able to do therapeutic work. However, these isolated phrases, on their own, do not tell us much. Because what anxiety is for one person is far from what it means for another. What someone experiences in a “panic attack” will differ radically from what another person goes through.
The art of “not understanding”
To situate the singular signification hidden behind these labels, symptom pictures or diagnostic categories, as therapists we do something that seems counterintuitive: we ask.
“What does that panic mean to you?”, “what do you mean by anxiety?”, “in what circumstances does that reluctance appear?”.
Unlike the term “empathise” — so popular and demanded today — a therapist is there, first, to not understand. It is about stepping out of common sense so that the particular, the difference, emerges. Only by distrusting the dictionary definition does the work with that unique symptom open a path, unrepeatable and different from any other.
The algorithm vs. the artisanal
This is what differentiates our analytical, artisanal work from the automatic processing of an Artificial Intelligence. Beyond its undisputed usefulness in other sectors, since it is a machine of immediate understanding and instant answers, AI quickly plugs every question with a preconfigured, statistical meaning based on probabilities.
When someone tells an AI: “I feel alone”, the machine responds with a synthesis of millions of texts about loneliness, offering statistical comfort.
Today, consulting an AI has become an immediate temptation. More and more people turn to the algorithm to find answers: “interpret this dream for me!”, “what do I do if I am having a panic attack?” or “how long does grief over a breakup last?”, “how to manage anxiety?”. People even hold extensive dialogues in which they confess their deepest wounds to chatbots and conversational algorithms “that teach tools and offer emotional support”.
But AI, by design, is a machine of closure, of shutting down. It is an algorithm trained to avoid the void and offer a predictive answer; therefore, it gives no space to not-knowing, to the unknown or to doubt. AI does not hear the silence between words nor perceive the tone of anguish, but it is a specialist in plugging the hole of not-knowing. The relief may feel real, but it is the relief of anaesthesia: it covers anguish with a meaning, but it does not touch the cause.
The dignity of the question
Therapy, by contrast, seeks to sustain an empty space so that it is the patient themselves who finds their answers. Analysis seeks to give the subject back their own voice. This logic of enabling the question, instead of the immediate demand for answers, requires two elements that our era tries to suppress: time and effort.
We live in the era of the “promised efficacy”: achieving more in less time. A logic that serves the market and companies, but that fails before the elaboration of human suffering.
In defence of the pause
From our place as therapists, we defend tooth and nail the dignity of suffering. We give pain back the pause it needs to be processed. Far from trying to suppress and crush discomfort, we first want to listen to it.
We understand that there are no recipes, standardised methods or “tips” that can replace the creativity, resilience and process of overcoming of every human being. Faced with the automatic answer of the machine, we bet on the talking cure.