Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Yes, very weird timing - I test-drove a GPT I personalized for talk therapy purposes just an hour ago. I cried 10 mins into testing it so there was some kind of release, and have something I can try in the real world that might help me.

I have a two month gap in therapy while my therapist is on maternity leave and while I have a real life standby in case I need it, I decided to cobble together my own chatbot therapist to see how it would go.

I'm mostly familiar with CBT, having read Beck's Second Edition[1], some of Eugene Gendlin work on listening. Supplying it with my favorite resources on reflective listening[2], cognitive distortions, and cognitive restructuring material, and basic framing ie: "Tell me about your week," it was deceptively simple to get off the ground.

There's one hurdle that I foresee - I have to be self-accountable and actually participate. I already have a habit of attending therapy once a week for one hour, but we'll see. It does change the accountability dynamic.

1. Beck, Judith. 2011. Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Second Edition: Basics and Beyond

2. https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/docs/default-source/ektron-files...

Reflective Listening can be a slippery slope to hell. Yes people will love trauma dumping all their inner most unresolved issues onto you but it doesn't help you develop mature mutual reciprocal relationships with people. Unless you like being a empathetic listening ear to peoples problems and being deferential to their wants, need, or desire instead of your own.

>Unless you like being a empathetic listening ear to peoples problems and being deferential to their wants, need, or desire instead of your own.

So like a therapist?

Kind of proved my point why reflective listening only leads to one-sided exchange.

Reflective listening has the main purpose of allowing the speaker to be emotionally validated. Why is this important at all? Because emotional validation is a necessary precursor to modulating beliefs. Contrary to popular beliefs, people are rarely logic-ed into new beliefs, especially away from maladaptive beliefs. For example to someone who feels unloved, telling them they are loved will not change their mind.

I'm not sure what experience you have with changing people's beliefs, but so far this isn't the way to do it.

If you practise what you preach then why aren't you using it now? Which is why I said, it only leads to one sided exchanges.

Why? Because not every tool can be used in all contexts. I use reflective listening to support friends.

It sounds like your argument is "If reflective listening is better, then it should be used universally." I'm not making that claim. The claim I'm making is that reflective listening is good for emotional validation.

I'm happy its working for you.

Reflective listening doesn’t mean to parrot back what someone says, but it is an artform to transform what they say to add clarity and precision, for example by representing assumptions of the other person accurately as such and help differentiate them from facts (and much more). You also ask questions to help the other see different perspectives in and about themselves. Systemic approaches add a huge repository of potential questions, such as „what would your life look like without that problem“ and such.

You also do not repeat every single thing, but pick what you think is essential. The other person will then immediately see if something is missing from the summary, which overall leads to weeding out what is important from the not important, and eventually escape thinking loops. Without you adding anything, just by selective removal, you end up with the essence of the problem. It’s a process of distillation.

Known techniques for example are nonviolent communications and Focusing. That is a multi year accreditation process.

I’m curious: where did you build the custom GPT? On ChatGPT?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com