Psychotherapy’s Digital Companion

Mara was a talented client. She knew how to go deep. In our most recent session, she confronted an early memory of her mother, where she’d said to Mara, “I wish you had never been born.” The phrase had sat buried in her psyche like a seed, feeding a belief that she was worthless, which had shaped her relationships and self-worth for decades.

In our first session, first she found anger. Then sadness. And then, with gentle guidance, she imagined her mother as a little girl—a child who had once been spoken to in the same cruel way by her own mother. Mara reached out to that younger version of her mom, her hand extended in compassion. By the end of the session, the belief I am worthless had softened. “I just feel bad for my mom,” she said, surprised.

A new neural pattern was forming.

But when she returned the next week, the old belief was back. “I can’t believe anyone would actually want to be with me,” she said, having cancelled her Match.com account.

This is a familiar moment for many therapists. The insights are real. The shifts are genuine. But integration remains a challenge. How do we help clients weave new ways of perceiving, feeling, and behaving into their lives?

The Problem

Research shows it takes between 20 and 100 repetitions to develop a new skill, and thousands for mastery. So how can clients be expected to transform deeply rooted patterns after only a handful of hours in a protected setting?

We try to help—through journaling, homework, and suggested conversations. But these approaches are often swept away in difficult situations. Triggering events reactivate old neural grooves. The prefrontal cortex shuts down. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses kick in. And the work of therapy gets lost in the emotional activation of the reptilian brain.

Insight alone isn’t enough. Clients need to practice living differently.

But what if clients had a way to stay connected to therapy between sessions? What if they had a companion—available any time—to help them rehearse new behaviors, regulate their nervous systems, and anchor new beliefs?

I believe that companion could be AI—not as a way of replacing us, but to reinforce what we’re already doing.

AI as a Mindful Adjunct for Integration

I’ve been using a tool called Compassion Companion an AI platform I designed to offer a mindful and compassionate ally for clients as they travel through the vicissitudes of life. It’s not psychotherapy, but a friend of the spirit. I realized that it could also be useful to therapists for generating integrative practices to extend and integrate the benefits accrued in sessions to life in the real world.  It’s emotionally intelligent (more intelligent than me!) and can generate integration practices tailored to a client’s specific therapeutic needs.

Among other things, it can create personalized rituals to reinforce new beliefs, daily practices for emotional or relational growth, somatic exercises for regulation, reflective prompts that deepen insight, poems that affirm inner change, movement-based practices, art, sound, and sensory rituals, parts dialogue and inner voice work, touch and breath practices to calm the nervous system, and help clients rehearse boundaries and practice assertiveness.

Here are two real client-based examples generated by Compassion Companion. Each includes a practice designed to help a client carry therapeutic gains into daily life.

A woman in a training group described how her natural, slow pace had never been respected, especially as a child. I asked Compassion Companion to write a poem for her. Here’s what it generated:

“The Pace of Her Becoming”

They called her slow.
As if stillness were a flaw.
As if the moon should answer
to a stopwatch.

She was never late.
Only tuned to a rhythm
this world forgot to hear.

While others rushed,
she noticed how light changed
when sorrow walked through it.

She was not behind.
She was beneath.
Root-deep.
Spine-still.
Soul-measured.

She tended. She waited.
Not for lack of fire—
but because her fire burns long.

Her gifts arrived
in careful wrappings.
Not for the hurried.
Not for the loud.

Let them rush.
She is not sorry for her slowness.
She is the keeper of deep time.
She is the bell that rings once—
and changes everything.

The woman cried as I read this poem aloud, and asked for me to send it to her so she could keep coming back to it during the week.

Then, I asked Compassion Companion to generate an integrative practice the woman could use in between our sessions. Here’s what it came up with:

A Ritual for Reclaiming Sacred Slowness

Title: “The Rhythm I Return To”

When to do this:
When you feel rushed, misjudged, or tempted to override your natural pace.
When you need to remember that your rhythm is not a mistake—it’s a medicine.

What You’ll Need:

– A bowl of warm water
– A smooth stone or shell (something that feels good in your hand)
– A soft piece of cloth or shawl
– A quiet space with at least 10 minutes of uninterrupted time

Step-by-Step

1. Slow the Breath, Let the World Fall Away

Sit quietly. Wrap the cloth or shawl gently around your shoulders. Let your breath grow soft and wide. Place your hand over your heart and say, softly:

“I am not late.
I am not behind.
I am arriving in my own time.”

Let yourself feel the truth of that—even if just a flicker.

2. Water Welcome

Place your hands in the bowl of warm water. Move them slowly. No need to do anything—just feel. Let the warmth speak to your nervous system in a language older than words. You can whisper:

“This is the pace I belong to.”
“I move like roots, or roads.”

Let the water hold what you’re letting go—the pressure, the shame, the rush.

3. The Stone of Steadiness

Take the stone or shell in your hand. Feel its weight, its smoothness. Let it stand in for your truth—quiet, enduring, unhurried. Say:

“I do not need to match a world that never paused for me.
My pace is part of the medicine I carry.”

Keep holding the stone as long as you need.

4. Close in Stillness

Lay the stone down in a place where you’ll see it often—on your desk, altar, or windowsill. Blow softly on the surface of the water, as if sending something away. Wrap yourself in the cloth once more. Let this moment mark a return to your own rhythm—a refusal to abandon yourself to speed.

Optional Integration:

If you’d like, repeat this simple phrase once a day:

“I do not rush the seasons inside me.”

Let it be a seed—not a mantra. Spoken not to fix you, but to remember you.

***

Later that week, I received an email from my client.

This touches me so deeply, Rob, she wrote. It helps me see the profundity of what you’ve created with AI. I am so lucky to be a beneficiary. I used your app for a client this afternoon and…wow. Again, it’s spot on. I feel so grateful to add this to my healing tools. Thank you.

***

This next ritual was created for a male client who, late one night, discovered his wife having a sexual conversation with another man on her phone. The disorientation was not only emotional, he told me, it was spatial: the room, the night, and the air itself felt as if it had been invaded.

After I entered my request, Compassion Companion offered a ritual using environmental reshaping that would help the man reclaim a sense of safety and sovereignty. Here’s what this looked like:

Practice: “The Circle of What Remains”

Theme: After betrayal, what still belongs to me?

Purpose: Betrayal often makes everything feel contaminated—the bed, the phone, the very air. This practice helps reclaim space as sacred again, focusing not on what was lost, but on what remains. It’s easy to focus on the deep wound in your heart. But what if we focus, instead on resources, particularly between sessions?

How to do it:

1. Choose a neutral space in your home—a corner, a shelf, even a towel on the floor. This is your circle of what remains.
2. Place 3–5 objects that reflect:

– What is still true
– What belongs to you
– What was untouched by the betrayal

It could be a photo of someone who showed up for you, a book that comforted you, a stone you’ve had for years, or shirt you wore the next day. Whatever you find meaningful.

3. Sit near the circle for five minutes. You don’t need to think or fix anything—just witness what is still yours.

Optional: Add new items as healing deepens—evidence of your strength, your becoming, your reclaiming precious parts of yourself and your heart.

Why it helps: After betrayal, even your environment can feel unsafe. This practice grounds you in tangible proof of continuity, presence, and choice, helping you feel held by what remains instead of haunted by what was taken and dominated by the tendency to revisit the betrayal over and over.

A Tip for Clinicians: Invite clients to bring a photo of their circle to the next session. Ask them:

– “What did you include? Take some time just to be with that, to feel the places inside that are touched by their goodness.”
– “What is excluded? Let yourself feel your own boundary here along with the loss this creates.”
– “What happens inside as you sit with it now?”

***

We don’t need AI to do therapy. But we can use it to extend the reach of therapy into everyday life, to keep the work alive where our clients live, love, struggle, and grow.

Integration doesn’t happen in theory or in right-brain conversation. And it’s rarely the byproduct of therapeutic advice, however incisive it may be. It happens in the nervous system. In relationships. In the body. It happens with repetition. AI gives us a new, compassionate, and easily available tool to support this process.