Backdraft:What is Left Behind Part Two: When We Stop

Anyone who works with me knows I consider awareness to be the most important step of the change process.  We can’t do something differently if we can’t see what needs to shift.  I am the first to say change doesn’t happen all at once.  Instead I invite my clients to consider the belief that” We don’t have to know how to make a change. We just need to practice being willing.” When I was writing Part One of this series, I kept being reminded of how I felt when I was abusing alcohol.  Or perhaps more specifically, it reminded me of when I stopped drinking and came to the realization that my super power or kryptonite (depending on how you look at it) is that I can do ANYTHING addictively.  

The Autumn of 2018 (because the fall of 2018 makes it sound like the end times we are living in now) was the first time I quit drinking for any significant length of time. To ease my ability to pass the time in the evenings “alcohol free” I decided to binge watch Game of Thrones (Is there any other way of doing anything for me?). I started Season One with the goal of being caught up in time for the release of the final season the following spring. While watching (because who can just sit and watch a show night after night without something else to keep their hands and brain busy) I took up cross-stitch. What started as picking up a harmless childhood hobby turned into something I came to call “cross-stitch elbow”.  The first time I noticed the painful ache from overusing the joint, an awareness hit me like a slap across the face. I can’t even embroider like a normal person.  

So, of course, as one does in recovery, I talked about it in a meeting with others like me. As I shared with tears rolling down my face (one of my dear fellows says “It’s not a meeting if Heather’s not crying”), “I can do anything alcoholically, even embroidery.”  It made me angry. It felt embarrassing. What was wrong with me?  I had spent my first 3 years in recovery trying to move past the shame. (And yes I had spent 3 years in recovery without any significant length of continuous sobriety, that is how addiction works). Why did I still feel like I was starting from scratch again and again.  

Thankfully, at this point in time in my recovery I knew I really wasn’t starting from scratch.  I was simply continuing down a windy road with all the lessons I’d collected tucked away safely in my brain and my heart.  I certainly was not where I had started, even if I had absolutely no idea where I was or where I was going.  And as far as the shame is concerned, like others much wiser than me have said before, I clung to the sentiment “I cannot punish myself sober”. 

After I dried my tears, over coffee and some hugs, I filed this one away as something I was willing to change, but maybe I was just not quite able to yet.  The awareness was growing. I could do the next right thing in front of me.  That was going to have to be enough. Although this lesson has shown up many ways over the last 7 years of my life (and yes I do think I am officially coming to the end of a 7 year cycle and starting a new one), we are going to fast forward to last week and this morning.  

After purchasing a website template over 6 months ago, I (finally)  had the time and capacity to begin the real work of updating the template with my own copy. I had an old website, but it was not reflective of the way I want to practice and what I am attempting to build for myself, my clients and my community. My life finally had space to grow my counseling practice from part-time to full-time. One of the ways you do that is with a website, a “niche” and marketing sites (think Psychology Today and Zencare) that are up to date with SEO (whatever that means) and words the Algorithm Gods are looking for.  I tried very hard to follow the instructions of the web designer and internet gurus whose work I poured over and instructional videos I studied. And then I threw it all out the window.  I devoted every spare second to the copy and layout of this website.  Section by section, page by page I built it out.  

And I deleted every em-dash so it wouldn’t be “TOO obvious” that I had used AI to help with my copy.  

Because that is what I did.  Because that is what I believed I needed to do to have “reach” and to “convert clicks”. All the therapist business coaches will tell you (okay maybe not all), use the AI as a tool: to help with SEO, to keep your branding consistent, to save money, to make money, BUT ALSO write it yourself.  How is a person to do this?  Use AI, but not too much. Be yourself, but not like that.  Let me tell you.  You can’t.  Or maybe you can, but I can’t.  As my adventures in cross-stitching demonstrate so clearly, I am not a normal person.  It is very difficult for me to do something just a little bit, and trying to do it just right, ethically, and keep it me, and not some robot voice pretending to be me or know better than me is more than what my heart and soul, and this menopausal ADHD brain can handle. 

Words are part of my magic.  They always have been.  Since I was a very little girl.  My parents discovered that quickly and they fed my love language with books, and the songs and stories of my ancestors, and other people’s ancestors. They exposed me to other lives and languages and experiences around the world.  I would soak up the stories, alchemize them and then pour them out again in my writing and performing.  I would bring them to life.  That is my magic. I am a story keeper AND a storyteller.

I almost gave that away. Willingly. I almost succumbed to the lure of a darker magic that would turn me (Hans Christian Anderson Sea Witch style) into something “more clickable”.  Something without typos, or run on sentences, or the magic of discovering the errors of my own heart and mind as they arrive on the page, the beauty of trying and failing and trying again.  Of not having to be everyone’s cup of tea.. Of trusting myself, believing I am enough.

Last week, I very literally couldn’t stop writing.  That is okay.  That is my magic.  But once I started “using the tools available to me” to edit and triple check everything. I couldn’t stop that either.  I couldn’t stop running it through ChatGPT to check for SEO, cut away at my wordiness, trying to make it more palatable/accessible for mass consumption. But why….would I do that?  And therein lies the hard truth. I wasn’t using ChatGPT for grammar checks and streamlining alone.  I was using it because it felt easy. Like taking a load off.  Like a glass of homemade red wine, a mystery novel and a Marlboro Ultra Light.

Once I asked ChatGPT to provide suggestions for SEO on one paragraph (to fantastic results), it was so easy to ask it to check “just one more” thing for me.  And then one more, and then before I knew it, AI was building out a community platform for me, on a tool I didn’t need (Thank God it was a free trial), for an offering I wasn’t ready for.  It literally happened just like that. 

The final wake up call (my AI Rock Bottom) came this morning when I went to post a carousel I had “created” to Intstagram. I am not sure you can quite imagine my level of shock and denial when it came back flagged for AI Content. I couldn’t delete that post any faster had I tried.  It was like a Scarlet Letter.  Me.  I did that.  I felt that old familiar sense of shame creep up my spine.  I let it wash over me, let my awareness witness it without judgement.  And in that moment I let myself experience the grief that came along with realizing I was going to lose this tool (that had allowed me to pretend for a few small moments that my brain has a different capacity, one that I want so badly). But the cost of that magic is too high, for the planet, for humans whose work goes uncredited, for human connection, and for my heart and soul.

Because I am human.  And if I am not willing to show up as the flawed human that I am, run on sentences and all, how can I expect anyone else too. 

So where does the road go from here. I am not going to redact my previous two blog posts.  I am going to leave them there as a reminder to stay aware of the risk, how easy it is to get caught up in the snare of the AI net.  I am not even going to untag the work of the two people I linked in my last post (they are both such staunch AI-Free World Activists and I still feel regret at linking their websites to a post I used AI to structure and craft).  I am not going to try to untangle which words were mine and which were ChatGPT’s, because the sad truth is that I don’t know which is which anymore.  If that is not a metaphor for the AI dilemma I don’t know what is.

I am not going to rewrite my website, because I do think I have to be able to reach folks through the algorithms and SEO and stuff that is way beyond my understanding, and tools that are beyond my ability to learn, or ability to pay for.  Going forward I won’t use AI to write webpages and I will take a course on SEO and learn how to do it the “old fashioned way” and/or pay someone who doesn’t use AI to do it (is that even possible).  Most of the platforms and tools I use have AI integration (Canva, Social Media Platforms, Squarespace, etc).  Clients are going to find me through AI.  I know I will accidentally (and maybe even on purpose) use it in the future.  

But I am NOT going to use it for my writing, social media posting, or content creation (courses, gatherings, groups, etc). Like drinking, it is just not something I can take a risk on.  The cost is too great: to the environment, to creativity, and to the humans I want to be in connection with.  I want what is real and true.  The false sense of connection AI creates (I told it “please” and “thank you” and “I will be right back” when I had to pee), is dangerous and I need to walk away before it gets too hard.

I used to joke with my children that they were lucky that they had one parent (their Dad) who embraced AI because the robots were going to take me out in the first round, that is how loudly I spoke out against AI.  All it took for me throw those values out the window was one hit.  I have learned in recovery not to be ashamed of becoming addicted to an addictive substance. Recovery means I can practice being willing to change.  One mistake at a time. As long as I keep practicing I never really have to “start from scratch”.  Recovering outloud means I tell about it.  That’s my magic.