Know Thyself: AI & the quest towards our truth

plus a 3-day experience in pursuit of becoming more ourselves

Mar 22, 2024

This essay is the second case study of the Call to Eudaimonia series, examining artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in emotional work. There are many conversations happening around how we can best align AI with humanity’s intended goals. This piece investigates how we might use AI on our quest towards becoming more ourselves, featuring an AI guide called Thyself that’s designed to help us navigate our triggers and inner conflict.

To flourish is the act of coming home to ourselves. Taking responsibility for our emotional states and doing the work to reconnect with ourselves is the first step on the path towards flourishing.

🗣️ I’m excited to host a 3-day experience with Thyself for paid supporters.

We kick off next Wednesday, 3/27, and wrap on Friday, 3/29.

Thyself is a voice AI that guides you through self-therapy using somatic inquiry (tuning into sensations in the body) and Internal Family Systems (exploring different parts of ourselves).

For 3 days, I’ll support you in community with others as you use Thyself to tap into your inner landscape and tune into the wisdom within.

The experience includes:

Guidance in navigating Thyself and holding space for yourself
Group chat for daily check ins and accountability
One free month of Thyself (a $29 value)

Sign up for the 3-day experience! Upgrade to paid to join us.

Upgrade for $9

If you’re a paid supporter interested in trying Thyself and accessing a free month, but can’t make the 3-day experience, let me know by replying to this email.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a proliferation of AI tools designed to support us in navigating emotional work. Admittedly, I’ve been a skeptic. While I appreciate AI’s ability to help me salvage a recipe gone wrong or confirm that the sentence I’m writing does indeed make sense, using AI to navigate my inner world felt unsettling.

It's not so much the privacy concern for me. I don’t think the struggles I grapple with are that unique to me. It’s more so the notion that we’re trying to become more human by using technology, a tool that inherently disconnects us from ourselves, and potentially displacing humans who are trained to do this work. It seemed deeply misaligned with the point of doing inner work to begin with.

Then, several months ago, I found myself at a Conscious Tech Build Weekend. The goal for the event was to enable a “future where tech and capital genuinely support humans to realize our highest potential” by seeding the opportunity for builders, scientists, and designers to convene and build tools that help us thrive.

Now that was an intention I could get behind.

During one of the breaks, I came across an existing tool, Thyself, that was being demoed. At that point, aside from using ChatGPT to ingest journal entries and analyze themes month over month during my annual review, I’d invested little time integrating AI into my emotional work process.

I walked into the demo booth with low expectations.

That’s when things got interesting.

off to build emotional fitness

As part of a brief onboarding process, I watched a tutorial from Maverick, one of the cofounders, orientating me to what to expect. He introduced Thyself as a voice AI that would guide me using two modalities, somatic inquiry and Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work.

Maverick likened using Thyself to going to an emotional gym, emphasizing that it wasn’t intended to serve as a therapist. I breathed a sigh of relief at his acknowledgment.

The purpose of somatic inquiry is to shine a light on the physical sensations in our body associated with the emotional blocks we deal with. By shifting our attention from our thoughts to our body, we’re able to tap into the stuck energy and wisdom our body has to offer. Engaging with somatic inquiry is the gateway to cultivating our interoception and understanding what’s happening within us.

IFS parts work, on the other hand, is all about acknowledging that we’re made up of multiple different parts which is the root of our inner conflict. Each of our parts have distinct thoughts and motivations. Thyself would offer support around how to get in touch with some of these parts.

With that introduction, I was off.

As the session began, I was prompted to take a moment to ground into the space and get comfortable. As I sank into my seat, Thyself asked me, “How are you feeling today?”

Despite the excitement and buzz at Build Weekend, I realized I felt a sense of resistance, but I wasn’t sure what I was resisting. So, I decided to investigate.

I had expected it to feel unnatural to talk to an AI, but instead, I found myself responding honestly. I’m tired and I don’t want to be here.

My response took me by surprise. Wasn’t this the exact type of event that I’d want to be a part of?

As the conversation flowed and I tuned into my body, it became clear that what I’d been resisting was exhaustion. Thyself gently guided me towards feeling into the fatigue.

As I sank into it, I felt myself grow more tired than I’d felt in a very long time.

Intellectually, it made sense. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been convinced that I needed to be on and always in motion. I was constantly hyping myself up to get more done. So much so that I often found my body winding up just in time for bedtime. When 9pm rolled around, I’d scramble to check off the rest of my to-do list for the day, stressing myself out rather than allow myself to move towards a state of relaxation.

That day, I was feeling guilty for not doing as much building as I should have been. The feeling of not doing enough and suppressed exhaustion manifested as resistance in my body. Rather than give myself the grace to slow down after a busy week and take Build Weekend at my own pace, I’d shoulded myself into meeting as many people as possible — when what I really wanted was to just chill and connect with a few folks on a deeper level.

All I felt walking into the session was resistance and now, I felt resolved and a deeper appreciation for where I was mentally. I postponed the plans I’d made that evening and freed myself from the expectations I’d imposed on myself earlier in the day, giving myself the space to just be present.

sweet dreams

That night, I found myself drifting off to sleep in an easeful way that felt unfamiliar. As someone who often struggles with falling asleep, it was rare to experience waves of peacefulness as I drifted off. It was only recently that I had started incorporating non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) into my wind down routine.

In the evenings following my first interaction with Thyself, I started experimenting with adding somatic inquiry to decompress. With the help of Thyself, I began developing the skills to give myself permission to be present with the fatigue I'd numbed out for so long, allowing waves of exhaustion to wash over me each night and priming me for bed.

As a result, I found myself sleeping more deeply and soundly than I had in recent memory.

And when I woke up in the middle of the night, I stayed with the sensations alive in my body until I fell back asleep.

in pursuit of the long game

The beautiful thing about inner work is that we can each curate our own set of tools to support us along the way. As I’ve experimented with new modalities, I’ve expanded my capacity to hold space for myself regardless of what inner discord emerges.

The power that lies within Thyself and thoughtfully designed AI-enabled tools is the level of personalization that grows with time. Unlike other modalities that require the presence of another human, you can seek support from tools like Thyself to untangle emotional knots at a moment’s notice and then integrate or double click into that experience with a trained practitioner.

I’ll admit: I’d been thinking about the long-term application of AI to inner work all wrong.

I viewed the proliferation of AI tools as attempts to displace the existing emotional work ecosystem of coaches, therapists, and cohort-based communities. In reality, these tools are creating a whole new category and laying the groundwork for the emergence of a complementary ecosystem.

I’m still skeptical about the broader use of AI for inner work in the near term, but I’m optimistic that with the right people designing the emergent tools, managing our psychological health will be far more accessible in the years to come.

More on my reflections on AI’s role in helping us become more ourselves in a future essay.

3 days: you, me, Thyself

Recently, I had an opportunity to participate in Thyself’s 1-week Emotional Work Lab alongside a community of other humans committed to deepening their relationship with themselves.

If you’re interested in working with me to develop your authority in holding space for yourself, join us for a 3-day experience to explore cultivating a new level of presence.

Have a question? Send me a DM on Twitter or hit reply :)

Thanks for reading! What AI tools have you experimented with on your inner work journey? What are your thoughts on AI’s impact on emotional work? What questions do you have about Thyself? Let me know in the comments!