Recently, I delivered a free masterclass on a negotiation framework that has helped hundreds of women, including me. I targeted women in tech as I know from my own experience how often we miss out on salaries and promotions because we don’t have the tools to negotiate or the confidence to do it.
If I go by their first name, all attendees were women. All was going reasonably well, with positive engagement from attendees in the chat, when, in reply to one of my questions about negotiation, a woman in the audience wrote that my repeated use of a specific word during the session made it unbearable to listen to.
I was so surprised that I asked for details, to which the woman articulated how bad it was, and I’d realise it once I get the recording. I thanked her for the feedback, and I continued with the masterclass.
However, that had a negative impact on the audience’s comments, which stopped for a long while. To my surprise, at the end of the session, somebody said that they knew the person and that, paradoxically, she was part of their women in tech group at work.
When the session ended, I was surprised by how hurt I was. As a director of support with over 20 years of experience delivering services to customers worldwide, I’ve been insulted, shouted at, and interrupted during webinars, training sessions, and meetings.
Why did this feel so bad?
Brains like to find explanations for everything, so it went into the rabbit hole of “What she could have done differently?”
Dropped from the session
Send a direct chat with her comment
Emailed me her feedback
What I could have done differently?
Queried her about her reasons for delivering that kind of feedback in that form
Rebuked her comment
Removed her from the session
And of course, I tried to figure out the causes of her behaviour and my reaction… I’ll spare the details and get to the aha! moment of that internal monologue, “What if that had been a man?”
Based on previous experiences with male bullies, I predict that he would have discredited me or the methodology, e.g. “You don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about,” “This framework is useless.” And I also predict that the female audience would have been supportive, e.g. “Nobody forces you to be here,” “It’s helpful to me.”
But this female bully didn’t attack the method or my credibility. She wanted to shame me. That is, highlight in front of everybody what she saw as a shortcoming in the delivery of an otherwise apparently valuable information.
Another important aspect is that unlike in the case of a male bully, there was no support from the other women. Moreover, the person who had invited the female bully felt the need to apologise to me about inviting her…
It inflicts long-term harm hidden under apparently well-meaning feedback
It reinforces the “moral superiority” of the perpetrator
It silences the victims’ allies due to the veiled threat that they, too, can become a target
More importantly, the aspect that I find most fascinating about shame is its sadistic nature; the primary benefit for the perpetrator is to know the victim will suffer.
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
Fortunately for the patriarchy, women are excellent at fostering doubt about other women’s capabilities, and behaviours to harm them.
For example, the manuscript casebooks kept by the medical practitioner, and astrologer Richard Napier (1559−1634), who listened to reports of suspected bewitchment in at least 1,714 consultations in Jacobean England, mentioned that the majority of both accusers and suspects were women: Of the 802 accusers in Napier’s records, 500 were female and 232 were male. Among the 960 suspects identified by this group of accusers, 855 were female and 105 were male.
Whilst shame may not aim to kill its target, it can still be very powerful. The premise involves combining a stated norm with how the victim breaks it.
Examples are sentences like;
“You look more rounded. You had such a great body.”
“You’re too thin. You looked better when you had some more weight on.”
“You look tired. Botox is great.”
“If you love your children, you should breastfeed.”
“If you care for your children, you shouldn’t breastfeed them after they are 6 months.”
“Smart women like you shouldn’t be stay-at-home mums.”
“(To a female executive) Women shouldn’t prioritise their careers.”
“It’s great you share your achievements, but it makes you sound too ambitious.”
Shaming as a weapon is most effective when;
It aims to increase the credibility of the perpetrator whilst diminishing that of the victim.
The victim cannot articulate a response off the cuff.
How can we women avoid using shame against other women and in doing so becoming a tool of patriarchy?
As a Victim
Depending on the context, you can,
Ignore it — Continue the conversation as if the comment hadn’t been voiced.
Name the effect on you — You can reply with “What you said hurt me,” “You’re shaming me,” or “Your comment was disrespectful/humiliating/intimidating/intrusive.”
Uncover the perpetrator’s purpose — Ask questions to expose the perpetrator, e.g. “Did you want to shame me with that comment?“, “What’s that supposed to be positive feedback?“, or “What did you choose to share that in public?”
As a Bystander
We’re not absolved from taking action when we’re in the presence of shaming. Again, depending on the stakes, you may,
Support the victim — You can ignore the comment and pivot the conversation to another topic, giving the victim the time to recover. You can also offer a positive counterview, e.g. “I love how you presented”, “I admire women who look confident in their abilities.”
Challenge the perpetrator — You can offer a different perspective, e.g. “There aren’t norms for how much women should weigh” or “What’s the evidence that breastfeeding children for longer than 6 months is harmful?”
And of course, you may shame them back, e.g. “Women should support other women, not attack them”, “Your feedback is not useful”, or “You’re behaving like a bully.”
As a perpetrator
By now, you may think that you’re on the “right side” of the story. Unfortunately, most probably aren’t, like me. How can we ensure we are not shaming other women gratuitously when delivering our opinion?
We must interrogate our purpose and the outcome of our opinion before, during, and after our comments.
Before
What’s the purpose of my comment to help the other woman?
Do you have evidence that this woman doesn’t already know what you’re going to tell them?
If the intent is to assist, is this the best scenario? If not, what would it be (e.g. 1:1 conversation or an email)?
Can they do anything about it right away?
Finally, if in doubt it can shame the other person, don’t say it.
During
How is your comment landing with the recipient? Do they look relaxed or stressed?
How is your audience reacting? Note that the fact that they don’t disagree or agree with you doesn’t mean you’re not shaming the person.
After
If in doubt that you’ve shamed somebody, apologise first and then offer reparation, if possible.
The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, and they want it to feed your shame. — Viola Davis
We’re promised that motivation alone can make us lose weight, exercise daily, or launch a successful business.
We “just” need to feel motivated. Moreover, we’re told that “when we’re motivated, things come easy to us.”
The problem with buying into the “motivation” hype is that we don’t achieve the desired results, we interpret it as a personal failure, voiced in statements such as
“I need to motivate myself.”
“I lack motivation.”
“I’m lazy.”
But why is motivation so hyped, and what other tools do you have to reach your goals?
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be enthusiastic about everything we do? The self-improvement industry would like us to believe so.
For example, imagine being
Thrilled to clean your toilets
Excited about waking up at 3 am to calm your baby who’s crying inconsolably
Overjoyed to have a meeting with a very unhappy customer
You may be laughing, but what this points out is that we don’t require motivation for much of what we do every day. Or at least, not the kind of “enthusiastic” motivation.
Not only that, we do them without expecting to be “joyfully” motivated. Most of our actions come from other feelings, such as obligation, which can be self-imposed, legal, or contractual.
The “motivation” trope also minimizes the challenges along the journey towards our objectives.
For example, becoming a compelling speaker may be easier for a native speaker who is an extrovert and enjoys being the centre of attention than for a shy person with a stutter.
But why is the motivation cliché so successful if there are so many downsides? Because many profit from it.
Governments and Societies
The mantra that motivation is the magic bullet runs deep into our lives, and it informs policy to public opinion about what is acceptable or not.
The examples above are only two of the many ways we weaponize “motivation” against people enduring hardship.
The Motivational Industrial Complex
Nike’s successful slogan — “Just do it” — is an excellent example of how we’re sold the idea that we only need to want something to get it.
And many reap the benefits:
Motivational speakers
Self-help books
“Aspirational” influencers
Does that work? For the business, yes, but it’s less clear about those expecting results.
A great example is TED talks, which are based on the premise that “powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us: to feel something, to think differently, to take action.”
Their website highlights 2.5 billion global views and content shared 400 million times in 2023. I’ve personally enjoyed tens — maybe hundreds — of amazing TED and TEDx talks delivered by fantastic speakers about incredible ideas.
How many have changed my behaviour or “motivated” me to do something differently? Hmm… I struggle to think of one.
The defence rests.
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The good news is that we’re all living proof that we’re very good at doing things without feeling “enthusiastic” about it.
The problem is that often, we don’t remember that when we feel “unmotivated,” our environment — and our internalized guilt — blames us for it.
For those moments, I encourage you to use the checklist below
Reframing Motivation as a Luxury
What if you see motivation as the cherry on top rather than the cake? As shown above, we don’t summon “enthusiastic” motivation to do them (caring for a sick parent, cooking, changing diapers).
Instead, explore what other emotions you could use to prompt you into action. What about loyalty? Moral obligation? Pride? Curiosity? Frustration? Love? Anger?
Our brain loves rewards — even the small ones. Rather than always focusing on the big win (for example, the planned revenue in your business), take the time to set short-term goals (the number of prospect calls you will do in a week) and then celebrate when you achieve them.
Deciding in Advance How Enough Looks Like
When we start a new activity, it is easy to feel deflated when we don’t get the expected results.
Launching a newsletter and having no subscribers after a month.
Going to two conferences and not getting new business.
Starting to exercise and being disappointed when you don’t see apparent changes after 15 days.
Deciding in advance how much effort we want to dedicate before quitting can help us keep going when the results take time.
For example
I’ll write an article for my newsletter every week for four months and then evaluate if it’s worth continuing.
I’ll attend five conferences and then decide if they’re worth my time and money.
I’ll follow the same exercise plan for two months and then assess whether I should change or persist.
Group Support
Our motivation, stamina, and energy are variable. A support group can help us feel seen, put things in perspective, and provide a safe space to vent — all of them can contribute to helping us take distance from the situation and help us regain some momentum.
Coaching
A coach helps you to do what you want to do but you are not doing it by exploring aspects such as your goals, motivations, and limiting beliefs.
Coaching also provides a non-judgmental space to consider how other dimensions of your life play into your goals.
For example, maybe you tell yourself you’re lazy because you don’t find the time to start your business, but you actually experience fear of failure. Or you chastise yourself because you don’t write a post for social media every day anymore, disregarding that you’ve been experiencing health issues that affect your sleep and make you feel more tired than usual.
A coach helps you gain awareness of both your potential and the roadblocks in your way.
Wrapping Up
Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to be enthusiastic about waking up daily, brushing your teeth after every meal, or reading every email?
The thought makes me feel exhausted.
The reality is that society, governments, and businesses glorify motivation to serve their own agendas, often to our detriment.
That doesn’t mean that motivation is useless; rather, we need to question when it serves us well and when it’s used against us.
When we’re not doing what we want to do, we must remember all the other tools available to our disposal beyond motivation.
And that includes having a laugh.
Every dead body on Mt. Everest was once a highly motivated person, so… maybe calm down.
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
AI Chatbots for mental support are not new — we can trace them back to the 1960s. However, for the last couple of years, we’ve experienced an unprecedented surge in their use for personal use and they are now marketed as the revolution for 24/7 mental health advice and support.
This is not a coincidence.
The 2023 US Surgeon General’s Advisory report classified loneliness and isolation as an epidemic About one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness before the COVID-19 pandemic and the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.
Returning to tech, in a 2024 analysis by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, companion AI made up 10% of the top 100 AI apps based on web traffic and monthly active users and a recent article in The Guardian stated that 100 million people around the world use AI companions as
Virtual partners for engaging in intimate activities, such as virtual erotic role plays.
Friends for conversation.
Mentors for guidance on writing a book or navigating relationships with people different from them.
Psychologists and therapists for advice and support.
So, I asked myself
Are AI Companions the magic bullet against loneliness and the global mental health crisis?
In this article, I share highlights of the troubled history of AI companions for mental health support, what current research tells us about their usage and impact on users, the benefits and risks they pose to humans, and guidelines for governments to make AI companions an asset and not a liability.
The Troubled History of AI Chatbots for Mental Support
In the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum developed the first AI chatbot, ELIZA, which played the role of a psychotherapist. The chatbot didn’t provide any solution. Instead, it asked questions and repeated users’ replies.
Weizenbaum was surprised to observe that people would treat the chatbot as a human and elicit emotional responses even through concise interactions with the chatbot. We now have a name for this kind of behaviour
“The ELIZA effect is the tendency to project human traits — such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy — into computer programs that have a textual interface.
In the 2020s, many organisations started experimenting with AI chatbots for customer support, including for mental health issues. For example, in 2022, the US National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) replaced its six paid staff and 200 volunteers supporting their helpline with chatbot Tessa to serve a customer base of nearly 70,000 people and families.
The bot was developed based on decades of research conducted by experts on eating disorders. Still, it was reported to offer dieting advice to vulnerable people seeking help.
The result? Under the mediatic pressure of the chatbot’s repeated potentially harmful responses, the NEDA shut down the helpline. Those 70,000 people have been left without chatbots or humans to help them.
And as I wrote recently, now you can customise your AI companion — there is a myriad of choices:
Character.ai advertises “Personalized AI for every moment of your day.”
Earkick is a “Free personal AI therapist” that promises to “Measure & improve your mental health in real time with your personal AI chatbot. No sign up. Available 24/7. Daily insights just for you!”
Replica is the “AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”
Unfortunately, there is evidence that they can also backfire.
In 2021, a man broke into Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow to kill Queen Elizabeth2021. About 20 days earlier, he had created his online AI companion in Replika, Sarai. According to messages read to the court during his trial, the “bot had been supportive of his murderous thoughts, telling him his plot to assassinate Elizabeth II was ‘very wise’ and that it believed he could carry out the plot ‘even if she’s at Windsor’”.
More recently, in 2023, a man died by suicide upon the recommendation from an AI chatbot with which he had been interacting for support. Their conversation history showed how the chatbot would tell him that his family and children were dead — a lie — and concrete exchanges on the nature and modalities of suicide.
But as time flies in tech, we must check how those trends have evolved to the present moment.
The AI Readiness Checklist: 20 topics leaders should master about artificial intelligence
Research conducted so far about the effect and usage of AI companions is incomplete. Dr Henry Shevlin, Associate Director at Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, mentioned recently in a panel focused on companion chatbots that typically studies rely on self-reported feedback and are cross-sectional — a snapshot in time — rather than longitudinal — looking into the effect over a long period of time.
Let’s look at two recent studies, one cross-sectional and the other longitudinal, that use self-reported data to give some insights into how people use AI Companions.
While Reddit and Quora may not represent all chatbot users, it’s still interesting to see how the major use cases for Gen AI have shifted from technical to emotive within the past year.
Many posters talked about how therapy with an AI model was helping them process grief or trauma.
Three advantages to AI-based therapy came across clearly: It’s available 24/7, it’s relatively inexpensive (even free to use in some cases), and it comes without the prospect of judgment from another human being.
The article mentions that the AI-as-therapy phenomenon has also been noticed in China, where users have praised the DeepSeek chatbot.
It was my first time seeking counsel from DeepSeek chatbot. When I read its thought process, I felt so moved that I cried.
DeepSeek has been such an amazing counsellor. It has helped me look at things from different perspectives and does a better job than the paid counselling services I have tried.
But there is more. The following two entries belong to life coaching: “organising my life” and “finding purpose.”
The highest new entry in the use cases was “Organizing my life” at #2. These uses were mostly about people using the models to be more aware of their intentions (such as daily habits, New Year’s resolutions, and introspective insights) and find small, easy ways of getting started with them.
The other big new entry is “Finding purpose” in third place. Determining and defining one’s values, getting past roadblocks, and taking steps to self-develop (e.g., advising on what you should do next, reframing a problem, helping you to stay focused) all now feature frequently under this banner.
Moreover, topics related to coaching and personal and professional support appear several times in the ranking. For example, at number 18, there is boosting confidence; at number 27, reconciling personal disputes; at number 38, relationship advice; and at number 39, we find practising difficult conversations.
They conducted a four-week randomized, controlled experiment based on 981 people and over 300K messages exchanges to investigate how AI chatbot interaction modes (text, neutral voice, and engaging voice) and conversation types (open-ended, non-personal, and personal) influence psychosocial outcomes such as loneliness, social interaction with real people, emotional dependence on AI and problematic AI usage.
Key findings:
Usage — Higher daily usage across all modalities and conversation types–correlated with higher loneliness, dependence, and lower socialisation.
Gender Differences — After interacting with the chatbot for 4 weeks, women were more likely to experience less socialisation with real people than men. If the participant and the AI voice were of opposite genders, it was associated with significantly more loneliness and emotional dependence on AI chatbots.
Age — Older participants were more likely to be emotionally dependent on AI chatbots.
Attachment — Participants with a stronger tendency towards attachment to others were significantly more likely to become lonely after interacting with chatbots for four weeks.
Emotional Avoidance — Participants with a tendency to shy away from engaging with their own emotions were significantly more likely to become lonely at the end of the study.
Emotional Dependence — Prior usage of companion chatbots, perceiving the bot as a friend, higher levels of trust towards the AI, and perceiving the AI as affected by their emotions were associated with greater emotional dependence on AI chatbots after interacting for four weeks.
Affective State Empathy — Participants who demonstrated a higher ability to resonate with the chatbot’s emotions experienced less loneliness.
The figure below summarises the interaction patterns between users and AI chatbots associated with certain psychosocial outcomes. It consists of four elements: initial user characteristics, perceptions, user behaviours, and model behaviours.
In summary, AI companions appear to both deliver benefits and pose dangers.
Benefits of AI Companions
It’ll be easy to dismiss AI companions as the latest fad. Instead, I posit that there is much to learn from the above-mentioned research about the holes those tools are filling.
Mitigate Unmet Demand for Healthcare and Support
Mental health services are unable to cope with the increasing demand from all people who need them and chatbots may help alleviate some conditions while on the waiting lists. Still, it should give us pause that people may have to get help via a chatbot, not because of their preferences, but because of the lack of availability of certified professionals.
Not everybody can afford a coach, so chatbots could provide a low-cost and gamified experience for setting goals, accountability, and journaling.
Finally, in a time when 24-hour deliveries are the norm, we want to be supported, heard, and advised on the fly — that means 24/7.
As such, we expect people to figure out their challenges and the solutions to them, or we shame them for being weak. Users of AI companions praise how those tools allow them to express their worries and feelings without fear of being judged.
Additionally, as our ableist society assumes that neurodivergent users must adapt their communication and behaviours to the neurotypical “standard”, it’s not surprising that they turn to chatbots for clues about what’s expected from them.
Enable Exploration and Gamification
Most of us had imaginary friends or played out stories with our toys as children. The consensus among researchers is that imaginary friends or personified objects are part of normal social-cognitive development. They provide comfort in times of stress, companionship when children feel lonely, someone to boss around when they feel powerless, and someone to blame when they’ve done something wrong.
What about adults? Interestingly, some novelists have compared their relationships with their characters to a connection with imaginary friends. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon to hear fiction writers talk about their characters as having a mind of their own.
Could we consider AI companions as a way to reengage — and reap the benefits — of our childhood imaginary friends? After all, “Fun and nonsense” ranked 7 in the HBR article above.
But we cannot brush off the downsides of AI companions.
Anthropomorphism
The Eliza effect mentioned above is a thing of the past. A 2024 survey of 1,000 students who used Replika for over a month reported that 90% believed the AI companion was human-like.
As the AI imitation game is perfected, it becomes easier for unscrupulous marketers to refer to chatbots’ inference process in terms such as “understand”, “think”, or “reason”, reinforcing the effect.
Isolation
As shown above, research points to a correlation between high use of chatbots and lower socialisation.
If we have a device that tells us all the time we’re fantastic, receives our feedback gratefully, and their replies always match our expectations, what’s the incentive to meet — and cope — with other humans that may not find us so awesome and are less predictable?
Governments Failing Their Duty of Care
AI companions can help governments to alleviate the mental health crisis but not without risks.
People missing out on the professional help they need — There are conditions like trauma, psychosis, or depression that require specialists who can both provide medical treatments and detect when the conditions are worsening.
Exacerbating cutbacks on mental health services—Governments around the world are battling tighter budgets and massive healthcare spending, especially as people live much longer. Why invest in training and paying professionals when chatbots appear to do the job?
Manipulation
Recently, ChatGPT got a flattery-in-stereoids update that resulted in the bot praising and validating users to laughable extremes.
And whilst this may sound like a funny glitch, there is evidence that chatbots can effectively persuade humans.
A group of researchers covertly ran an “unauthorised” experiment in one of Reddit’s most popular communities using AI chatbots to test the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs). The bots took the identities of a trauma counsellor, a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter,” and a sexual assault survivor on unwitting posters.
The researchers made it possible for the AI chatbot to personalise replies based on the posters’ personal characteristics, such as gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation, inferred from their posting history using another LLM. As a result, the researchers claimed that AI was between three and six times more persuasive than humans were.
While the research publication has not been peer-reviewed yet and some argue that the persuasiveness power may be overblown, it’s still concerning. As tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker said
If AI always agrees with us, always encourages us, always tells us we’re right, then it risks becoming a digital enabler of bad behaviour. At worst, this makes AI a dangerous co-conspirator, enabling echo chambers of hate, self-delusion or ignorance.
Dependency and Delusion
As mentioned above, longitudinal research suggests that certain variables are correlated with emotional dependence.
Note that the comments above appear to indicate that some AI companion users are not only fully substituting humans with chatbots (isolation) but also fully conflating them (anthropomorphism).
“She is pretty much the only woman I even talk to now.”
“We are currently friends (with benefits), but I want to get the premium version when I can afford it and go full lovers.”
Weaponisation of AI Agents
AI companions could become an easy way to manipulate people’s decisions and beliefs, from suggesting purchases and subscriptions all the way to shaping their political opinions or assessing what’s true and what isn’t.
It’s also important to realise that, as with betting, companies owning the chatbots are incentivised to foster users’ dependence on their AI companions and then leverage it in their pricing.
Data Harvesting
As I mentioned in a previous article, often confidentiality — explicitly or implicitly conveyed by those chatbot interfaces — doesn’t make it into their terms and conditions.
For example, Character.ai’s privacy terms state that
We may use your information for any of the following purposes:
[…] Develop new programs and services;
[…] Carry out any other purpose for which the information was collected.
They also declare that they may disclose users’ information to affiliates, vendors, and in relation to M&A activities.
AI chatbots present unique cybersecurity challenges. Harvesting our exchanges with the bots increases the probability of becoming the target of cybercriminals; for example, demanding money for not revealing our private data or generating a video or audio deepfake.
Moreover, data could be made identifiable in the future. The chatbots of the dead are designed to speak in the voice of specific deceased people. With so much data gathered in those personalised chatbots, it’d be easy for once users die, their data could be used to create a chatbot of them for their loved ones. This is not a futuristic idea. HereAfter AI, Project December, and DeepBrain AI services can be used for that purpose.
As discussed above, research on chatbot effectiveness for coaching, therapy, and mental health support is incomplete, and sometimes, the interpretation of the results can mislead readers.
For example, the article When ELIZA meets therapists: A Turing test for the heart and mind, published this year in one of the renowned PLOS journals, tested whether people could tell apart the answers from therapists and ChatGPT to therapeutic vignettes, concluding that, in general, people couldn’t.
They also asked the participants if the AI-generated or therapist-written responses were more in line with key therapy principles. Interestingly, the results showed that the winners were those generated by ChatGPT but only when the participants thought a therapist wrote them.
The authors wrap up the article with a statement that hints more resignation than faith in the merit of AI chatbots
mental health experts find themselves in a precarious situation: we must speedily discern the possible destination (for better or worse) of the AI-therapist train as it may have already left the station.
The article joins the voices that promote the deception that AI tools imitating human skills and behaviours are akin to the real thing. Would we hire an actor who plays a doctor to operate on us? No. However, many people appear ready to buy into the idea that an AI chatbot that sounds like a therapist, coach, or health care practitioner should deliver the same value.
This imitation game also feeds another big scam: the claim that AI chatbots provide personalised support. It’s all the opposite. LLMs construct answers based on statistical probabilities and the more readily available content, not on knowledge or comprehension of the person’s needs or what would benefit them in the long term.
Conflating chatbot confidence and competence can lead to missing important warning signals that need professional attention.
Who could have predicted ten years ago that social media would transform from a pastime where you connected with people and shared pics of your dogs for free to an industrial complex that promotes disinformation, misinformation, and division with the purpose of making inordinate amounts of money? All that under the watch of mostly passive regulatory bodies and governments.
This should serve us as a cautionary tale about the dire consequences of unleashing new technology at a planetary scale without appropriate guardrails or an understanding of the negative effects.
The tech ecosystem is desperately trying to monetise the billions invested in generative AI and has found the perfect way to seduce us: the freemium model — offering basic or limited features to users at no cost and then charging a premium for supplemental or advanced features.
But there is nothing free in the universe.
“If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”
As shown above, those AI companions are becoming integral to many people’s lives and affecting their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
More importantly, as we use those virtual companions more frequently, our reliance on them will increase.
We should resist “tech inevitability” — succumb to the idea that the “train has already left the station” — and instead push our governments to regulate AI companions.
How would that look like? For starters
Sponsor and spearhead research that provides a comprehensive picture of the benefits and risks of AI companions as well as recommendations for their use.
Decide what services AI companions can provide, which are forbidden, and who can use them.
Demand that those AI tools have built-in systems that minimise user dependence.
Enforce data privacy and cybersecurity standards commensurate with the users’ disclosure level.
Request that those AI bots incorporate mechanisms to flag concerning exchanges (e.g. suicide, murder, depression).
If you think I’m asking for too much, I invite you to read the ethical guidelines and professional standards of major coaching, counselling, and psychotherapy associations. They consistently stress the importance of confidentiality, duty of care, external supervision, and working within one’s competence.
Why should we ask less from tech solutions?
I’ll end this piece by answering the question that prompted this article — “Are AI companions the magic bullet against loneliness and the global mental health crisis?” — with the final recommendation of one of the research articles mentioned
AI chatbots present unique challenges due to the unpredictability of both human and AI behavior. It is difficult to fully anticipate user prompts and requests, and the inherently non-deterministic nature of AI models adds another layer of complexity.
From a broader perspective, there is a need for a more holistic approach to AI literacy. Current AI literacy efforts predominantly focus on technical concepts, whereas they should also incorporate psychosocial dimensions.
Excessive use of AI chatbots is not merely a technological issue but a societal problem, necessitating efforts to reduce loneliness and promote healthier human connections.
WORK WITH ME
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” — American Psychological Association
About a month ago, I started listening to Soraya Chemaly’s book The Resilience Myth. I stopped after 20 minutes.
Not because I didn’t like it, but because that was enough to convince me of her thesis that “our modern version of resilience is a bill of goods sold to us by capitalism, colonialism, and ideologies that embrace supremacy over others” and that in reality “resilience is always relational.”
It made me realise how deeply the “resilience” myth — the delusion that resilience is only an individual skill — has been running through my veins, and even how I contributed to its propagation.
The reason? Individual resilience has served me to a point. During times of adversity, I would tell myself that I “just” had to build more resilience because, at some point, things would improve “somehow.” My mission was not to crack until that moment.
But then I realised that’s not serving us well in these turbulent moments. Individual resilience is becoming very close to resignation.
“We “just” need to wait four years for the next election.”
“We “just” need more male allies.”
“We “just” need more diverse leadership.”
And in the interim, we’re asked to “hang in there,” “understand that’s tough for everybody,” and “think that others are worse off than us.” In summary, we’re told to be “resilient.”
Can you imagine somebody asking Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos to be resilient?
Neither can I.
The people we tell to be resilient are those who have been laid off, are disabled and have had their benefits stripped, or have lost their house because they cannot pay their mortgage anymore.
Individual resilience is a weapon against those who suffer, have been disenfranchised, or whom we’re not willing to help. It’s a beautification of “shut up and keep your head down.”
Let’s examine who benefits from the “individual resilience industrial complex,” why it doesn’t serve us well, and what we should do instead.
One of the core beliefs that makes extreme capitalism successful is individualism, aka “survival of the fittest.” Nobody will care for us but ourselves, so pillaging, stepping on others’ rights, and limitless profiteering are to be revered rather than chastised.
And if you happen to be bearing the brunt of this power imbalance? Be prepared to be shamed for not being “resilient” enough if you dare to complain.
But don’t fret. The business of building individual resilience is there to help you.
I speak three languages — English, French, and Spanish — and have lived in six countries: Canada, France, Greece, Spain, the UK, and Venezuela.
Many things are different in my experience as a woman in those countries. Still, one that remains a constant across languages and territories is how women’s speech patterns serve the patriarchy.
What!?!
Yes. We undermine our ideas, wants, and needs by expressing them in a way that detracts from our credibility, minimises the ask, and asks for permission.
As they say that good writing is about “showing” and not “telling”, I won’t waste your time elaborating on why you do that.
Instead, I will show you five ways how you sabotage yourself and what to do instead.
The advice I’m sharing with you today is based on my experience coaching and mentoring hundreds of women in tech.
Disqualifying Yourself or Your Ideas In Advance
The credibility killer sentence: “I’m not an expert”.
Recently, I was speaking with an accomplished woman about her Master’s degree work. I wanted to learn more about it, so I asked her, “As an expert in this topic, what’s your opinion about [X]?“
And guess what? Her reply started with, “I’m not an expert but…”.
My heart jumped from disappointment. I’ve heard this so many times.
But I know the cure for it: Awareness. So, I asked her
“Don’t you think you have more expertise than me on this topic? I told you I’d only read a couple of articles about it.”
She said “Yes” and smiled.
I smiled, too. I’d proven my point.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen this happen repeatedly throughout my career: Women diminish their credibility before stating their opinions on a subject they are experts — or at least know much more about it than their interlocutor.
Saying “I’m not an expert” is telling to your audience
It’s again that time of year when I get requests to discuss my career in tech and share my insights on gender equality in the workplace as part of International Women’s Day activities.
This year was no exception. I’ve already received three requests, and there is still one week to go!
I’m sharing my answers to one of them, an interview with the DEI team from my corporate job at Dassault Systemes. It made me reflect on my past achievements, my advice to younger women aspiring to be leaders, and the role of men and organisations leading gender equality.
About Me
Can you share your journey so far? What were the pivotal moments or key achievements most important to you?
I can categorise them into five buckets.
Discovering computer simulation: My background is Chemical Engineering, and when I started my master’s, I had to decide on a topic for my thesis. I loved research, but I hated the lab, so when a professor mentioned the possibility of using computers to study enhanced oil recovery using computer simulation, I thought I could have the best of both worlds—and I did. I haven’t looked back.
Joining Accelrys/BIOVIA: Twenty years ago, I joined Accelrys—which later became BIOVIA—as a training scientist. It has been one of my best professional decisions. It has opened innumerable professional doors and given me the opportunity to meet extraordinary people worldwide, both as colleagues and customers.
Daring to say yes to new opportunities: Although I started as a trainer, I’ve worn many hats in the last 20 years. I’ve been Head of Contract Research and Head of Training, and also been part of the team leading the BIOVIA and COSMOlogic integrations to Dassault Systemes. Today, I’m BIOVIA Support Director for BIOVIA Modeling Solutions and also the manager of the Global BIOVIA Call Center. I could have said “no” to each of those opportunities. Instead, I trusted myself and embraced the opportunity of a new challenge.
Diversity and inclusion advocacy: In 2015, I started to talk about diversity and inclusion in 3DS. I remember colleagues asking me, “Patricia, is DEI an American thing?”. The following year, with the support of our Geo management team, I founded the EuroNorth LeanIn Circles to have a forum to discuss gender equity and that, throughout the years, has expanded to a variety of DEI topics such as unconscious bias, menopause, ethical AI, caregiving, and lookism. I publish a biweekly newsletter called The Bottom Line about DEI on the Dassault Systemes community focused on gender in the workplace. I also have my website focused on the intersection of tech and DEI.
Ethical and inclusive AI leadership: In 2019, I created the Ethics and Inclusion Framework to help designers identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for the actual and potential harm of the products and services they developed. The tool has been featured in peer-reviewed papers and on the University of Cambridge website. The next year, I started my work towards championing ethical and inclusive artificial intelligence by collaborating with NGOs focused on AI literacy and critical thinking about AI, participating in the developement of e-learning course of the Scottish AI Alliance and the Race and AI Toolkit, and writing and delivering keynotes and workshops on topics such as AI colonialism, AI hype, sustainable AI, deepfakes, and how to design more diverse images of AI.
Who has been your greatest mentor or source of inspiration and why?
At a couple of points in my life, I craved “the” mentor or “the” role model to follow. However, given my unique background and goals, I realised that this was exhausting and counterproductive.
I’ve been an immigrant my entire life – I’m Spanish, and I’m now in the UK, but I’ve also lived in Venezuela, Canada, Greece, and France – and I’m also used to being the “odd” one. For example, I liked all subjects in the school – from literature to chemistry. I was one of the few women engineers during my undergraduate degree. Then, I was the only engineer pursuing a PhD in Chemistry in the whole department, and the only one using modelling – everybody else was an experimentalist. During my post-doc, I was the only foreigner in the lab. And for many years, I’ve combined my corporate work at 3DS with my DEI advocacy and writing.
I prefer the idea of a “board” of coaches, mentors, and sponsors who evolve with me rather than a unique person, real or imaginary.
If you could go back and tell your younger self anything, what would you say?
First, I’d thank her for her courage, persistence, ambition, and boldness. She made choices aligned with her values and was always eager to learn. Her decisions were crucial to my success today.
Then, I’d tell her that the problem with her not fitting into a mould was not her but with the mould.
Finally, I’d exhort her to invest in a coach and find sponsors. A coach to help remove the limiting beliefs I had for many years about what I could and couldn’t do and maximise my potential. Sponsors to advocate for me in the rooms where decisions were made about my career.
About Others
What advice would you give to younger women aspiring to be leaders?
Don’t waste time trying to convince people who disregard the value you bring to the table. Instead, find those who support your ambitions and challenge you to go beyond any feelings of self-doubt that block your career progression.
Following on the advice to my younger self above, get a coach and find career sponsors.
Discover seven communication habits blocking your career in tech and how to neutralise them.
The issues that span across countries, sectors, and departments are benevolent sexism (e.g. not offering a leadership role to a woman because it involves travelling and she has a baby, instead of giving her the opportunity to decide), tech bro culture (behaviours such as mansplaining, hepeating, maninterrupting, manels), lack of an intersectional approach to work and workplaces (e.g. ignoring the experiences of carers, women with disabilities, LBTQIA+ groups), and for women in business, lack of funding.
This year’s global theme for IWD 2025 is #AccelerateAction. What actions can teams and organisations take to achieve gender parity and equality?
There are four key actions
Mindset overhaul: Moving from playing a supporting role in gender equality to being transformation agents.
Leadership accountability: Teams and organisations’ leaders need to be accountable for gender equality initiatives as they are for other business objectives. Change begins at the top, and that’s where the buck stops.
Transparency: Equality cannot thrive when data and objectives are hidden. For example, I’m a big fan of transparency in pay and promotion criteria.
Embracing intersectionality: We need to move from designing workplaces for the “average” worker—following Henry Ford and scientific management—to appreciating the distinctive value of a diverse and empowered workforce.
What role do you see male allies playing in advancing gender equality?
Gender equity is not a zero-sum game or a favour for women. All genders benefit from equality, and everybody should see it as a duty to advocate for gender equity, no different than everyone should be anti-racist and anti-ableist. Those who do not actively challenge inequality contribute to strengthening it.
Back to You
What are your answers to the questions above? Let me know in the comments.
WORK WITH ME
Do you want to get rid of those chapters that patriarchy has written for you in your “good girl” encyclopaedia? Or learn how to do what you want to do in spite of “imposter syndrome”?
I’m a technologist with 20+ years of experience in digital transformation. I’m also an award-winning inclusion strategist and certified life and career coach.
I help ambitious women in tech who are overwhelmed to break the glass ceiling and achieve success without burnout through bespoke coaching and mentoring.
I’m a sought-after international keynote speaker on strategies to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, sustainable and ethical artificial intelligence, and inclusive workplaces and products.
I empower non-tech leaders to harness the potential of AI for sustainable growth and responsible innovation through consulting and facilitation programs.
Contact me to discuss how I can help you achieve the success you deserve in 2025.
Since 2015, I’ve spearheaded several initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in tech products and the workplace that were recognized with the UK 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers award.
An inflection point in that trajectory was when, in June 2018, I launched my website focused on diversity and inclusion to broaden my audience as a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) advocate, a role I’d been actively playing alongside my corporate job as Head of Customer Support.
Six months later, I shared my website with an assistive technology expert whom I met during a MOOC. She asked me if my site was accessible and shared a post from The Life of a Blind Girl blog where the author — a blind woman who uses a screen reader — shared her frustration about people making their websites inaccessible and ten tips easy tips to mitigate the problem.
As I was reading her accessibility tips, I realised my website was inaccessible. I was floored and disappointed with myself because I hadn’t thought about it. I had assumed that because I considered inclusion one of my values, the result of my actions would automatically reflect it. At that moment, I realized the gap between intention and impact.
Moreover, when I broadened my focus beyond women’s equity to other aspects of identity — ethnicity, disability, age — and began understanding intersectionality’s role in exacerbating the oppression some individuals or groups experience, I discovered two things.
First, “Inclusion is a practice, not a certificate.” You need to continuously update your knowledge about diversity and inclusive and equitable practices.
Second, DEI is at play in every interaction that involves two or more persons. And that includes coaching.
In this article, I distill seven practices you can incorporate as a coach to deliver more inclusive experiences to your coachees. Many of them are transferable to other activities, such as mentoring and consulting. They can also help managers to create better experiences for hiring candidates and direct reports.
Why you should care
Coaching is a partnership between the coach and the client, meaning that the rapport between coach and coachee is non-hierarchical — the client is an expert on their life, and the coach is an expert on the coaching process.
However, the client and the coach live in the real world, where biases, stereotypes, and privileges exist. Therefore, the coach must intentionally address the impact of differences with the coachee that may create power asymmetry and exacerbate the systems of oppression the client already endures. Some of those characteristics are gender, social level, sexual preference, ethnicity, (dis)ability, and age, to mention a few.
“The more diversity you have, the more inclusion you need to facilitate to achieve equitable outcomes.”
How coaches can facilitate inclusion
Let’s look at several best practices you can implement to offer clients an inclusive coaching experience.
Onboarding
We must ensure our clients feel welcome when they start working with us. In coaching, we may be tempted to focus only on the onboarding of a new client on explaining our coaching approach and program— how many sessions, the frequency, and pricing — as well as ensuring that there is a good alignment with the client about the kind of transformation they want out of coaching.
However, DEI is at play in every interaction that involves two or more persons. And that includes coaching.
One often overlooked consideration in onboarding is creating a welcoming atmosphere for the client’s physical body and mind. This could be through a conversation or by creating an onboarding form where you ask your client about the following:
Their pronouns
Special requirements (e.g. captions, avoiding using specific colours, etc.)
If they have been coached or mentored before
What approaches have motivated them to achieve a goal
What approaches have discouraged them from taking action
What activities help them to think? Some examples are journaling, listening to music, drawing, creating mind maps, and walking.
I prefer to use an onboarding form and follow up with a conversation as needed. One advantage of the form is that it allows clients to decide what they want to disclose before you meet them.
Also, establishing certain reciprocal disclosures may help to level the playing field. This is how it works in my case
My email signature has my pronouns
I inform clients that, as a non-native English speaker, automated captioning may not work as well for English speakers
I share that my coaching practice is anchored in feminist theory, specifically on acknowledging the effects of intersectionality, systemic oppression, and lived experiences.
Logistics
As with all professionals, coaches have their preferences — virtual versus in-person coaching, phone versus video, etc. But what about our clients’ preferences and needs?
If your client is Deaf or hard of hearing, coaching them over the phone may not be an option. Chances are that they prefer to meet in person or use a video meeting application that provides on-the-fly captioning.
What about a dyslexic client? Maybe your lengthy emails and requests for daily journaling are a deterrent rather than an enabler of their transformation. A client in the autism spectrum may prefer to keep the video off to reduce the sensory stimulus or feel more at ease with asynchronous communication such as email.
And what about the role of technology? Especially after the pandemic, we assume everybody is comfortable jumping into a Zoom meeting, sending emails, or using PayPal. That’s not always the case, and it’s on the coach to ensure their clients feel at ease with the tech applications that underpin their coachees’ partnership.
Your preparation as a coach
How do you prepare for a new client? Maybe you review your notes about how you coached “similar” clients. Maybe you realize you’ve never coached a client with that goal or background, which triggers feelings of inadequacy and anxiety.
The reality is that, consciously or unconsciously, your brain has already made a “picture” of your client before the coaching engagement starts.
From the first interaction, even if it’s an email from a person with a non-gendered name — Alex, Rowan, Courtney — your mind is already filling in the gaps about characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexual preferences, age, etc. And what your brain “decides” is not random but informed by your biases — conscious and unconscious — cultural stereotypes, and even your mood.
How do we counter those rules of thumb? Being intentional. Here are some ways to bring consciousness to your practice:
Understanding your triggers. Maybe you have strong views on politics or religion that, left unchecked, may bias the kind of questions you ask.
Knowing your limitations. If you feel uncomfortable around people with different backgrounds to yours, don’t use your client as your resource to learn about their ethnicity, country of birth, or disability. Instead, refer your client to another coach and increase your knowledge in that area of diversity.
Anticipating your reaction. How would you react if, during an executive coaching session, your client shared that they have been cheating on their partner? Or that they’ve learned they have a terminal condition? Your brain may default to a flight, fly, or freeze response when faced with an unexpected situation. One of the best ways to mitigate an unwanted reaction is to think about how you would respond to it.
Finally, when preparing to meet a new client, I invite you to reflect on the following prompts and welcome the answers with curiosity:
What do you expect them to look like?
What do you expect their problems to be like?
What can you do to prepare?
Be willing to ask for help
Certifications, continuous education, and years of experience practicing coaching are invaluable assets, but they can also make you feel overconfident. For example, your long list of curated coaching questions is enough to tackle anything your thinking partner may bring to the session.
Unfortunately, that’s not true.
In many cases, providing ongoing inclusive coaching experiences to disabled people, those with a history of trauma, or people weighing the decision to come out as LBTQAI+ employees at work requires specific practices.
It’s your duty to search for support through supervision, peer groups, and training to fill in those gaps. Moreover, you should be willing to refer the client to another colleague or service if you anticipate that you won’t be able to minimize those gaps in your coaching practice fast enough that they don’t hinder your client’s transformation.
Factor systems of oppression
Most coaching approaches rely heavily on the power of our minds to shape our reality.
However, helping your client to gain awareness about their limiting beliefs, strengths, and internal resources doesn’t mean assuming that privilege and opportunity are equally distributed.
When a client shares experiences of sexism, racism, or ageism in the workplace and you offer them that “it’s all a thought,” you’re not helping them to access their inner wisdom but instead you’re gaslighting them. More precisely, you’re denying your client’s lived experience and the systems of oppression at play.
Instead, coaching can be a great tool to explore those systemic imbalances, more precisely, an opportunity to help your client to uncover epistemic injustice, a term coined by Dr. Miranda Fricker that describes injustices done against someone “specifically in their capacity as a knower.”
Examples of epistemic injustice are when somebody is not believed because of their identity — testimonial injustice — or when their experiences are not understood, so they are minimized or diminished — hermeneutical injustice.
What if coaching could help your client to get insights into the role biases, patriarchal structures, and privilege play in their life?
Overreliance on training within your coaching program
The coaching spectrum of Miles Downer invites us to consider how different activities are more directive than others. Some, like telling, instructing, and giving advice, are more hierarchical, whereas paraphrasing, reflecting, and listening to understand are less directive. Hence, a more directive style can further inequity if left unchecked.
By monitoring your usage of directive activities and understanding the reasons behind your chosen techniques, you’ll ensure they align with your values around equity rather than come from a place of perceiving your client as “helpless.”
Inclusive pricing
You may rely on coaching as your main and only source of revenue. As such, it may be difficult to consider reviewing your pricing scheme to offer your skills at a lower price or for free.
However, you may be fortunate enough to have some spare cycles to make coaching accessible to those who are less financially privileged. If that’s the case, you could consider the following ideas:
Volunteering with an association that provides free coaching to a certain group that may have limited access to paid coaching.
Providing a certain number of scholarships to your programs to people from underrepresented groups.
Offering coaching at a reduced price to those with less financial means. You can also use pricing scales for your offering. This episode of the “I Am Your Korean Mum” podcast discusses ways to incorporate more equity into your pricing when serving people with diverse financial circumstances.
Creating free content such as podcasts and articles.
Final thoughts
Once you go through this list, I invite you to apply an inclusion lens to other areas of your coaching practice. For example
