People online have always edited the truth, but at least they used to be people.

A new form of deception is spreading through dating apps: chatfishing, aka when someone uses AI to help them flirt, text, or even build an entire romantic persona.

It’s the softer cousin of catfishing. The photo is real; the banter isn’t.
And it’s growing fast.

A 2025 Match–Kinsey Institute survey found that 26% of U.S. singles now use AI to enhance dating (a 333% jump in one year!). Apps like Rizz, Winggg, and YourMove AI turn screenshots of conversations into suggested replies. Some literally advertise, “put your texting on cruise control.” Facebook Dating is testing a built-in assistant, and Hinge now uses AI to coach people toward more “authentic” answers.

(Next week: how AI isn’t just shaping what we send, but what we receive—and how that changes the texture of intimacy.)

Therapeutic relationships shift, stretch, and sometimes come back to meet you again years later. I delivered an FT-AN (Family Therapy - Anorexia Nervosa) training last week, and one of my long-since-discharged patients joined us. She's now an adult, and since discharge, we have done a lot of public-facing Eating Disorder Advocacy work together. It's a rare gift to meet someone who is fully recovered from Anorexia Nervosa with no trace of the illness left behind.

We started as we always do. India shared her first experience of meeting me. She was recently discharged from an inpatient unit, standing on a table and loudly exclaiming displeasure using questionable language, meanwhile, Marianne is standing with her arms crossed, and after the table-standing session was over, calmly asks, “Have you finished?” That, for India, was the moment she knew “ok, this one (this therapist) might be alright.” I share all of this with permission.

There’s something about those moments, that say more about therapy than any manual ever could. We talk so much about models, fidelity, and evidence-based practice, but the truth is that recovery often begins in the smallest acts of staying put. Standing calmly without escalation. Being the adult in the room when everything else feels impossible. Sometimes that’s the first experience of safety a young person has had in years. That’s not a line you’ll find in the FT-AN manual, but it’s there in spirit.

Seeing India now — thriving, making meaning of what she went through, and offering hope to others — is the quiet reward no outcome measure ever captures. We spend so much of our working lives navigating bureaucracy, policy, and burnout that it’s easy to forget why we do it. And then something like this happens: a reminder that what we do matters, that people get better, and that the relationships we build can ripple far beyond discharge. Therapy doesn’t always end; sometimes it transforms. And when it does, it’s a privilege.

Across the world, this week carries a shared thread of remembrance.

Each tradition reflects the same impulse to honor those we’ve lost while staying rooted in the living.

Grief doesn’t unfold in a cultural vacuum. Rituals, beliefs about the afterlife, and expressions of mourning vary widely, and so do norms around privacy, emotion, and time.

Practicing cultural humility means asking, not assuming. It also means noticing where our own comfort, or discomfort, shows up when clients express grief differently than we expect.

The Therapist Resource Network (TRN) is a US-based nonprofit offering emergency financial support, burnout prevention, and advocacy for mental health clinicians.

Founded by licensed counselors and Therapist Brief reader Jeanine Rousso and Zandra Baker, TRN was born from a hard truth many of us know too well: the profession built on care often leaves its caregivers without a safety net.

To date, TRN has provided emergency grants to 19 clinicians facing natural disasters or personal crises, and that number is growing. These small lifelines during moments when support can make all the difference. Grant applications remain open, and next year, TRN plans to expand its mission with programs focused on secondary trauma, healing, and burnout recovery.

💡 Apply for a grant: therapistresourcenetwork.org/get-support
💛 Support the work: Donate here

My teen daughter introduced me to the singer-songwriter Olivia Dean, and I loved her sound and vibe from the get-go. Her music blends soul, jazz, and a kind of gentle emotional honesty. She’s an easy, uplifting listen. Her lyrics about boundaries, self-worth, and quiet resilience hit that perfect therapist sweet spot.

This week’s Off the Clock is a celebration of the therapist friends who keep showing up, creating, and carving out space where it’s most needed.

Top of that list is Anthony Pennant, whose new website is live and whose forthcoming book, Celebrating the Resilience of Queer Black Relationships: A Guide to Multidynamic Relational Therapy, deserves every bit of attention it’s about to get.

Anthony holds the kind of depth, integrity and generosity that reminds me why this field matters.

The President of Britain’s ‘Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Dr Lade Smith, has warned that a powerful cannabis lobby is fuelling a “dangerous complacency” about the drug’s mental-health risks, particularly for teenagers.

“When you start smoking with your mates at 14 or 15, you’re literally growing your brain in a cannabis soup.”

Cannabis remains the most used illegal drug in England and Wales with approx. 2.3 million users last year. Yet it’s often viewed as harmless. New cohort data shows adolescents who use it are 11 times more likely to experience a psychotic episode than non-using peers

Smith points to high-potency cannabis, found in 94 percent of police seizures, with products often exceeding 10-15% THC (some between 20 and 40%), as the main driver. Frequent or high-potency use during adolescence is associated with increased risk for mood dysregulation and psychotic disorders, and research links it to alterations in memory, reward, and emotional processing, as well as structural and dopamine-related changes in the brain.

The CBD boom—from vitamin sprays to sleep oils—has blurred the boundary between therapy-adjacent wellness and evidence. While some medicinal use is justified, Smith warns the “CBD = safe” narrative is under-tested and under-regulated.

Her broader concern lies in youth-mental-health investment. With three-quarters of all mental-health problems emerging before 24, she argues for early, assertive intervention to prevent chronic relapse and improve economic outcomes—a call easily lost amid industry lobbying and social-media myth-making.

Shift the frame. Cannabis isn’t only a substance issue, it’s often a story of belonging, anxiety management, and identity formation. Curiosity beats confrontation.

Name the grey area. Clients increasingly arrive with “it’s natural” or “it’s just CBD” narratives. A gentle psychoeducational stance, linking THC potency, adolescent neurodevelopment, and mood regulation, can recalibrate the conversation without shaming.

Map function, not frequency. Rather than counting joints, explore when and why cannabis use peaks: before social exposure? After therapy? During loneliness?

Hold the paradox. For some, cannabis feels medicinal, calming, or identity-affirming. For others, it fuels psychotic vulnerability. Therapy can hold both truths while keeping brain development and safety in view.

Sources:

The results are in, and it seems most of us have an intimate relationship with our screens, although some more than others.

In short, therapists are logging plenty of digital hours. Not terrible, but still — to the 1–3 hour crowd, are you okay? And can you teach the rest of us how?

Comments from the Community:

“My screen time is offensive.”