This week's ‘Logged In’ is written by our friend Daniel Fleshner, whose Disrupted Therapist newsletter explores the intersection of tech and therapy. Check it out here.

The use of AI as emotional support has been well-documented, but what does this mean for the companies responsible for AI, and how do therapists’ futures align with those visions? OpenAI recently gave some insight into that topic with their announcement that they will be Augmenting ChatGPT with an Online Network of Human Therapists.

Here’s what this strategy from OpenAI seems to indicate about their perspective:

What it Means for Therapists

Read the full OpenAI announcement here

I’ve just come back from the Association for Family and Systemic Psychotherapy Conference (AFSP)— my first in the role of board member — and, true to form, I didn’t see daylight for two days: all corridors, coffee, and conversations. But what a privilege to host and moderate workshops that will stay with me forever. Anthony Pennant’s session on Expanding the Application of Systemic Sex Therapy with the Global Majority was a masterclass. They illuminated how systemic sex therapy must reach contexts too often ignored, naming the barriers practitioners face and offering frameworks that honour both culture and lived experience: the kind of workshop that leaves you with new tools in one hand and a challenge in the other. It was also a joy to see them again.

Equally moving was From Salesman to Craftsman: Embedding Systemic Practice in Homelessness Prevention, delivered by Tasnia Nawaz, a student psychotherapist who reminded us just how alive Minuchin’s ideas still are in the next generation.

Umberta Telfener captured the global mood in one sharp sentence: “the world is on fire, turning upside down. Coherence is dead, humans don’t feel too well. We are living in a crisis of values, a post-truth world.” Hard to argue with that. Dr Dwight Turner called us to go further — pushing systemic practice to face its colonial legacies, to take decolonising seriously, and to make space for voices pushed to the margins. And then there was my own contribution with Sezer Fahri and Jo Bullen: a live workshop where we put ASH by Slingshot.ai, our AI “supervisor,” to the test. Equal parts experiment and provocation, it was a chance to ask not just what AI can do in our field, but what it means for us as systemic practitioners to invite it into the room at all.

Of course, the real magic of conference is always in the people. Meeting the rest of the board in person for the first time and that electric feeling of being in a room full of colleagues who care as deeply (and differently) as you do. In spite of heading to my next major conference (I’m currently at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool), I’m nursing a hefty dose of AFSP conference blues. Because stepping out of that bubble of a sense of shared purpose — leaves a gap. And yet that gap is also the point: we go back to our corners of the NHS, our clinics, our classrooms, carrying a little more fuel for the fires we all face.

When clients report a recent uptick in inattention or ADHD-like symptoms, ask this simple question: “How much short-form video content are you watching these days?”

Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are designed for rapid novelty and reward cycles. For some clients (and therapists if we’re being honest), even minimal to moderate engagement with short-form content can amplify distractibility, restlessness, and reduced tolerance for slower-paced tasks.

Framing it as part of your clinical curiosity (not a judgment) can open the door to conversations about digital hygiene, media boundaries, and strategies for supporting attention outside the scroll.

It’s back! Two episodes into the new season, and I already want more. Maybe it’s the therapist in me, but I have no appetite for drama in my own life (and I hear plenty of it at work), but I still love every messy minute of it on screen.

This week I’m following MI5’s most unwanted agents, banished to Slough House under the brilliantly rumpled Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman at his best), it’s part spy drama, part office comedy, and entirely addictive.

It’s also a reminder that people are rarely as useless as the systems they’re trapped in might suggest!

A new survey of 2,000 parents of children ages 0–6 (commissioned by Kiddie Academy) suggests parenting priorities are shifting, especially across generations:

Overall, 7 in 10 parents adapt their style to their child’s personality rather than sticking to one approach. Popular frameworks include breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma (37%), attachment-based parenting (33%), cause-and-effect parenting (31%), and child-led parenting (20%).

Note: Details about sample demographics and methodology remain unclear.

Source: PR News Wire, Sept. 18, 2025

How has the recent news of political violence affected you?

While the responses varied, these results suggest it’s affecting us all in some way. They serve as a reminder that we’re carrying this together, inside and outside the therapy room.

“I work with a lot of DC area clients, so politics in the therapy room tends to be prevalent.”

“It's horrifying. It's sad.”

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