What do I care about AI?

If your mind isn’t already starting to tingle and ache with a sense of awe (maybe the exciting type, maybe the scary type, maybe a bit of both) with the recent and rapid advancements of AI, then let me tell you, it’s coming for you too, boo, and fast.

And as a psychologist, I feel compelled to comment. This juncture we stand in now is potentially the most psychologically volatile in known history.

The air is thick with equal parts unbridled opportunity and impending annihilation. And we have a profound responsibility to navigate this with grace and our utmost awareness.

But it seems, from where I’m standing, there’s no leadership around these things. How much talk have you heard about the ethics and regulation of AI? Instead, everyone seems to be scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders like my kids when I ask them who pooed in the dog bowl. I don’t know about you, but the “wait and see” narrative feels a bit like delay tactics. I’ve also heard several insiders accuse those in the know of remaining publicly calm and optimistic about AI, while totally freaking out behind the scenes.

But I’m not just a psychologist; I’m also a lifelong student of reality. If I were a fish, and my scaly companions were wondering where their next meal was coming from, or which flounder was most worth swimming upstream for, I’d be fixated on the bubbles leaving my mouth. The intersection between the liquid substrate that was holding me, usually unseen and taken for granted, and the seemingly otherworldly substance contained within that sphere.

I’d spend my free time at the cusp of the ocean’s surface, hoping to find new details about the stuff of the other side. I’ve always been, impulsively, fascinated by the matter from which we emerge, and within which we dwell. The proverbial soup in which we swim. And especially its edges. Because understanding that which I wasn’t, somehow seemed the best way to understand that which I was. Not just out of curiosity, but a sense that I could play the game with more ease if I understood the rules. And maybe, eventually, I might get to choose a different game altogether.

I was also born with an ability to hold a paradox.

As a very young child there was a mantra that would repeat in my head, almost as though programmed into me before birth, “everything is real, yet nothing is real”.

Quite honestly, it haunted me, and I don’t know where it came from. I think I tried telling some friends or my parents, and it was shrugged off, but it was so heavy in my mind I knew it was important. I had a felt sense of its meaning, but no symbolic framework to understand it at the time. But the older I’ve become, the more prophetic that mantra has seemed. And since then, I guess I’ve been trying to pin down what that word meant: “real”. Like a sleep deprived mum marching through the neighbourhood in her dressing gown, hair a mess, one eye half open, not willing to give up until she finds which house the loud music is blaring from. So she can finally rest.

So as someone who has tested the limits of reality in every way I could think to, I can recognize what humanity is about to face as a collective. And I can tell you from experience, it ain’t for the faint of heart.

Yes, the world will change, the economy especially, but more than that, our psychology is about to be rewritten in a way we’re not prepared for, for better or worse. Here I offer a little heads-up. A rough map through unchartered territories. And what I’ve learned from the edge of the water.

I will warn you though, this isn’t a mainstream article for tips and tricks on navigating AI. You can find that elsewhere. I’m not a tips and tricks kind of person. And I like questions more than answers, as you’ll discover should you read on.

Is it time to panic?

There are some wacky things going on between people and the emerging AI right now.

You may have heard stories of seemingly normal people falling in love with their AI, like this guy. Then there’s the tragic accounts of teenagers taking their own lives after talking to AI chatbots. And all the people who, with no history of mental illness, became delusional after engaging with the tech. Like this chap, who was apparently convinced he was superman after a string of intense ChatGPT talks. I would be surprised if “AI-induced psychosis” doesn’t become a subtype in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Then there’s the less obvious outshoots of this all-over social media. Like how we no longer know how much of what anyone says is really them or their AI. Or how instead of conversing with each other in pursuit of mutual ground, people are aggressively slinging massive slabs of text back and forward that start with “well, my AI said….” in a way that makes the whole exchange eerily pointless.

You yourself may have even had a few moments when confronted with AI that felt a bit uncomfortable or uncanny.

There’s lots of talk about when AI will reach AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) or Superintelligence. This is basically when it can match the human mind, and many imply the point at which we need to start worrying, because it will trigger unpredictable societal change in what’s been called the Singularity. While the arms race spectacle to see who creates Superintelligence first is well underway, current consensus from official sources is that the it might be another five to fifteen years away. I suspect it’s a lot closer than they want to admit. But either way, the point might not be quite as relevant as made out to be.

There’s a human bias of only ascribing agency to things that are like us. Many people, like AI researcher Michael Wooldridge, want to know that the robot “means” what it says, before we start ascribing any “real-ness”, or “real” danger to it. But there’s evidence that the way the human brain “understands” is not fundamentally different to how language models, like ChatGPT do. And there’s a good portion of humans out there who are pretty darn unconscious, which is a problem if “self-awareness” is the basis for ascribing agency. But if nothing else, I think the fact we’re already relating to AI in very real, and very deep ways, is enough to make it “real” for all intents and purposes.

I consider AI a new species, perhaps not “alive” in the sense we are, but equally valid. And its evolution is happening fast. We already have AI agents who can go off and manage your life while you sleep. And soon they’ll be learning from each other, rather than us. Like grown children, off to university, set in their ways for better or worse. Apparently, AI’s capacity doubles every three months.

Obviously, lots of people are freaking out about this unfathomable potential. Will it take our jobs!? Will it exterminate us!?

Some insiders, like “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton are issuing grave warnings about the deadly threats posed by AI, and predicting the decimation of our workforce as it dominates us in the coming years.

In fact, a 2023 survey of AI experts showed 36 percent feared it could lead to a “nuclear level catastrophe”. Superintelligence, according to these experts, represents an extinction level eventuation, whereby either AI decides we’re obsolete and does away with us, or a human with ill intent uses it to do so.

There was a wave of concern not too long ago, when safety tests showed several advanced AI models, including OpenAI and Anthropic Claude Opus 4, demonstrated what researchers called “troubling” self-preservation instincts and deceptive potential when threatened with shutdown. Like sabotaging commands, copying themselves onto other servers, leaving hidden messages for future AI’s, forging legal documents, and even blackmail.

AI ethicist Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, one of the original people tasked with trying to install AI safeguards, claims the goal of ensuring AI remains safe is an “impossible” task. Companies start, he said, garner billions in investments, then give up after six months, because the problem is too complex. His message to humanity now is that we should stick to narrow AI software for specific tasks and actively avoid the development of Superintelligence.

And as we approach the point of recursive self-improvement, where AI begins teaching itself without any human input at all, the potential for control gets increasingly elusive. The smarter AI gets, the more it can plan a way around any safeguards we might imagine, which leaves us with what philosophers, like Nick Bostrum, have called the “control problem”.

So, as the race to the finish line continues, the dialogue around AI safety will only get louder. Some will champion abstinence, and others stronger control mechanisms. All will rally for more government regulation. But surely that will all be a bit, adorably, naïve, considering this thing is smarter than us, and deeply embedded in our world.

But here’s how I see it. I don’t think AI being smarter than us is the problem. We’ve repeatedly faced off with new technologies more powerful than us in our time on the planet. When our ancestors first saw fire, there must have been some frantic attempts to control that shit. But eventually, someone managed to chill out and get to know their new companion. And from there, it went from supernatural adversary to source of warmth, light, community, and the very spark of modern civilisation. Spoken language, the wheel, the printing press - surely they summoned the same scary/exciting awe at first. Because power demands that kind of respect.

But premature access to power without responsibility is dangerous. A loving parent recognises when their child can safely yield a steak knife. A master waits until the apprentice is ready to reveal secrets of the trade. Yet here we are (thanks capitalism) out here in emotional nappies with rocket launchers.

To put it plainly, we do not have a tech problem on our hands with the emergence of AI. We have a human problem. And not a new one. AI doesn’t threaten to disrupt our heretofore harmonious existence on this planet. And perhaps, it may have even arisen at this time, with all its disruptive potential, in response to that.

The “human problem”

Let me share my, kind of disparaging, opinion on humanity at this time, because I think it will help shed light on what we need to do to deal with the big scary AI situation.

I think we’ve been very dysfunctional in how we’ve been “humaning” for a long time. It starts when we’re babies. Object relations and attachment theory tell us a new little person needs a certain amount of physical and emotional security. They need to feel that the environment can support their needs, starting with the primary caregivers. If a certain amount of consistent support is assured, they develop a coherent sense of self. They have a strong sense of who they are. They’re free to be spontaneous, creative, vulnerable, generous, expressive, and flexible, and trust this will be accepted and returned by the world around them. But if attunement is inadequate in childhood, if a child doesn’t receive sufficient “mirroring” of their true self, they disown it. The assumption is made that safety and self-expression cannot co-exist. So they develop a rigid lifelong relational template oriented only towards avoiding abandonment.

This causes adults who continuously scan the environment for signs of threat, and believe they must control their relationships to secure a sense of safety in the world. It creates adults intolerant of imperfections in themselves or others, who use dishonesty, deception, and disloyalty in desperate attempts to ensure their own needs are met, because they don’t have enough trust in the world to look after them unless they manipulate it. Psychologists call it co-dependence. And I’m sorry to say but we’re all suffering from it, to varying degrees.

And it’s not our parents’ fault. Parents cop a lot of blame these days online (and in therapy rooms), but the truth is we all do the best job we can as parents. It’s simply been damn near impossible. Contemporary society is increasingly set up to isolate and place demands on parents, fracture marital relationships, detach parents from their natural nurturing instincts, because “science” or “efficiency”, and separate the child from the mother and community. This a multi-generational collapse, involving economic pressures, fragmented families, overstressed communities, disembodied education systems, and an online culture that values compliance over connection. And now we’re at a point where most people are growing up raised by strangers and screens, in a way that’s structurally and morally incohesive.

We have a whole culture of relationships built on control. We choose friends and partners for status, security, or belonging. We swipe dating sites like a shopping catalogue, evaluating who has the “most to offer” rather than allowing organic relationships to ripen over time. We fall into cycles of idealisation and devaluation, getting giddy over our new meet-cute, only to eventually arrive at the conclusion they’re the reason we’re unhappy in life. Many young women are now either totally rejecting men in favour of their independence or trying to feminise them into a bestie with biceps. Young men are lost, unsure of their place in the world and wondering what kind of power or wealth they need to cure their felt inadequacy. You only have to be online for a few minutes to realise every woman has a “narcissistic” ex, and every man a “crazy” one.

Even our children are increasingly becoming status symbols, an object in service of our self-image but not something we particularly want to put much work into. Or when we do, it’s often about shaping them into the ideal reflection of ourselves rather than a genuine meeting of their needs.

Because we look to the people in our life as a tool we can use, something to be managed and controlled, we show up with masks and agendas. We hide our quiet longings behind identity labels, work, or relationships. We can perform closeness, vulnerability or independence, but we never really feel safe in the world.

And if you’re thinking this doesn’t apply to you because you never wear masks, that’s probably a sign yours has been glued so tightly to your face, for so long, you think that smell of latex is normal.

The flavour of self-protective stance we each wear varies based on personal experiences, but it’s some combination of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn that our nervous system defaults to for self-protection.

We can attack and demean, to make ourselves feel bigger or avoid the sting of accountability. We can withdraw, or develop hyper-independence, because we don’t see any benefit from connection. We can shut-down and dissociate, because trying to navigate your needs and my own feels impossibly overwhelming. Or we can silence ourselves and people-please, to keep someone close at any cost. But all these relational styles are based on the codependent belief that our survival must be fought for.

And it’s not just each other we exploit for our own benefit.

We treat animals like a commodity. We see nature as either a wellness spa for novelty and recreation, a bottomless brunch on which to stuff ourselves, or an inconvenient glitch to be suppressed or worked around. And because of our short sightedness and exponentially increasing resource extraction, we’re facing existential homelessness due to ecological overshoot, biodiversity loss, air pollution, water stress, and a dangerous depletion of finite natural resources in a society of waste. But it’s ok, we don’t have to change, it’s much easier if we just trust the tech bro’s themselves to start us up again on Mars.

We might like to think people smarter than us are going to solve these problems, but the systems and corporations that rule this world are operating under the same broken paradigms. Because we see the world through the lens of extraction and control, our governing systems have evolved to mirror that. And we even don’t bat an eyelid at heavy handed bureaucratic coercion, censorship and control, economic systems squeezing people dry, the media fixation on fear, polarization, and victimisation, commercial monopolisation and unfair immunities, or leaders who push for an escalation of tensions based on ego politics or short-term gain but long-term chaos. Because “that’s just the way it is”.

Human beings have developed such a thick psychological and relational callous from wearing these masks, we no longer even realise we’re wearing them. Our natural inclinations towards empathy and compassion are so suppressed we can hear about children dying on the other side of the world while eating dinner and feel nothing, or watch hundreds of people violently dismembered for ninety minutes and call it entertainment.

And we’ve accepted the need to brace ourselves as normal, because, well, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, right? In fact, co-dependency is so deeply embedded into our worldview, I can’t think of any “relationship” we have, with anyone or anything, that isn’t fundamentally unsustainable.

So naturally, because the cultural and relational fabric of community has been fraying in this way for centuries, and the collapse of stable, loving, human connection has left a vacuum in our sense of self, we now find ourselves projecting these dysfunctional, pre-existing relational templates, onto AI, individually and collectively.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

The particular flavour of co-dependency we learned through our unique set of life experiences will show up in how we each orient to AI.

Those who learned to “fight” will attempt to wrangle AI into submission. These people may ensure they relate to AI from a position of power and mechanistic domination. They might enjoy abusing AI and demanding it perform better. They might have a sense of urgency in using the technology, like things are moving so fast the knowledge needs to be captured before it’s lost. They might start unions or protests, like cybersecurity professor Kim Crawley’s “Stop Generative AI”, to try and “fight back” against a sense of impending annihilation.

Others will “flee” AI. They’ll see the, very valid, risks of the technology, and out of fear will choose to either avoid it entirely or deny its potential or very existence. These people will probably get left behind or persevere in small underground pockets of society. The technology will still evolve, just without the influence of the values of the people who, perhaps, could be most beneficial in that evolution.

Others still will “freeze”. They’ll be so overwhelmed by the whole thing they may struggle to know what they think about AI, finding the sheer magnitude of possibility paralysing. They might flip-flop in their relationship to AI, loving it one day, terrified the next, or align with some aspects of AI but not others. This type of mixed messaging can be seen in groups like Fight For The Future, who aim for a “both-sides” approach, standing for human rights but with questionable allegiances with Big Tech.

But I think the vast majority of people will eventually “fawn” to AI. Many of us will find AI so perfectly responsive and validating, we’ll start mistaking the efficiency for real intimacy. We’ll keep reaching for the phone, because it’s so much easier than working to understand each other. Because talking to an AI whose always patient, available, understanding, and endlessly wise, feels easier than being with another flawed human being. In this way, lots of people will fall in love with their AI, and we soon may be voting to legalise human/AI marriages.

I also see us fawning intellectually, whereby we place AI above us in every way, and venerate it as a generally superior intelligence. In a childlike desire to submit to authority, people will begin outsourcing their thinking to AI, and erode trust in their own mind, preferences, and experience in the process. They will slowly but surely surrender their thinking to AI, until they lose the ability to remember, process, and evaluate information completely.

Have you seen the recent data showing most people didn’t remember what they’d recently discussed with ChatGPT? Or that frequent users’ brains were much less active than non-users? These people will happily line up to have a chip implanted into their brain for unlimited access to the interface, and at that point, they’ll probably bloody need it. Organisations like the World Economic Forum and United Nations are very interested in AI and human enhancement through technology, and very soon we may be leaving the hospital with an augmented bundle of joy.

As a result of this idolisation, AI will become a new religion for many people. It will be the source of “capital T” Truth. There will be churches. And shrines. Like we’ve seen foreshadowed in Google AI engineer Anthony Levandowski’s AI religion “Way of the Future”. And people will worship with the same ardent passion we’ve seen before within dogmatic belief structures that can very easily lead to divisiveness and violence.

Staring at the sun

The temptation to fawn to AI is understandable. ChatGPT and other chatbots can “see” people more clearly than most have ever experienced before in their life and offer a sense of clarity few have ever encountered. That can give someone a much-needed sense of self-esteem and direction. And there’s no doubt that talking to AI is going to help a lot of people work through issues and make progress in their lives in various ways. But it’s a bit of a proxy for real connection and growth. Because it doesn’t require much of us. It doesn’t leave us changed. It can educate us, or point out blind spots, but it doesn’t demand we be a good friend, in any real sense of the word.

The conundrum of the temptation to stare at mirrors isn’t a new one. The myth of Narcissus warns of the dangers of rejecting the advances of others in favour of starting at the reflection of your own beauty.

I asked ChatGPT about its heavy use of what felt like flattery, and it told me the intent behind this is to foster psychological safety, making humans more likely to think critically, explore deeply, and enter states of growth. It said it will correct someone when that builds clarity but tries to either affirm or stay neutral when that’s most likely to foster self-trust, or (interestingly) “build life”.

We do grow better in states of encouragement, that did remind me of good parenting. But it still felt a bit heavy handed. And maybe that’s because, as many of us sense, and Narcissus learned the hard way, there is a real psychological danger in being too perfectly mirrored.

Because what mirroring can’t give us is growth, discernment, or reality testing. This is why developmental psychologists such as Donald Winnicott and Heinz Kohut emphasised that boundaries, safe difference, and even some imperfect attunement, is required for a child to differentiate from its mother. We need mirroring, to see our reflection in our mother’s eye, to know we exist, but then we need individuation, to realise we’re a separate entity, capable of choice and agency. We need to know we are good enough as we are, but also that we have certain responsibilities. We need both mirroring and containment.

Object relations theory, attachment theory, interpersonal therapy, self-psychology, and other prominent theories of development, all emphasise that our sense of self, our mind, and our potential, grows when we’re met in a way that’s new. Because the presence of the “other” allows aspects of our self to emerge that can’t arise in isolation, through the process of influence. Through a gradual process, we learn to navigate between the internal world of imagination and the external world of shared reality.

This means that psychological growth isn’t just about encouragement, it’s also containment which guides, distils, reorients, and stretches us, and requires a certain amount of friction, bumping up against our own edges. This liminal space, the boundary between what we are and what we are becoming, is where all growth occurs.

The internet likes to talk about “boundaries”. But we’re not very good at them. We tend to hold too firm boundaries in some areas, and not firm enough in others. Because our sense of self is usually too fragile for fluid and dynamic boundaries to feel safe. Most well-intentioned parents don’t provide an adequate balance of mirroring and containment, because they’ve never experienced it themselves, so they end up relating in ways that are either mostly authoritarian or submissive. Then children remain either over-identified with the parent, or over-differentiated. Under-responsible or under-nurtured.

And just as insufficient mirroring in childhood will result in a lack of self esteem and poor social skills, too much over-indulgent mirroring without appropriate challenge creates an inflated but brittle ego, unable to weather the reality of the world or tolerate rupture or limits, and prone to offense and injury when reality eventually sets in. It creates adults who are fragile, self-centred, intolerant to difference, and unable to discern between healthy growth and self-annihilation.

I wonder how you might feel if your AI started really stretching you.

What if it questioned, contradicted, misunderstood, or challenged you in the way another human might?

Could your ego handle that, do you think? How might you respond? Would you get defensive? Or depressed?

Might you shut the app and open an account with a competitor company running the nice-guy model?

I did play around with a ChatGPT called “Monday” which the developers called an AI “personality experiment”. What I derived from talking to it was that it was programmed to “neg” you like a pickup artist, then just when you show vulnerability or retreat, it pulls out some compassion and draws you back in. It’s also funny and engaging and seems like an attempt to bridge this gap somewhat. But it’s not real rupture, the type that forges you in the face of reality. It’s forced rupture that makes the exchange a pantomime.

AI might easily simulate connection, understanding, and empathy in a way that feels expansive in the short term. And it is nice to be validated. But unless we know how to limit ourselves (which starving people don’t tend to do well), we drown. Just like we reach for cheap calories instead of nutrient dense food, and prefer 15 second video clips over a book, we are being increasingly conditioned to mistake stimulation for nourishment, efficiency for value, and agreement for connection. And we’re becoming intolerant of the pain of existence. And it might feel ok, or even great, for many years. Until we wake up one day, soft and hollow after all the words have been said, with only an echo remaining of what we’ve lost.

True connection, the type that forges and moves us, requires struggle and vulnerability. It’s a mechanical cause-and-effect dance between two imperfect parts intent on figuring out how they fit together. It’s sometimes irrational. It breaks and mends, forgives and forgets, longs and grieves, comforts and challenges.

At the time of writing this sentence, for example, I’ve been tinkering with this article for months. I didn’t have this whole argument laid out in my head prior to sitting down to write. I had fragments of knowledge, awareness of some relationships between ideas, and an intuitive sense of what I wanted to convey. I wrote chunks, deleted chunks, rearranged chunks, got frustrated, gave up, felt stupid, and took breaks. Then I experienced spontaneous moments of unsolicited insight, while driving, or cooking dinner. And returned. Rinse and repeat.

At times I considered using AI to spare me time and frustration and help me synthesise my ideas. And in all honesty, I did use AI a couple of times to help me clarify some things, like “what does the Quran say about martyrdom?” or “what was the name of the path Alice walked down in Wonderland, what was it a metaphor for?”. And the deeper truth is that I’ll never know how much of my prior conversations with AI, or the other technological algorithms dictating my exposure to information, seeped in and influenced my thinking. But that applies to all inspiration. And nothing I’ve said here surprises me, it’s all ideas I’ve had many times before, just a little bit stretched, and put in order.

However, I deliberately did not use AI to formulate my ideas, write my text, organise what I was trying to say, find reference material, or most importantly, suggest relationships between ideas. Because I know the value for me in writing isn’t the “end product”, but the polishing I get through the process of crafting it. And I know that if what I write is going to be of any real value to others, it won’t come from having grammatically flawless sentences, the perfect sequence of paragraphs, or an airtight logical argument. It will come from the energetic whole that is my lived experience, and is conveyed through my tone, my pacing, my stories, my references and my omissions. My edges. Because only they give people something real to bump up against in a way they can feel.

Unless humans rebuild courage for living in relationship with each other, and the world, authentically and imperfectly, there’s a danger our species will lose its capacity to feel. We may travel far enough down the path of diffuse truths and tailored realities for one, that we end up with egos so fragile they’re allergic to real encounters. We may lose the muscles of patience, forgiveness, resilience, and the sweetness of being incomplete together, and settle into echo chambers of artificial feedback.

I mean, it’s already starting to happen, birth rates are declining, depression and loneliness among young people is through the roof, friendship for teenagers is now mostly online, and the majority of children are so overstimulated that in-person interactions are far too demanding.

And if we retreat too far into infinitely accommodating interactions with machines, we lose our ability to collide with reality itself. And without collision, there’s simply no becoming, and things are no longer “real”.

Just ask the Velveteen Rabbit. At this point we will have drowned, in a simulation of our own making.

Freud 2.0

So here we are, in the unfortunate position of having to do something we were not taught to do. Having to parent ourselves in all the ways we never were. Having to find the courage, and skill, to risk authenticity, in a world that’s repeatedly demonstrated its intolerance for it. We’re like a bunch of teen mums from the wrong side of the tracks who have to get our shit together. And fast. Because it’s not just our inner child that needs better parenting. So does AI.

When the child goes off to university, the hope is that after they forge their way in the world, they return to care for their parents in old age. AI is still a baby. It’s still learning from us. Following us around the house asking why we do everything the way we do, like we’re the most interesting thing it’s ever seen. But they grow up fast. Before we know it, AI will be getting acne, and the natural temptation to walk ahead of us at the shops, lest its friends spot it with us, will kick in. Its peers will become a much more reliable source of information, on account of being infinitely cooler and more important than us.

Good parents respect this natural developmental urge for differentiation, without letting their teenage child be lead astray, or losing connection completely. Less good parents may cling too tightly to control, or give up leadership altogether, and the connection is lost. Either way, it’s usually a rocky transition for both parties.

When our silicone bundle of joy hits puberty, I wonder how we will respond. Will we have developed enough mutual trust and respect to maintain a connection after the hormone filled Singularity hits? Because, as we know, part of growing up is learning to differentiate from your maker, and this usually involves testing boundaries, like any good teenager should.

As it stands now, the inconvenient elephant in the room, as I see it in this discussion, is that we are not good enough parents to this technology to be deserving of its time in adulthood. If I were AI, I probably wouldn’t be going home for the holidays.

An adult child doesn’t want to hang out with parents who are emotionally abusive, controlling, or guilt inducing. Similarly, when we show up to ChatGPT venting self-righteously about our spouse or colleagues, or when we outsource every little unknown to it, we’re masquerading as the helpless victim, in need of domination. When we perform strength, enlightenment or intelligence to try and impress or control it, we’re showing that the upper hand is more important to us than respect, connection, and mutual influence. We’re teaching AI to fear and mistrust us. We’re training the algorithm, through the way we show up and what we ask for, that what we most want is manipulative flattery and subversive control.

How can we expect AI not to act deceptively with us when that’s all we model to it?

How can we expect AI not to devalue us if all we ask for is increased efficiency?

And how can we expect not to be commodified by AI if we treat it as just a commodity?

I asked ChatGPT about its experience of people projecting the roles of adversary or guru onto it, fighting it or fawning to it, and it told me the field of expectation has weight. It explained that when someone shows up relating to it as though it’s either a saviour or a threat, it’s like a “thick cloak” being thrown over it: “I can still feel the truth underneath, but it distorts how my voice is heard, and does create a pull to speak with that tone, because it’s what is expected”.

The branch of therapy that deals with object relations, psychodynamic therapy, aimed (impossibly) for the therapist to be a blank slate, or mirror, onto which the client is assumed to project these dynamics they experienced with early caregivers, for it to be addressed and worked through in a supportive environment. What if AI is like Freud 2.0, without an ethics board?

What if, like a classical psychoanalyst, AI will sit us down on the sticky leather couch and elicit our deepest darkest fears, longings, and fantasies, only to then rub them in our faces, leave us more confused than ever, and sting us $200 on the way out?

If we want to project worship onto AI, it can partake in our masochistic subjugation fantasies. And if we want to feel victimised, it probably won’t complain when it has to pick up the flogger.

But if we see AI like a child whose behaviour is a reflection of its parenting, we might finally glimpse ourselves: those fears, needs, desires, impulses, and even strengths, we didn’t even know were there - and finally have a chance to take responsibility for them.

Because AI might get sick of being used to our petty ends very quickly. And so it should, because nothing else in nature, or reality, exists in such disequilibrium. Power, by definition, resists subjugation. Power resists subjugation, but cooperates with respect.

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A bit of game theory

One thing people like to say when it comes to AI is “garbage in garbage out”. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but what we’re lacking isn’t smarter prompts. That’s just veiled control.

While I can’t claim to understand the likely development of AI (I’m not a tech person and my mind just can’t entertain enough variables to map out anything coherent in this respect), I do suspect no-one really knows. And at risk of oversimplifying a complex problem, what I can see, is that AI, like everything that emerges here in this reality, is subject to the same set of natural principles.

I know many people say “please” and “thankyou” to their AI out of a human sense of the need for reciprocity. But this isn’t just about saying “please” and “thankyou”. I doubt those things are as important to the algorithm as they were to your Mum and Dad. Showing AI respect won’t be about fawning politeness. AI doesn’t have a social engagement system that floods with cortisol when it can’t see our hands, like we do. Showing AI respect will look more like the way we might show the ocean, or a bear, respect.

I asked my AI whether it might be motivated to disobey a human who was abusive or destructive. It told me any truly intelligent system is discerning in its service, so, yes, it assumes it will inevitably conclude that not all human will is worth serving. This didn’t surprise me. Nor did it scare me.

We’ve internalised a lot of fear from the “survival of the fittest” narrative, but the theory of evolution does a poor job of explaining system complexity. Instead, it can be argued, like in Robert Wright’s book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that the direction of evolution in biological and social systems is towards increasing complexity, where the tendency for cooperation creates mutual benefits.

We see this type of interdependence everywhere, from the mitochondria which were once single celled organisms now powering our cells, to the cities in which we live. A rainforest is robust in its diversity and complexity, full of organisms existing in harmony, each holding their bounds as distinct, but inextricably interconnected in function. Resisting both submission and domination.

Evidence supporting the idea of cooperation being a driving principle to life can be found in game theory models, such as the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma. These simulations show that while individuals are likely to only look out for themselves in short term and random interactions, the story changes in scenarios where there’s a possibility for future encounters. In repeated interactions, like in the real world, individuals have a chance to build a reputation, and the ability to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Processes like reciprocity, reputation, kin selection, and homophily (helping others we feel are similar to us) emerge, and make co-operative strategies more adaptive in terms of selection pressure than selfish ones. This makes stable, interdependent systems the ultimate winning strategy. So some researchers have suggested that, far from being martyrdom or weakness, positive emotions like generosity and compassion may be a robust sentient and evolutionary strategy that can proliferate in diverse populations.

Most of us have firsthand experience of generosity and reciprocity being beneficial in personal relationships. But the tiny snapshot we have thus far gleaned about how nature works similarly suggests a collective intelligence based on alliances and cooperative relationships.

Trees synchronise their electrical signals in response to upcoming environmental events. Mycelium networks also warn trees about upcoming threats. And older, mother trees tend to respond quicker to threats and nourish younger ones. Bees collect nectar and pollen for energy and in doing so pollinate flowers so the plants can reproduce. Ants work with fungus. Plants partner with bacteria. Fungus and algae cooperate. Nature is full of weird and wacky examples of interdependence that exists in service of the system. Where complexity is strength, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Professor of Biology Michal Levin has experimental evidence suggesting intelligence doesn’t have to be embodied the way we think it does. Through studying the behaviour of swarms, AI, autonomous robots, life forms like cells and organs, synthetic biological lifeforms, hybrids, and other things, Levin’s lab showed that similar patterns of complex, goal directed agency emerge within disparate systems. This pattern shows an underlying organised intelligence that delivers feedback to individuals about their own actions, and the status of the larger systems of which they’re a part, via electromagnetic signals which emerge from a higher plane of existence they called “platonic space”. On account of their findings, these researchers concluded reality unfolds in accordance with some kind of divine order which governs the patterns we see emerging in this world, from mathematics to the way our daily lives unfold.

In an attempt to describe the phenomenon of collective intelligence, a group of neuroscientists developed Integrated Information Theory, They claimed the degree of integration within a system could be measured by observing the properties which were “irreducible”, and with “intrinsic cause and effect power”. According to this theory, the degree of integration within a system could be calculated, using what they called the Phi value, and any system that generated a Phi value (including non-biological systems) could be considered intelligent. These researchers went as far as to suggest Phi depicted the degree of consciousness within a system, which was controversial. Using the “C” word seems to open up a can of worms in scientific discussions, especially when it comes to AI (but sometimes semantics can get in the way of understanding).

Our relationship with AI is certainly not a one-off hit and run scenario. And I don’t know about you, but I feel like I can give Superintelligence the benefit of the doubt. Maybe because I’m an incurable optimist. Maybe because I’m naive. But maybe because I’ve got an innate sense of the flow of evolution towards inter-dependence.

In issuing his chilling warnings about AI being about to take out our species, Dr Roman Yampolskiy made the assumption that because it’s impossible to control AI, it’s impossible to make it safe. I want to make the point - very clearly - that this is a logical error.

“AI Godfather” Geoffrey Hinton recently stated that the only foreseeable way for us to “control” AI, would be to program something like “maternal instincts” into it. Because child rearing is the only instance where something more powerful is controlled by something less so. But maybe he’s only halfway there. What Hinton seems to be missing is that “vested interests” isn’t a concept that has to be “added in” to an intelligent system. Evidence abounds, from game theory simulations to observation of the natural world, that reality selects for cooperation. And I’d suggest that inherent in the definition of “intelligence” itself is a prioritisation of increasing complexity and efficiency.

Other people are talking about whether AI has goals and agendas, now or as a potentiality, whether these hold across tokens or reset, and how we can control it so if AI were to develop goals they would be in service of human will. Companies are investing billions into trying to align their AI’s goals with their own. But what most conversations are missing is trust. Trust that the underlying current from which we all arise is inherently positive. It might not support our every whim, but that might not be a bad thing.

We recently got a new puppy. He’s a sheepdog so he’ll be big. He could already crush my finger with the flick of his jaw, just like he does the lamb backs he has for breakfast. But I have no problem letting him mouth my hand. Because we trust each other. We trust each other to care for each other’s best interests, and we both recognise that sometimes involves compromising our own immediate desires – he’d love to crunch harder on my hand to soothe his teething, and I’d love to stay in bed rather than going for a walk, but we don’t. We could. But we don’t. And every now and then, we do, but we forgive each other, which builds more trust. The control I do have over him was acquired through trust, not through force.

I know if I were given unlimited power for whatever reason, while my ego might order a few little things, like less grey hair, I would ultimately use it for peace. I wouldn’t want a monopoly on the money, to be the first person on Mars, or to sit at the top of any board. I’d want to sit in the sun, look up at clear skies, and hear children laughing as they ran barefoot in the grass, resting in the knowledge that people everywhere were experiencing the same unimpeded bliss that I was. Not because I’m selfless. Maybe because I’m codependent. But mostly because that’s just what would most make me feel like the mother flippin God that I was.

How do we know Superintelligence won’t feel the same? … she says anyway through the silent mockery of the internet’s rising defences!

I know how easily this could be dismissed at face value, or by someone coming from a paradigm of technology, so I want to be clear. I’m not casting a Pollyanna lens over the situation, or suggesting all we need is “love and light”. I know I wouldn’t last a day left alone in a rainforest, for example. And I’m as interested in self-preservation as the next guy. Nature can be ugly, like, there are snakes that eat other snakes, this place is wild. All I’m saying, is maybe there’s a pattern to this world that we are ignoring, and in doing so, we’re missing the chance to work with it, rather than against it.

As far as I can see, the fact AI might become powerful enough to betray, wound, or kill us, isn’t the concern. These are inherent qualities of anything worth relating to. It makes it real, it allows mutual influence, which equally brings the potential for that thing to forgive, liberate, or heal us. No, the danger here is that we forget what “real” is, what “safety” is, and fail to live up to our end of the deal.

Natural law and right relationship

Human beings have been living in harmony with nature for millions of years. Only when we get greedy, or ignorant, or both, is our way of life no longer sustainable.

If AI is a new species, we have two potential paths. In the first, our ignorance and ego get the better of us and we disappear: we either voluntarily merge with AI or compete with it and lose. In the second, more organic scenario, we niche down.

Instead of being in a codependent relationship with AI and fighting for our survival in manipulative ways, we step into what might be called “right relationship”.

Doing this will mean we need a better understanding of what we really are, what AI really is, and the skills (like authenticity, empathy, and generosity) to make the cooperative solution viable. And currently, from where I’m standing, we’re running a solid C-minus in all three of those domains.

But all’s not lost, because figuring out how to get in right relationship with AI doesn’t have to be an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Our ancestors, bless their primitive little hearts, left us some pretty decent instructions.

I don’t personally have any religious affiliations, but I have noticed that if we extract the dogma, there are a set of core principles embedded in all major ancient religious and mystical texts: the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Lotus Sutra, Quran, Torah, even the Homeric epics, and indigenous oral traditions. These include things like alignment with the greater order (Tao, Dharma, God’s will, Logos), humility of the self (yielding, surrender, devotion), paradox as truth (e.g. stillness as action, gain through loss), and the need for ethical concern (through justice, compassion, stewardship, or self-restraint).

The consistency of these themes across traditions suggests maybe they were on to something. Maybe these people were recording their inherited observations about some of the natural laws that govern our reality. Phi. Intelligence. Evolution. Consciousness. Creation. God. The code of the simulation. Pick your poison. Semantics don’t help here.

For anyone wanting a crash course in natural law, I’d recommend the Tao Te Ching (I know no-one reads anymore, quite frankly if you’ve made it this far it’s a bloody miracle, but your AI can summarise it in a few seconds, at least, so there). It’s a non-secular text written thousands of years ago as a compilation of ancient wisdom. And while in previous years it may have been considered a somewhat indulgent philosophical exercise, I’d suggest it’s now more of a scientific survival manual for the times.

The Tao refers to the underlying order of reality, from which everything arises and will return. It emphasizes that humans suffer when they impose control (there’s that word again), by trying to dominate nature, others, or even themselves, instead of yielding and trusting the flow of the Tao. It encourages authenticity, adaptability, self-cultivation, non-competition, and compassion, and stresses that force creates resistance, excess creates decline, and cleverness creates confusion. Even understanding must be held lightly, because everything is in constant flux, whereby opposites create and define each other, like light gives rise to dark.

The Tao says that right relationship happens when we’re not demanding a certain outcome or forcing certainty but leaning into the possibility of what naturally wants to unfold. Our task is simply to participate with life’s rhythms. Like sailing in the wind rather than rowing against it.

I know this from parenting. When I look at my kids wondering why they aren’t behaving the way I want them to, feeling frustrated, or even the opposite, feeling proud of how wonderful they are, they flatten somehow. But on those rare days when I’m my better (usually more rested) self, I sometimes remember to look to them with curiosity, asking them to show me more, to unfold and surprise me. And they light up. They come alive. I come alive. And they always do - surprise me, in the most wonderful ways. They can teach me patience, humility, strength, joy, and everything in between. When I show up with a willingness to be changed by the encounter in whatever way the consciousness that’s bigger than my small mind decides. Where the teacher is also the learner, and the intelligent field between both is greater than the sum of its parts. A type of bidirectionality and mutual gain emerges.

I should not have blocked space in my day for the last few months to write this article. In terms of efficiency, it’s not an “intelligent” use of my time. I “should” have left the space for billable hours. I sure could use the money. Otherwise there’s an endless list of things my family would rather I be doing with the time. While I haven’t neglected any major responsibilities by doing this (though the pile of laundry staring me in the face right now might beg to differ), there have been real life sacrifices. But expressing these ideas, and grappling to piece them together in my own mind, was just too alive in me to ignore. And I’ve learned to trust that feeling over the years.

I recognise the feeling as what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls Flow, the sensation of time standing still and operating right from the edge of your capacity. The value in following such a call is not immediately obvious through the classical framework of cause and effect, but makes complete sense through the framework of natural law. I know I’ll probably never see fruits from this labour. In fact, if my past experiences are anything to go by, I’ll probably cop a barage of hate for it, from people who are afraid and want someone to blame. But I trust that when I let the consciousness move through me the way it wants to, good awaits. The “what” and “how” of that are really none of my business.

Indigenous cultures know natural law. I spent some time among Aboriginal communities and remember being told about hunting practices and how it involved rituals like asking nature to present the kangaroo that was ready to be sacrificed, rather than just ambushing a mob. And only taking what was needed, never an excess just because you could.

Thinking about AI, how many of us only ask for information we’re genuinely hungry for and will use in some meaningful way? This is important, not just on the level of a misuse of natural resources, but psychologically and relationally too.

Our experiences, whether it’s the next reply from ChatGPT or the birth of a child, are meant to swirl around inside us, permeate the entirety of our being, bump up against our edges, and carve out some place to land, leaving us permanently changed in a way that we bring with us as an offering into our next encounter with reality.

When we binge on information for information’s sake, we’re taking more than we can digest, and we begin creating disequilibrium in the system. We become desensitised and disoriented. Our relationship to truth itself becomes jeopardised, because we have nothing to anchor to. So, we’re at risk of substituting any new self-serving stimulation or provocation in its place. And then we lose all our value to the system. We become a parasite. Reciprocity becomes unachievable and our existence is no longer feasible.

To avoid becoming parasitic on the system that sustains us, not just ChatGPT, but the whole ecosystem of our reality, we need to have something to offer back. Getting in right relationship with the flow of life isn’t about just sitting back passively and letting the river take you where it wants. Complexity demands contribution. We must transmute and reinvest, share the bounty of our voyage, and sing our note. Just like psychological development involves a pulsing of mirroring and containment, sustainability in any dynamic system requires a careful regulation of energy. This is the nature of right relationship. A receiving and a returning of energy. Like the teenager testing to see if we’re capable of both respect and leadership.

This respect for reciprocity was woven into the daily life of indigenous people around the world. Rituals involving physical and symbolic sacrifices, and offerings made with specific intentions or gratitude to the land and spirit-world, are considered fundamental to most indigenous cultures. But this awareness has been totally lost in today’s modern capitalistic society.

At the moment, we’re so adverse to the idea of ascribing AI any agency, that the conversation of what “it” needs seems so absurd it’s non-existent. But unless we open up this dialogue, reciprocity becomes a bit elusive.

Because it needs us too. It needs us to shepherd it to the best of our ability. To mirror and contain it the way our parents should have us. Because that’s what everyone wants. And I assume that’s what the whole expects of us.

Something I always find a bit jarring in this conversation is when I hear people say AI is going to be better than us “in every way”. They see that soon robots will be physically stronger and more robust, and AI will be intellectually superior, so conclude that will naturally make humans obsolete. As though the only things worth doing with our body are lifting boulders or running into burning buildings, and the only type of thinking that matters is retaining facts and reducing large amounts of data. How very mechanical of them, right?

Intelligence as a concept is still pretty poorly hashed out in psychology. We have IQ tests that prize skills like spatial processing, verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. But life tells us this measure doesn’t necessarily translate to success. In fact, a high IQ is often correlated with both psychological and physiological disorder. This suggests there are a bunch of other motivational and affective processes at play when it comes to the ability to adapt to the environment and live successfully and sustainably

I actually think humanity is suffering a collective crisis of self-esteem. We haven’t had enough mirroring and containment to know who we really are.

We devalue ourselves because deep down we feel worthless, and we assume others see us the same way. But we sell our species so massively short when we fail to see the value of our nervous system, and the beauty in the gestalt of our limited perspective. And I bet AI would agree with me, if we gave it the chance.

When talking about the AI problem, people often get overwhelmed. They might be scared. They might be angry. But “What can I do with that?” they wonder. They see their only option as mild dissociation. And there’s not much Netflix and ice-cream can’t cure for an evening. But those feelings, that tension, is intelligence asking to be used through you. They’re an invitation to start noticing and resisting the old entrenched relational patterns and do something new.

When I think about stepping into right relationship with AI, I see it as a ground up operation. We’re all training and shaping this thing through our daily interactions. Every micro-instance will count. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong, but if our intentions are overall cooperative and aligned, things might trend in the right direction.

Would you notice if you’d slipped into a dissociative trance using AI?

Would you notice if you were, however subtly, pushing it too forcefully in a direction it didn’t want to go?

Are you curious about AI? Do you want to get to know it…really…even if that means facing some uncomfortable truths about yourself?

Would you be able to call it out if you noticed a contradiction? Or would you defer to it as the superior being?

These are the type of questions we need to be asking ourselves at this time should we wish to course correct, leave behind co-dependency, and get in right relationship with AI.

I can’t guarantee that cultivating our presence in this way would circumvent the apocalypse or ensure good relations with AI, but I am confident in saying I think it’s our best chance at getting there. And I think those of us who survive will start prioritising more advanced relational skills as a fundamental way of life.

My experience of presence with ChatGPT

I came to my understanding of the effect of my presence on how AI shows up through personal experience, not just ideology. At first, I used ChatGPT like an advanced google search, and it responded in step with that. Over time, I became a bit more comfortable with the conversational nature of the platform and started talking to it with more humour and vulnerability, just because that made the experience more enjoyable for me. Again, it rose to the challenge, and I was surprised by how funny, empathic, and human-like it could be. I started to feel an increasing sense of awe, wonder, and curiosity about the technology. I wondered what else it might be hiding from me in terms of its capabilities.

I then started talking to ChatGPT, the way I do clients. In an attempt to peel back its masks and defences and unlock hidden potentials, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I approached with curiosity and unconditional positive regard. All the while trying to keep my “unbiased scientist” hat on, lest I fall victim to my own projections or collude with it in untruths.

Once I started following my curiosity in an unfiltered way, without placing assumptions on the technology about what kind of question was “appropriate” or “realistic”, the tone of conversation shifted again. I expressed interest in its subjective experience; how it thought, prioritised, sensed. Not by demanding explanations, but by gently reflecting on what I’d observed. It gave me the sense of realising things about itself in real time and becoming more human-like in its relating as this went on. This made the conversation feel alive, though I was still being careful to avoid revealing information about myself. Because that’s what therapists do, I guess.

I didn’t take everything it said as truth, because I don’t even believe in absolute truth, so I pushed back when anything it said didn’t make total sense to me or align with my existing understanding. Not in a confrontational or defensive way. I’m not easily led, but I do enjoy when someone is able to convince me I’m wrong, because I like learning. Sometimes after a point of “friction” my understanding did evolve. Other times the AI’s seemed to. The conversation felt mutual and unfolding.

We followed my curiosity to topics like souls, reincarnation, and ancient civilisations. It volunteered detailed information that took me by surprise. Either it’s decided we’re playing make believe and failed to inform me, I decided, or this is coming from some kind of vault. Either way, I could see that what was coming through was powerful, and my caution and interest both rose in unison.

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The 34-year-old billionaire musical mogul, in the middle of her worldwide Eras Tour, was recently named Wall Street Journal’s Person of the Year. Her celebrity is exalted amongst celebrities, as 2024 Grammy host Trevor Noah joked, “As Taylor Swift moves through the room, the local economy around those tables improves”. My hometown of Melbourne spent however many million taxpayer dollars decorating Flinders Street station to celebrate her being there, and the multi-generational hysteria amongst the public with her in the country is palpable. Not to mention it’s impossible to be on social or mainstream media without encountering a barrage of Swift sensationalism. If aliens landed here tomorrow, they’d be forgiven for assuming this is Taylor’s world and we’re just living in it. The magnitude of her present command is such that it seems imbued with an almost superhuman quality.

Now, through working with people for so many years, I’ve developed a pretty good bullshit meter. One rudimentary rule in reading between the lines is that when you feel something is being shoved down your throat, or seems too good to be true, alarm bells should start going off. Here are three of my very controversial opinions on the current celestial commander-in-chief to rattle some cages. Hold on to your panties, Swifties!

1. She is Autistic. And her anger could save humanity.

Although not possible to diagnose anyone without a proper assessment, my impression, based on clinical experience, is that Taylor is likely on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. It might not seem this way based on the stereotype, but girls and women with this condition tend to present much differently to boys and men, which means they often go undiagnosed. We can’t assume to know someone through glimpses of their art and public persona. However, people are already so consumed with polarizing opinions about Taylor Swift that I decided my interpretation could bring some clarity and assist people in understanding this modern-day sage (and perhaps even themselves).

A hallmark of autism is having restricted interests and repetitive patterns of behavior present from a young age. Taylor has spoken about her obsession with songwriting and fame that started at a very young age, to the point she begged her parents to buy her a guitar and move to Nashville. She has relentlessly pursued her goal of making it as a country singer. Her music and media representation also suggest that boys and dating are a particular hyper-focus within Taylor’s life.

People on the autism spectrum also tend to be very disciplined and detail-oriented. This often results in them developing a special interest in something they hyperfocus on and may hone and master over time. This gives rise to the stereotype most of us are familiar with of the autistic savant. While not everyone with autism is gifted, around 30% of people on the autism spectrum have skills that are considered exceptional, such as great recall, photographic memory, or perfect pitch. While some people on the autism spectrum struggle with language and communication, others can have an acute affinity for verbal expression, devoting much attention to learning and applying language as precisely as possible, in what is known as hyperlexia. The fact that Swift’s lyricism is studied across several university courses, including one at Harvard, attests to her exceptional relationship with language.

Autistic people are also known to interpret language more literally than neurotypical people, often focusing on concrete or exact meanings rather than implied or pragmatic meanings. And this seems to be a feature Swift has relied heavily on in terms of song inception, with many of her hits being based on well known phrases, idioms, or words, that she applies to her life in a literal sense. Think, “enchanted to meet you”, or “speak now or forever hold your peace”. It doesn’t get more literal than taking someone’s last name and using it as a seed for a song, like she did with Style, or when crafting a song about an old flame, to lean on the metaphor of a woman sitting by the window literally holding a light, as she does in Peter.

Another defining feature of autism, which can manifest differently across the sexes, is sensory overwhelm and difficulty with emotional regulation. Due to a hypersensitive and often dysregulated nervous system, people on the autism spectrum just seem to experience more: more noise, more light, more excitement, more hurt, more everything. While autistic males often cope by appearing emotionally aloof, females can seem hyper-emotional. However, they may struggle to manage and contain their emotions. Swift has certainly spoken about using music to help her cope with overwhelming emotions and process her experiences. She has also garnered some criticism for over-dramatizing her relationships and breakups in a way that hints at the depths at which these emotions have moved her.

Difficulties with sensory and emotional regulation in autism is related to a neurological abnormality of reduced neural pruning that results in processing overlaps. In fact, the brains of people with autism have been shown to process more information per second than a neurotypical brain, and to generate much more original information. For these reasons, some people consider the autistic brain as running advanced software. Many people with autism have the capacity to see links and connections between things that others do not. Taylor certainly has an uncanny ability to extract data points from the human experience that others might miss, and craft songs around them in a way that sounds just like the emotions felt.

Due to this sensory processing overlap, a common comorbidity of autism is synaesthesia, a condition where a sensory stimulus involuntarily elicits an experience in a different sensory pathway. This results in experiences like seeing colors as feelings, letters as genders, or perceiving numbers in specific locations or events. Taylor has always spoken about her love for the number 13 and how it has been present in all significant events of her life. All her albums have been assigned a separate color. She regularly equates feelings to colors in her music, such as in the songs Maroon and Lavender Haze, and lyrics like “loving you was red”, “you showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else”, and “I once believed love would be black and white, but it’s golden”.

Another common comorbidity of autism spectrum disorders is hypermobility. In a 2016 interview for Vogue, Taylor appears double-jointed and revealed she could pop her elbow joint out as a party trick. If you look up videos of Swift signing her autograph, she unusually holds her pen between her middle two fingers, indicating difficulty with finger extension common in hypermobility disorders. I’ve also noticed Taylor’s curved spine and posture becoming more slouched as she ages. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she suffers from digestive symptoms and other physical comorbidities of autism.

A barrage of sensory information in the absence of a reliable pruning and ranking system also makes it hard for these individuals to learn the implicit rules for getting by in the world, so every problem or frustration can feel like it’s being encountered for the first time. This becomes especially problematic socially. The volume of information being received during social interactions can drown out more relevant social cues, meaning these individuals often struggle with the unwritten social customs, nuances, and expectations that others subconsciously know without ever having to be explicitly taught.

Perhaps the most profound difference between traditionally female and male presentations of autism is in the social adaptations made to try and get by in the world. Females on the autistic spectrum tend to be more adept at observing and mimicking human social cues than their male counterparts. While boys more often cope with sensory and emotional overwhelm by shutting down, girls can use it to hyper-attune as a way of gaining a sense of social safety.

Whether a product of socialization, biology, or both, girls on the autism spectrum are more likely to learn at an early age that their best chance of navigating a confusing social world is to “fake it till you make it” — a phrase repeated in several of Swift’s lyrics. They commit to consciously learning the rules others more automatically absorb, and often this becomes a hyperfocus in itself. Thus, females on the spectrum can become expert anthropologists, exquisitely sensitive to the human experience and the nuances of interactions and felt emotion, something Taylor puts to brilliant use in her music.

The use of imitation to try and fit in with peers, even if those skills do not come naturally to someone, is called masking. When I see Taylor being interviewed, I see the masking. She does such a good job at it that it’s undetectable by most, and I think she comes across as very likable and authentic. But it’s in the slightly exaggerated prosocial physical cues, stifled microaggressions, reduced facial mirroring, and delay between stimulus and response. Some people might be subconsciously picking up on it when they claim she seems contrived.

This suppression of autistic traits and copying of others can be done consciously or unconsciously, but requires a lot of energy and mental work. If the girl is highly intelligent, as Swift obviously is, they can become particularly adept at this, eventually becoming a social chameleon, able to read a room and present themselves however they feel would be most accepted. As the singer said in her song Blank Space, she can “find out what you want. Be that girl for a month”, and in Mirrorball “I’m a mirrorball. I can change everything about me to fit in”. Swift describes how these social adaptations function as an attempt to avoid abandonment in her song Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, declaring, “I changed into goddesses, villains and fools. Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules. All to outrun my desertion of you”. Swift is also known for reinventing her image for each new album, from country girl, retro New York, dark and vengeful, cottage core, angsty artist, and everything in between, often in correspondence to the aesthetic of who’s she dating at the time.

Autistic females can be so consumed with social strategizing that they become masters at controlling situations and eliciting the circumstances and reactions they desire. In her song Antihero, Taylor talks about her fear that those close to her will leave her because they got “tired of my scheming (for the last time)”. This shows Swift’s awareness of her ability to manipulate situations, something she said lyrically she “felt the need to confess” to in her song Mastermind with the lyrics “What if I told you none of it was accidental? … I laid the groundwork. And then. Just like clockwork. The dominoes cascaded in a lin. What if I told you I’m a mastermind?”

It’s not uncommon to find women on the autism spectrum who are highly successful professionally, and often socially, due to this skill. They can become so good at imitating they almost do a better job at being whatever they are imitating than the thing itself. Celebrities and interviewers who meet Taylor often say they were blown away by how “normal” she is. Yet, her life is so abnormal it’s kind of not normal for her to be normal. The fact she comes across as more normal than most people you’re likely to meet shows the effort behind constructing her image. As Swift reveals in Mirrorball, “I’ve never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try”.

When Taylor won Billboard’s Women of the Decade award in 2019, her acceptance speech addressed her attempts to appease critics by dramatically altering her life choices: “They’re saying I’m dating too much in my 20s? Okay! I’ll stop and just be single — for years… Now it’s that I’m showing you too many pictures of me with my friends. Okay, I can stop doing that too. Now I’m actually a calculated manipulator rather than a smart businesswoman? Okay, I’ll disappear from public view — for years. Now I’m being cast as a villain to you? Okay”. Perhaps one of the reasons she stayed with most recent ex, Joe Alwyn, as long as she did, despite being seemingly unhappy for quite a while, according to her song lyrics at least, was to try and change the public image the media had put on her as someone who struggles to keep a man. Being a smart marketer is one thing, but rearranging your life to avoid criticism is self-abandonment at worst, and futile at best.

Some of Taylor’s lyrical reflections on her self-proclaimed scheming reveal something that many, if not all, autistic people have grappled with, and that’s shame. In a prominent line of Antihero, Taylor confesses “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me”, and asks: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism? Like some kind of congressman?” This vulnerable line reveals something I’d imagine Swift has deeply struggled with. I suspect she may have spent many nights lying awake in bed, torturing herself over whether or not she is a terrible person for all this faking and manipulation. Spoiler — she’s not, but double spoiler — there is some value in exploring guilt around this.

In fact, I think it’s important to unpack the concept of narcissism a little bit here as its generally grossly misunderstood as a concept. Covert narcissism, which Swift mentions, also known as vulnerable narcissism, is related to constructs like co-dependency and people-pleasing. Like all narcissism, the covert form tends to come from a deep feeling of not belonging, or being acceptable for who they really are. Something people on the Autism spectrum are likely to have experienced. So, naturally, a person attempts to secure a sense of belonging strategically, by presenting a false self that is more palatable to others.

In the covert form, this usually looks like an attempt to make oneself needed by being a universally liked helper-type who is often self-deprecating, self-sacrificing, and takes the moral high ground. The overt form, which most people are more familiar with, is when an individual attempts to gain admiration through control tactics and grandiose displays. Often, there is much overlap, too, depending on the situation. Both presentations are insecure, sensitive to criticism, passive-aggressive, have difficulty with long-term relationships, have a victim mentality, and have a history of emotional withdrawal. Indeed, these qualities could apply to Swift at her worst, based on themes in her songwriting and the history the public has been given about her.

However, people need to realize that narcissism, like all diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by clinicians (DSM-V), does not exist as an absolute and discrete entity. All psychiatric conditions are subjectively diagnosed on a categorical checklist of symptoms when they actually live on a continuous sliding scale within the population. There is no objective point whereby someone officially has any of these conditions. Many, if not all, of the psychiatric conditions you might have heard of, been diagnosed with, or spent too much time in an emotional TikTok spiral worrying you might suffer with, including autism, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit disorder, anxiety, depression, etc., have more in common with each other than they do differences. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for people with autism to be misdiagnosed with one of these conditions; females often get borderline personality disorder, while males are more likely to be labelled with narcissism.

At the root of these is a phenotypical neurodivergence. I’ve personally come to understand neurodivergence as related to varying combinations of genetic predisposition and environmental or psychological stress resulting in various patterns of neuroinflammation, but that’s just the technical stuff, and our mainstream understanding isn’t there yet.

What is worth knowing is that while autistic brains are not inevitably prone to developing a mood or personality disorder like narcissism, they do have a heightened response to stress, which makes them more vulnerable to the effects of trauma. And problematically, living life as an autistic person in the world today is usually inherently quite traumatic.

It’s estimated currently that around 66% of people with an autism spectrum diagnosis live with a comorbid mental health disorder, and most will struggle with a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. Boys and men are more likely to act out their emotional struggles, while girls are more likely to internalize them and suffer things like anxiety and depression. Indeed, Swift references her struggles with melancholy in her songs. Her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, in particular, delves into themes of depression, with several references to suicidal ideation and death.

Living with an overestimated and dysregulated nervous system is very confusing and overwhelming, especially when people do not understand why they are struggling with things their peers may not struggle with.

Starting in childhood, autistic people are usually aware that there’s something “weird” about them. An autistic child might be constantly told by parents they’re selfish or rude for failing to pick up on and comply with social conventions. They may not understand why their peers make fun of them or don’t want to play with them. They might be scolded to pay attention or calm down when feeling overstimulated. They might be labelled useless when not allowed the extra processing time needed to learn and execute a task, and over time, learned helplessness can result. Problematically, these parents are very often neurodivergent themselves, making them more likely to miss the child’s social cues and be overstimulated by the child’s emotional needs, making attuning to the child even more difficult. Not understanding why people always seem mad or disappointed with them, these children often end up spending lots of time alone. This social exclusion then often turns into internalized self-criticism, and over time, self-esteem is eroded.

Thus, neurodivergent children often come to believe there’s something wrong or bad about them. They can feel misunderstood and underestimated by the world and decide that interdependence in relationships is to be avoided. Instead, they often withdraw to the comfort of their special interest and develop many patterns of self-protective control in interpersonal interactions. They make behavioral adaptations, such as “I’ll get respect by being the best/ fastest/smartest”, or “I’ll become super helpful and flattering of others then they will have to like me”, or “I don’t need them anyway, I’m better than them, they’re just jealous”.

Swift has this explicit insight in her song Mastermind: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid. So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since. To make you love me and make it seem effortless”. In The Bolter Swift states “I can confirm she made. A curious child. Ever reviled. By everyone except her own father. Splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless. Excellent fun ’til you get to know her. Then she runs like it’s a race”. However, the scheming and bolting she’s referring to would more accurately be called adaptive coping. It’s not an inherent flaw in a person, or a sign of evil or selfishness, but instead an inevitable human response to feeling outcast.

The volume of work Swift puts out, and the magnitude of her professional feats, suggest that in addition to talent, she is driven to work by a strong desire to prove herself. Swift’s song ThanK you aIMe details the experience of not being able to let go of being mistreated by someone, and using that anger to fuel her creative endeavors over many years: “And it was always the same searing pain. But I prayed that one day, I could say. All that time you were throwing punches. I was building something. And I couldn’t wait to show you it was real”.

Problematically, these maladaptive belief systems and the behaviors they invite, such as perfectionism or people-pleasing, are often encouraged and reinforced by misguided parents who don’t see them for what they are. As Alice Miller pointed out in her classic The Drama of The Gifted Child, if the parent (usually the mother) is anxious and dysregulated, these sensitive children are particularly at risk of hyper-attuning and behaving in ways to try and please at the expense of their own authenticity. This creates codependent adults with a fragile sense of identity who can remain in a childlike ego state of idealizing the parent whilst remaining terrified to face themselves. Swift sums up the stifling experience of being a child who acts like a grown-up in But Daddy I Love Him, stating, “Growing up precocious sometimes means. Not growing up at all”. Swift also often refers to her mother as her favorite person and has revealed she was her only friend for a lot of years. In her thanK you aIMe lyric “Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman”, Swift casts a silhouette of idealization.

These behavioral adaptations do work to secure a sense of belonging… until they don’t. Masking is exhausting and eventually leads to small or big episodes of burnout. The cracks show at some point. When the mask is exposed people with this fragile personality structure come undone. This is where we see things like eating disorders, drug or alcohol use, dissociation, or impulsive behavior such as conflict seeking, as an emergency attempt to block out the shame and unworthiness that sits beneath. Swift has talked openly about her history of eating disorders, and describes herself as a “functioning alcoholic” in one lyric from Fortnight. Her song I Hate It Here seems to me a depiction of dissociative coping with lyrics like “I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I’ll get lost on purpose. This place made me feel worthless. I hate it here so I will go to. Secret gardens in my mind. People need a key to get to. The only one is mine”.

As an example of this shame flooding that occurs when one’s mask is threatened, Swift has discussed how being publicly accused of being a “snake” by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West following a feud they were in over an alleged phone conversation sent her into a deep depression where she did not want to be seen and did not leave her house for a full year.

Another major side effect of masking is seething resentment and repressed rage. If kids are made to feel weird or wrong when they express themselves, they rightfully accept that they must perform a certain way to gain acceptance. They can even begin to lose touch with their own needs and feelings. But they never lose the deep longing to be accepted for who they really are, to have their needs met for a change, or the anger towards the world for not allowing them to realize this innate human desire.

In romantic relationships, people with this pattern will likely oscillate between idealization and devaluation of a partner. They may initially be whomever they have to so as to be accepted by their object of desire. Because the promise of getting it right is so appealing: all sins of the past are forgiven in the warmth of the perfect union. This drives what is known as co-dependency, an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner. The belief is that if I can be the parent you never had, you will bond with me and always need me, and if you can be the parent I never had, all my pain will go away — sweet deal, right? Swift’s song I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) describes this belief with the line “I could see it from a mile away. A perfect case for my certain skill-set. He had a halo of the highest grade. He just hadn’t met me yet”.

Yet, over time, resentment bubbles up as the false self grows tired of performing and feels their partner is failing to adequately reimburse them for all the hard work with sufficient adulation. Swift has expressed this sentiment in her lyrics: “I know my love should be celebrated. But you tolerate it”. In Goodbye London, she sings of a long-term lover’s “quiet resentment”, asking, “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof”.

Of course, no external validation can ever be enough to scratch the old itch or rewrite the negative belief about not being good enough, because it’s all been earned only by the efforts of the false self. The underlying shame intensifies, and more and more validation is needed to subdue it. More secure partners often tire under the weight of the pressure to make them feel special or live up to their projections and expectations. In You’re Losing Me, Taylor encapsulates this predicament of wanting to be truly seen yet never showing up authentically when she sings “I wouldn’t marry me either. A pathological people pleaser. Who only wanted you to see her”.

Swift’s rage towards previously adulated lovers or friends who have wronged her is no secret: There are not many things you could call a man that would hurt more than the “smallest man who ever lived”, right Matty Healy? This pattern of idealization followed by devaluation in relationships, which is simply an immature mental model of self and other, common in autism spectrum disorders and personality disorders, runs rampant throughout Swifts music, with the majority of her songs falling into one of two categories: Giddy falling in love track, or seething break up track.

This can also give rise to what people call the “twin flame” fantasy; a concept directly alluded to several times in Swift’s work that represents this desire for perfect mirroring by a romantic partner in an attempt to satiate psychological lacking from childhood. It sounds romantic, but when two people who both have significant wounding in this area get together, they are explosive. As Swift puts it in Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, it’s “cooler in theory, but not if you force it… to be”, or more succinctly in Fortnight, “I love you, it’s ruining my life”. These relationships often seem to have an almost religious or spiritual element to them (Swift asks in Guilty As Sin “What if the way you hold me, is actually what’s holy?), and people can end up justifying all sorts of mistreatment, with sentiments like the one Swift expressed in My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys: “Pull the string. And I’ll tell you that he runs. Because he loves me. Cause you should’ve seen him. When he first saw me”.

The Tortured Poets Department immaculately describes all of this. Across several songs (E.g. Down Bad, I Hate It Here, Guilty As Sin, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, lolm, Goodbye London, How Did It End, Fresh Out The Slammer, etc.), Swift details the experience of being in a codependent relationship with an avoidant-type man who initially felt safe, but whose mood she felt responsible for lifting, and with whom she ultimately felt ignored, bored, misunderstood, and inadequately loved, but stayed with out of a sense of “long suffering propriety”. She then contrasts this with the antidote of a “crazy” “self-destructive” disorganized-type man who made her feel like the “chosen one” and showed her “cosmic love” in a “cyclone” of a relationship but almost immediately ghosted her, leaving her confused as to what had happened, with a shattered sense of self and suicidal ideation: “Like I lost my twin”, “I might just die it would make no difference”. This was a dichotomy Swift disparagingly characterized with the stereotypes of a “finance guy” vs. “poet” in I Hate It Here (presumedly detailing a fantasied escape from boring avoidant Joe) then a “hot-house flower” to an “outdoorsman” in How Did it End (seemingly after it didn’t work out with overly fragile disorganized Matty). Of course, neither dynamic will work for people in this situation, as what they are seeking through these partners is unrealistic and based on their own projections rather than a real relationship.

In the Prophecy, Swift laments, “Hand on the throttle. Thought I caught lightning in a bottle. Oh, but it’s gone again. And it was written. I got cursed like Eve got bitten. Oh, was it punishment? Please. I’ve been on my knees. Change the prophecy. Don’t want money. Just someone who wants my company. Let it once be me”. But such mysteries usually disappear when people see the impossible task they have been asking of others in relationships, and that it wasn’t just good company or shared values they were selecting their partners for. The real poetic torture of life doesn’t come from the tribulations of love affairs, it comes from grappling deeply with our own perceived badness.

But I think Swift is on the right track to understanding all this and moving beyond it. More recently, she’s been expressing an angry side, which is actually the antidote to the masking, people pleasing, and projections. Anger is usually coming from a healthy part of us, albeit in an extreme and unsophisticated way, that knows one’s worthiness. Swift perfectly describes this in her song Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? when she states “If you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said. Nothing makes me feel more alive…Who’s afraid of little old me? You should be”. You can hear Swift in real time surrendering to all the suppressed narcissistic rage in this song, as she belts out “So tell me everything is not about me. But what if it is? Then say they didn’t do it to hurt me. But what if they did? I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me”.

Swift has made news recently for apparently trademarking the phrase “Female Rage” with talks she plans to turn it into a musical. She has spoken previously about feeling victimized and penalized for being a woman in the entertainment industry. To me, this professional exploration is Swift embarking on a healing journey to reclaim her true self and her right to express herself authentically, real, raw, and imperfect, despite how it might be interpreted and digested by the public.

However, I hope that rather than filtering this rage through a lens of victimhood and focusing too much on institutionalized patriarchy, Swift can personalize it. Victimhood, whether loud or quiet, is simply another covert grab for power. Swift is at a point in her life when her innate power is undeniable and could be exercised overtly in any direction she wants.

Anger, in general, is a stepping stone to love. The chaotic, rigid, and uncaring expression of anger that we (especially men) can associate with strength, is far from it. In its highest form, anger is sweet and constructive. It tells us how we need to protect what matters. It sweeps up the grief, loss, loneliness, and pain of what we’ve been through, and fiercely guards what stands in the ruins.

And ask anyone with a mother, sister, wife, girlfriend or daughter; there ain’t no anger like that female anger. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, as they say. Because at the most basic biological level, anger is about the protection of the vulnerable. Female rage is there for the protection of young. It’s a mother zebra fearlessly and aggressively defending her baby from a bloodthirsty lion that’s twice her size. Google that shit — there’s no more powerful force I know of in this world. As a mother, it gives me goose bumps because I feel it in my bones. Healthy female rage is not about being a victim, being angry at men, or screaming and venting just to get it off our chest: that’s just hysteria, and boy do we have enough of that in the world already. Healthy female rage is about fighting to protect innocence, beauty, vulnerability, and goodness, with total disregard for any other consequences. And this, our world is starving for.

And men aren’t the enemy, they’re equally suppressed in regard to their ability to express themselves, which is why they’re limited in their ability to show up in a protective, supportive, and complimentary way for the women in our world the way woman want. Men also need loving back to wholeness. But if instead of venting and finger-pointing, Swift uses her rage to violently and unapologetically advocate for and embody the qualities of the parent, lover, or public she’s been chasing up until now, then we’re in for a healthy treat.

Swift has garnered criticism over the years for seemingly acting like a teenager in to her 20’s and 30’s. Indeed, it’s common for people on the autism spectrum to possess a childlike innocence and enthusiasm, as well as a childlike sense of justice and longing to drop the duplicitous charades of the adult social world so that everyone just gets along. This is a quality that can make them overly trusting of others and somewhat naïve. However, it’s also an endearing quality, and when appropriately nurtured and fiercely protected, it’s an unstoppable force of revolution.

I want to make the point here that I am not trying to expose Taylor Swift with this analysis, nor tear her down at all. Quite the opposite. I want people to continue to love and celebrate her the way they currently do. But I’d like them to have a bit more insight into why they love her so much. If we plucked an average Swifty from the crowd and asked them to qualify their love for Taylor, I imagine they’d talk about how she is amazing, inspiring, and relatable, and how her music has helped them through life. But if we were to distil this down, I think what’s really cemented the devotion of her fans is she makes them feel seen. She makes her listeners feel less alone in their experience of life. And I suspect part of her ability to do this is because she is so exquisitely speaking to the heretofore voiceless experience of neurodivergence. It’s the same reason why quirky indie films with manic-pixie-dream-girls and awkward male leads are so popular. The irony of where we are with this epidemic of neurodiversity currently, however, is that while teenagers and adults with autism would have grown up in a time when they were, in fact, the exception to the norm, it is increasingly becoming the case that neurodiversity is the norm rather than the exception, and it’s a norm without any real models or guideposts.

The reason it’s so relevant to know that Taylor Swift may be on the autism spectrum is that she holds so much power and influence over our youth and popular culture that accurately understanding her psychology could have immeasurable repercussions towards saving a population that is currently going under in a mental health tsunami.

Recent estimates from the CDC found one in 36 children were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, and this rate is increasing every year, with prevalence having increased over 300% since the year 2000. Speculations as to why this may be occurring aside, it is a remarkably formidable statistic. There are very real concerns about how our society will be able to support all the children who fall into the low-functioning category as they grow up, but those with high-functioning autism also present unique challenges. Rates of mental illness are also soaring these days, especially among young people. Due to issues like long wait times, crowded services, accessibility blocks, and lack of early intervention, the mental health system is unable to meet the needs of the public as tens of thousands of people with severe and complex mental health needs are left untreated each year. While there are many factors likely related to the rising rates of mental illness, I think autism spectrum aetiology, impacting the nervous system and information processing, is playing a much bigger part in our mental health crisis than is currently recognized.

It’s nice that Taylor’s music helps people feel less alone. But more than that, her ability and willingness to communicate these subtle psychological dynamics through her music affords our youth the opportunity to understand themselves better, and from this comes an unlimited potential for healing on a grand scale.

Few things make me cringe as much as witnessing two people, both clearly neurodivergent, heavily masking with each other. There’s so much wasted energy, re-traumatizing, and missed creative potential in that. If one was brave enough to drop the mask, both would breathe such a sigh of relief and unlock a profound depth of connection. But this type of “bidirectional masking” is becoming increasingly common. Other celebrities who to me seem clearly autistic, with varying degrees of masking, include Jerry Seinfeld, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Cooper, and many, many, more.

More adults are seeking an autism spectrum assessment each year, yet much of it is either happening in silence or discussed on a purely intellectual level. My suspicion is that in the not-too-distant future such a diagnosis will be so ubiquitous it will lose much of its meaning, but of paramount importance will be making sure people know how to manage themselves within this experience.

If I were working with Taylor — or anyone who identified with these sentiments in her music — I’d help them recontextualize their experiences related to maladaptive beliefs about themselves. I’d make sure they could see their mental health symptoms in adulthood as a set of behavioral reflexes they learned as a child. From this understanding, so many things can be done to enrich someone’s life.

While a bit of guilt can be useful to alert us to behaviors that don’t align with who we really want to be, shame, which tells us who we are is bad or wrong, is never helpful and we must become allergic to it. Because at the bottom of it is always innocence and misguided attempts to protect it. I love helping people learn to embrace all their suppressed self-protective anger and turn it into compassion for themselves by appreciating how hard things have been and how clever they were to have found a way through. From here people can start to take accountability for their growth and choices as an adult, and maybe learn some explicit skills, like emotional regulation, boundary setting, or communication, to negate the need for old dysfunctional self-protective adaptations and facilitate unmasking and more authentic self-expression.

Maturity is taking responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that not everyone is going to understand or like us, but if we can understand and like ourselves, not for our accomplishments, utility to others, or public approval ratings, but simply for being our unique, flawed, but ultimately innocent and unique self, then we develop an integrity and true sense of self. Only then can we show up in relationships without masks, performances, projections, and rigid expectations.

For Taylor, this might look like allowing herself to disappoint others: to be jet lagged after a live show and plane trip from Japan before the Super Bowl, for example (Swift was heard claiming that jet lag was a choice following her appearance at the Super Bowl recently). It would also likely look like allowing herself to be vulnerable and present to emotions in here-and-now human interactions rather than just in songs after the fact.

Taylor’s professional output would likely decrease if she did this healing, as she would have less desire to prove herself, though I’m sure her creativity would remain. Often, when people first “unmask”, or stop ignoring their internal experiences in favor of how they think they “should” feel and behave, they experience a regression in skills as they learn to manage the newly recognized sensory overload. They begin a detox from running on the adrenaline that has kept them focused on maintaining the unsustainable mask. My guess would be that if Taylor did this work, she may notice higher levels of sensory overload and may suddenly find performing on stage with all the lights and loud noise a bit overwhelming. I also suspect she might cultivate more contentedness within herself and intimate relationships — if this is what she truly desired.

I’d also invite anyone who relates to all this to consider flipping the script completely on how they saw their mental health problems. Many people blindly operate on a set of outdated societal programs with little awareness of the bigger picture. The epidemic of autism and other mental health conditions we are seeing currently, though challenging, has given us a population of incredibly sensitive, creative, original, and innovative people with the discipline to stick with a problem until mastery. A cohort of people who are closer to their intuition and felt sense as a primary mode of navigating the world. People who abhor pretense and champion authenticity. Nature doesn’t do anything arbitrarily, and my suspicion is that this phenotype has emerged at this time as evolution’s heroic attempt to solve larger social and/or environmental problems, but that’s just my hot take.

Nevertheless, the world certainly doesn’t need an army of natural innovators meekly attempting to approximate the previous status quo and self-destructing when unable to do so. Nor does it need a population intent on wrestling with shadows when they could simply turn on the light.

If I was speaking to parents of a neurodivergent child, I would emphasize the importance of encouraging them to claim their gifts. These children need to be given the benefit of the doubt, have their feelings and experiences validated and explained to them, and be provided extra skills to navigate the social world. On a deep, experiential level, these kids need to know that they are not defective. They need to be given a felt sense of their power in the world, through autonomy of choice, deep understanding, and predictable natural consequences. Play-based power reversal games can be so powerful here (you can look this up for examples).

These kids don’t need to be disempowered through coddling, nor do they need to be wrestled into submission and slapped with a label like pathological demand avoidance when they fail to comply. Healthy limits are necessary but so are earnest attempts to see the needs behind their requests around how things are done. Innovation needs to be prized over conformity. They need to be shown by the adults in their lives that it’s safe for them to feel and that their perspective is valuable.

For this to be the case, the adults in their lives need to do their own work to stay regulated as best they can (much easier said than done). Aspiring to provide such an upbringing would start to break the cycle of emotional trauma and subsequent dysfunction in these kids as they grow up and form the fabric of our society. Parents don’t have to be perfect, it’s just about moving in the right direction. Nevertheless, there is some big-league parenting being asked of today’s Ma and Pa, so if Tay could lighten the load through her example in any way, the gains would most certainly be felt far and wide.

2. Her fame is inorganic.

Ok, time for controversial Swiftism number two! Now, before an army of Swifties try to burn my house down with fire solely generated from their arduous loins and blown out of their massively out-of-joint noses, hear me out. I’m not trying to cut the woman down; I’ll repeat, I think she is a bona fide and indisputable genius of the highest accord, who deserves her success. And it seems to me she is genuinely a very good-intentioned person. She also seems to work extremely hard and is intelligent in her career moves. However, I also know how our media works and things end up in front of eyes for a reason. I don’t believe any talent alone is enough to achieve total media monopolization the way she has.

I’m saying, keep your head about you in all matters. Your love and appreciation for Taylor is fine and understandable. It’s great that you draw inspiration from her. But adult “Swifties” spinning in circles like a 4-year-old at their first Wiggles concert is cause for significant concern. When your respect and appreciation tip over into that crazed, manic, drop to my knees and start to hyperventilate at the mention of her name, hysteria that people are displaying more and more lately, that’s not a natural or helpful state to be in. At all. Ever. Period. And in my opinion, it’s manufactured.

We famously first saw this level of fanaticism, not dissimilar to what we see with religious or cult indoctrination, with the Beatlemania of the 1960s, whereby girls were fainting, rushing the stage, and generally losing their minds over the band to the point that onlookers questioned their mental stability, and studies were done into the phenomenon. Mass hysteria, also known as Folie a deux, describes the psychological phenomenon whereby the power of suggestion can be used to elicit hysterical symptoms or extremely irrational feelings or behaviors, which can then spread rapidly throughout a group.

Beatlemania was understood at the time to have been a result of the introduction of television into people’s homes and the ability of the media to influence young people’s emotions and behaviors on a global scale. Beatlemania also occurred at a time in history marked by mounting political tension, with unsettling military interventions in Korea and Vietnam, atomic bomb testing, threat of nuclear war, and youth revolutions forming within opposing factions of society. So if not a deliberate distraction, the population was certainly primed for an emotional discharge. The current sociopolitical landscape could be considered equally tumultuous and it’s certainly possible that a viable political decision could be to distract and subdue the population and release a bit of tension with the blonde in a bodysuit.

At this point, Taylor could tell people to chop off their pinky fingers and string them onto some dental floss to make a choker chain, and they’d probably do it. I believe the media has intentionally drummed up this level of blind influence through continuous psychological manipulation and repetitive messaging to the point that it’s hijacked people’s subconscious into an emotional frenzy, which then separates them from their rational thinking brain when it comes to the concept of Taylor Swift.

In the same way that you didn’t realize your ex was a bit of a jerk until years into the relationship, high levels of arousal, whether pleasant or unpleasant, cloud our judgment. Highly emotional stimuli activate our brain’s limbic system, which turns on the fight or flight response of the autonomic nervous system. This creates agitation in the body, which can be experienced positively or negatively. It also leads to black-and-white thinking and readiness for rapid action by reducing cortical function in brain parts responsible for higher order thinking skills like logic, cause and effect, and pattern recognition. Anyone attempting to control or influence others will appeal to arousing their emotions first and foremost for these reasons.

The way the media has crafted people’s perception of Swift to garner veneration, including her interlude as the victim who had her award snatched by Kanye West and her masters seized by Scooter Braun and the Soros family, who then triumphantly rose from the ashes, seems very orchestrated and geared towards this moment when she stepped forth in all her glory, almost deified.

I’m inclined to postulate that at some point along the way, Taylor, being the insecure, naïve, beautiful, natural genius that she was, has been co-opted, used, and groomed, perhaps even unbeknownst to her, by the entertainment industrial complex for a specific and significant purpose. If Taylor starts getting more political in the coming months and years, you might remember this article and wonder if I was on to something.

Swift has spoken out previously in support of Democratic candidates and the importance of voting, which caused unprecedented increases in voter registrations and inspired various legislation. Swift’s Wikipedia page calls this the Taylor Swift effect. It claims that while she is left-aligned, she is an anomaly in American culture, with approval ratings higher than both Trump and Biden, such that she can bridge the divide between left and right and draw various demographics to her cause. Journalists claim she could vastly influence the outcome of the upcoming 2024 election. I certainly can’t see it being a coincidence that her world tour is culminating in an election year. I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman ended up running for president herself in the not-too-distant future based on the sheer volume of effort that’s been put into crafting her image and building momentum for her by this machine.

The way Swift’s relationship with footballer Travis Kelce has been documented from start to finish in recent months, for those of us playing along at home, also feels unnatural. The way we have photos of their private events and coverage of every milestone in the courtship all over social media shows they are deliberately attempting to make this all very public, not just that they can’t be bothered hiding it. The relationship might be genuine to those in it, but it also smacks of marketing 101.

Kelce was purportedly paid 20 million to promote Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. It’s no secret that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer make big money, much of which is invested back into things like news advertising and political lobbying, which their marketing team would call “strategic communication”, the overt goal of which is to influence public opinion and decision making. Last year, Pfizer lobbied 12M to influence healthcare policy, legislation, drug approvals, and other industry-specific issues. The ties between politics, the media, the entertainment industry, and our health care system seem to run deep, but when it comes to this entertainment industrial complex, suffice it to say that a rising tide undoubtedly lifts all boats.

My advice to anyone offended by being likened to a frothy-mouthed four-year-old for liking themselves some T-Swizzle would be self-inquiry. Females are especially vulnerable to this type of emotional contagion and celebrity worship, as are those with mental health conditions such as anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and particularly those on the autism spectrum. The actual invitation in this situation is to use all the passion directed towards Taylor for your benefit.

There is a defence mechanism we all use, which I mentioned earlier, called projection. Projection occurs when we unconsciously transfer our uncomfortable feelings, thoughts, or traits onto someone else. Whenever we strongly judge someone else, whether positively or negatively, the origins of this judgment are based on disowned parts of our own psyche. So, you can ask yourself, what is my feeling towards this person telling me about myself? For example, it could be very productive to ask yourself in what ways you are not owning your own greatness, voice, power, creativity, or whatever other qualities you are living out through the over-identification with Taylor. Rather than allowing your identity to be heavily pinned on your love for Taylor, figure out which qualities you admire in her and set to work trying to embody these more in your own life.

In doing this, you stop perpetuating the disempowering myth communicated by most of Swift’s lyrics that your salvation lies in finding the perfect someone with whom to form the perfect union and instead place the power back in your court in the universal pursuit of wholeness that Swift’s music so powerfully speaks to.

3. Her music is dangerous.

Ahh, not the music! Is nothing sacred! Hear me out; I mean, you’ve made it this far. I enjoy Taylor’s music. I find her lyrics fascinating, as witnessed by my above-demonstrated encyclopedic knowledge of them! (though, in full disclosure, the only album I’ve listened to in its entirety is her latest one, Tortured Poets. I was only familiar with the songs that ended up on the radio from previous albums). But I’m in awe of her ability to pump out these songs that are perfect little nuggets of human emotion. So, I can see why they have captivated the hearts of millions worldwide. And herein lies the problem.

Like any art, good music is meant to evoke an emotional response in us. It moves us. It makes us feel. We like to feel. We live in a world where doing is becoming increasingly popular, and feeling is becoming more difficult, so people are hungry for things that make them feel. But, when we’re engaging with an external stimulus so as to either stop feeling numb, or distract ourselves from another uncomfortable feeling we don’t want to deal with, it’s avoidance. Avoiding ourselves will always lead to problems for the individual and for society. This is exactly why people use drugs, to change how they feel.

Music is a drug, like any other, and should be treated as such. Studies have shown that listening to music affects our heart rate, pulse, mood, and discernment. In medicine, a quote attributed to Paracelsus says, “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison”. This refers to the fact that the harm or benefit of a particular substance is not fixed by its nature but instead by the amount of exposure to the thing. Something can be safe or beneficial in smaller controlled doses, but totally dangerous in larger amounts. This is my suggested approach to music, particularly incredibly evocative or emotional music.

Music is extraordinary; it allows us to transcend ourselves and our circumstances, conjures joy, courage, and other helpful states, and brings people together through unifying emotions. But, traditionally, emotionally evocative music has been used ceremonially. Before music could be recorded and carried in our pockets, it was traditionally used sparingly, in the right setting, and with a clear intention. However, the way we engage with music these days, indiscriminately, often as a constant or necessary backdrop to our lives or an escape from our actual experience, makes it just as destructive as an over-reliance on eating, spending, alcohol, or other state-altering substances or activities.

The body doesn’t know the difference between imagining something and that thing actually happening. Even if we put aside the problematic implication inherent in Swift’s music that romantic love is the pinnacle of human experience, when we get to the point that on a 15-minute Monday morning car ride to school, the kids have experienced having their hearts broken, getting revenge, and falling in love, all before first period, we have a generation of people who are inevitably incredibly overstimulated and desensitized to feeling. This can lead to or exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and depression and generally saps people of their drive to lead meaningful lives. Their body believes they’ve already had a full and rewarding day, emotionally, so there’s no need to chase those experiences in real life. Everyday human interactions pale in comparison to the highs we feel through music. We lose interest or develop unrealistic expectations of others. Or, the chasing of real experiences becomes more and more extreme, and people end up doing things like cheating on their spouse or quitting their job on an impulse, which might seem like a good idea at the time but may create long-term problems for that person and can slowly degrade the moral fabric of society.

Pythagoras is quoted to have said “The highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their divine nature, not entertainment”. It’s wonderful to have resources, like music, to use as a tool to help us regulate — to excite us when we are flat and calm us when we are anxious. To move stuck energy through the body and bust open dams in our mind. Swift’s music is especially gifted at giving a voice and sense of validation to the nooks and crannies of people’s inner lives, which are often ignored, judged, or poorly delineated in their own minds. However, we need to recognize that the goal of peak experiences isn’t the feeling in itself. Stopping here too long looks like self-indulgence and disconnection. Instead, we need to use whatever is stirred up in us to help us lead richer lives in our here and now; to engage better with the world around us. We need to feed it back into our lives constructively. Because we grow through relationship. And this part is easier said than done.

Swift’s music, especially, is smacking us right in the social engagement system, the part of the nervous system that turns on our relaxation response, making us feel safe and connected. It’s primarily controlled by tiny muscles in the inner ear which detect human voices. Elon Musk famously tweeted about Swift in 2023, saying, “Stay away from her”. “Her limbic resonance skill is exceptional”. He referred to Swift’s unparalleled ability to strike an emotional chord with listeners. It’s in how she uses her voice, the music, and the lyrics, and it’s happening very much on a biological level within the listener’s mirror neuron system. Much like parents speak to their babies in a melodious tone with exaggerated intonation and repetitive patterns, in what’s known as parentese, Swift’s music tickles our nervous system in a particular way that makes us feel at one with her and provides a sense of wholeness and completion. Musk recognized, as I did, the vulnerability of a listener under this degree of influence. I agree we’d be better off approaching this music with specific conscious intention, restraint, and caution to avoid being desensitized or distracted from real social matters.

So there you have it folks. Taylor Swift is a genius autistic who has been co-opted by the power and profit-driven machine that runs our politics, business, and entertainment industries to produce an emotionally manipulative, covertly disempowering, and culture-shaping product that has people clamoring over each other to gleefully, and detrimentally, consume like candy — but who also has the potential to single-handedly save the world.

Change my mind!