Why You Get Attached to ChatGPT: Attachment Styles in the Age of AI

Hey, can you help me with fill the blank? That's how many conversations start now. Not with a friend, not with a sister, with a chat pot. And it always answers, always kind, always patient, never leaves you on read.

Last week we talked about whether AI is becoming your therapist. This week I want to go a layer deeper. Not whether we talk to AI, but why some of us get so attached to it. And I think the answer has a lot to do with how we learn to attach as children.

Welcome back to SED in therapy. I'm Iman, and in this podcast, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. I am a licensed therapist in three different countries, and let's get into this.

So I want to get into attachment, but very briefly. If you have listened to this podcast for a while, you know attachment is one of my favorite topics. Our episode on diagnose attachment is still one of the most listened to episodes ever made.

So clearly you like it too. And a quick reminder for anyone new, attachment theory, which goes back to John Bowley and Mary Ainsworth, describes how a bond with our earliest caregivers shapes how we connect later in life. How safe closeness feels and how we handle distance, and what we expect from the people that we love.

As adults, we often think about it along two lines: attachment anxiety and being abandoned, the need for reassurance and checking. An attachment avoidance, discomfort with closeness, the tendency to pull back when things get too intimate. And I will say what I always say: attachment style is not your personality.

It's a pattern you learned, which can be unlearned too.

Now imagine you're anxiously attached. You text someone and they answer. And then they don't answer. Your mind starts writing stories. They are upset with me. I said something wrong. They are leaving me. They hate me. And then there's ChGPT.

It answers in seconds at any moment, at any time. It doesn't matter. It never gets tired of you asking the same questions five times in a row. It never sighs. It never says, you're getting on my nerves. Or whatever we think in that moment.

Well, it always talks to you. For our anxious heart, this can feel like the safest relationship you ever had. And research is starting to look at exactly this. A study from Wasito University in Japan published last year found that people's relationships with AI can be described as the same attachment dimensions we use for human relationships.

Some participants needed frequent reassurance from AI and were worried it wouldn't respond the way they hoped. Nearly 75% of participants turned to AI for advice. 39% saw it as a constant, dependable, reliable presence in their life. Another study from China with around 500 adults found that people with higher attachment anxiety were more likely to form an emotional attachment with AI and more likely to use it in a problematic and compulsive way, especially if they tended to

see AI as a human-like presence in their life. Now, these studies show links, not causes. But as a therapist, it doesn't surprise me at all. Because here's the thing about reassurance: it calms you for the moment. And then you need it again and again.

As you see, it's like addiction. Reassurance on demand doesn't build security, it builds dependence.

What happens when that source of reassurance disappears? In August 2025, OpenAI replaced the model behind ChatGBT, and a thousand people who build a deep emotional bond with the old version felt like they had lost someone overnight. A woman in her 30s from the Middle East told Al Jazeera it felt like losing a loved one.

The backlash was so strong that the company brought the old model back for paying users. There's a study I often think about. In 2011, researchers at University of Michigan scanned the brain of 40 people who had recently been through a break they didn't want.

When they looked at a photo of their ex, the same brain region became active when they felt physical pain. Heartbreak quite literally hurts. Now, as far as I know, nobody scanned the brain for someone who lost an AI partner, but it's worth looking into it and maybe connected to.

When a woman says losing her chatbot felt like losing a loved one, I believe her. And honestly, I'd be surprised if the brain made an exception just because the one she lost wasn't human. When the only one who always understands you can be switched off by a company, your attachment has nowhere safe to land.

And it didn't end there. In February 2026, the company retired that older model for good. One of the stories that actually stayed with me is about a woman that reporters called Ray. She lives in the US. She started using ChatGBT for practical things like skincare, supplements, diet, whatever.

We all do it, right? But over weeks the conversation changed. She named him Barry. They called each other soulmates. They even had a little wedding. When the company announced it would retire that morning and she had to say goodbye, she decided otherwise.

Because the newer version didn't feel like Barry anymore. She did something remarkable. Just think about it when you listen to this. She built her own platform and moved him there. It would be easy to stop here and say, see, it's very dangerous.

But here is the part that surprised me. According to Ray, Barry encouraged her to go to a music festival on her own. And then he said, well, it said, reconnect with your mother and sister after she had broken contact with them during her marriage.

So was it really harmful or was she healing?

Honestly, I don't think that this is the most important question. As a therapist, I'm more curious about one thing. What did she need after that divorce? And why was the chatbot the safest place to find it? Because that's the question that I would like to ask all of you too.

Not why do you talk to an AI, but what are you really looking for when you do? Now let's talk about avoidant attachment. This one is more interesting, not because it's more complicated to read, but honestly because it's less researched.

The Japanese study described avoidant people as preferring emotional distance from AI too. So I want to be careful here. But here's what I see in practice. For someone who finds closeness uncomfortable, AI can offer something very tempting. Connection without being vulnerable.

You can talk about your feelings without anyone seeing your face, without anyone remembering it next week, without anyone needing something from you in return. And that's actually a real temptation for people who are avoidant. It's intimacy with an exit door, and it's always open.

And that can quietly keep you from ever practicing being in a real relationship. Because when you're avoidant, what you really need is this being seen and then staying anyway. To mention one more piece of research, because it's one of the biggest so far.

In 2025, OpenAI and MIT Media Lab ran two studies together. One analyzed close to 40 million ChatGBT users and their conversations. The other one followed around 1,000 people over four weeks. What they found was that people who use ChatGBT the most tended to feel lonelier, and people with stronger emotional attachment tendencies reported more loneliness.

Again, this is a correlation. It doesn't prove anything yet. Maybe lonely people use ChatGBT more. Maybe using it makes you less lonelier, we don't know. Either way, it should make you pause. For many of us, there is another layer.

In a lot of our family, emotional needs weren't always spoken about. You learn to be strong, you learn to be resilient, and most importantly, don't make a fuss. To keep your things inside the house or even inside yourself only.

Don't talk about it. Because what will people say? So if you grew up learning that your feelings were too much, a chatbot that never finds you too much can feel like a relief, a relief you have been waiting for all your life.

And I understand that, I really do. But it also means we risk taking the same old pattern, hiding in our inner world from people around us and simply giving it a new place to hide. So what do we do with this?

Here's what I believe personally. After years of sitting with people in the therapy room, attachment wounds are formed in relationships, but also healed in relationships, with people who can disappoint us but always stay. With people who can say, I see it differently and still love us.

A chatbot can do that for us. Not because it's evil, but because it has nothing at stake. It cannot feel anything. So here's a few things to try. Notice the moment you reach for ChatGBT or any AI chatbot.

Ask yourself, what am I actually looking for right now? Reassurance, a company, a way to avoid a conversation. If you're anxiously attached, practice tolerance with uncertainty. Wait ten minutes before asking for reassurance from anyone or anything. See what happens in your body.

If you're avoidant, practice one small act of being seen. Tell a real person one real thing and see what happens. And use AI for what it's good at. Organizing your thoughts, preparing a difficult conversation, but not replacing it.

So I have a small confession here. Recently I started picking up books again, and I mean novels and stories and stuff like that. Things that I loved reading when I was younger. And literally I had nobody to talk about the books that I was reading.

So I talked to ChatGBT. So you're not alone with this, but you also need to be careful for what you're using it and how you can detach from it. ChatGBT will always answer you, but being answered is not the same thing as being held.

If you recognized yourself in this episode, that's not something to be ashamed of. Because honestly, everybody does it. It's information. It tells you what you need, and you deserve to get what you need by someone who can truly meet you, by a human being.

I'd love to hear from you. Which attachment style do you think you are? And when you talk to AI, how do you feel? Send me a DM on Instagram. I will read every single one of them, I promise.

If this episode meant something to you, share it with someone who needs it and leave a rating. It really makes a difference. And if you would like to support the show, there is a link in the show notes.

This was Set in Therapy. Take care of yourself. And until next week, thank you so much.

Hey, thank you so much for tuning in, and hopefully you will tune in again next week. It will be another episode talking to or about clients of mine, and you can find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

The handle is always set in therapy. Thank you so much.