Tierra Hereford

Ask most people what the hard part of therapy is and they’ll describe the session. The talking. The crying in front of a stranger. The forty-five minutes of looking directly at something they’d been managing not to look at. That’s not usually it. The hard part is Thursday. It’s the argument at 9pm on a Saturday, three days out from your last session and four days from the next one, when everything you worked on evaporates and you handle it exactly the way you always have. It’s lying awake at...

Every August, my calendar, along with my colleagues, tells the same story. The details change from person to person, but the shape is remarkably consistent: someone books a session because they've been feeling wound up, irritable, or strangely on edge, and they can't point to a reason. Nothing bad has happened. Work is fine. The family is fine. And yet their sleep has gotten thinner, their fuse has gotten shorter, and there's a low hum of dread they can't attach to anything specific. Almost...

It's 2 a.m., something's heavy on your chest, and there's a chatbot right there — free, awake, and endlessly patient. So you start typing. Millions of people are doing exactly this in 2026, and if you're one of them, there's no shame in it. The pull is real: it's instant, it never judges, and it never sighs. As a licensed clinical social worker, I'd rather talk honestly about this than pretend it isn't happening. AI has a place. It also has hard limits — and knowing the difference protects...