This is the second part of a three-part series inspired by a shared feeling that we are standing on a threshold. In my January essay, Crossing the Threshold, I explored the psychological thresholds and mythic dimensions of this moment. Here, I want to look more closely at why thresholds are so difficult to cross, and what may be at stake when we try to bypass the work they require.

In the absence of resistance, there is no creativity

– Dr. Iain McGilchrist

It is a strange experience to be living through what is often described as the approach of a technological singularity, while the Wi-Fi still does not work properly in the kitchen. And yet the feeling is unmistakable. I encounter it daily in the therapy room, and I hear it echoed in conversations with colleagues and acquaintances. A sense that behind the scenes, something is accelerating, while our inner lives struggle to keep pace.

As the world becomes harder to make sense of, and as we are increasingly siloed by personalised algorithms and digital feeds, I notice a particular hunger people bring to therapy. A desire to be seen, recognised, understood, and not feel alone. But wanting to be understood does not always mean wanting to change.

This has become an ever-present question for me. What is life, and what is therapy, asking of us when we do not turn to a quick fix, a moral high ground, or a clean narrative to soothe our discomfort? What happens when we stay with our quiet instead?

I was recently struck by a conversation with an acquaintance who asked whether I was using AI with my patients. She told me her own therapist had asked permission to input her data into an AI system for formulation. I found myself momentarily at a loss for words.

I should be transparent. I have used AI, not with confidential material, but as a form of intellectual supervision, much as one might discuss anonymised clinical material in a peer group. I have found some of these tools useful. But I am also increasingly uneasy about their power to seduce, to impose themselves quietly, and to promise clarity where none yet exists. I reflect daily on my own boundaries with technology, and I find myself inviting my patients to do the same.

So what is really being offered to us, and what might be taken away? Is this simply the adoption of a helpful tool, or are we at risk of losing something less tangible but more vital in the process?

The task of the therapist is not to rescue, but to accompany, to illuminate, and to clarify what is unfolding. In this sense, therapy models the ability to stand at a psychological threshold and look out into the unknown without rushing to resolve it. This capacity is developed first through our own training and inner work, and then offered to patients over time. It can be uncomfortable. It involves weathering uncertainty, confusion, anxiety, and grief. Depth psychotherapy does not rely on premature answers that temporarily soothe, but on cultivating the inner capacities that allow resilience and genuine change to emerge.

Growth cannot be handed over. It arises from within. This is why therapists traditionally refrain from giving advice or directing patients too much. Respect for autonomy is not a neutral stance, but an ethical one. The aim is not dependence or compliance, but the slow development of inner authority.

Traditions have named this process in different ways. Psychoanalysis speaks of psychological maturity. Jungians refer to individuation. Mystics such as St John of the Cross described the dark night of the soul, a period in which familiar supports fall away and one must learn to find one’s way without consolation. What unites these perspectives is a disciplined willingness to face layers of grief, wounding, and defence without bypassing them. When we are able to face what pains us, we do not eliminate suffering, but we lessen its hold.

In the therapy room, ambiguity is allowed to remain. We resist collapsing into easy explanations. We accept that human experience can encompass love and hate, longing and resentment, excitement and despair. Moral certainty can sometimes function as a defence against anxiety, just as endless processing can function as a defence against grief. Often people do not avoid crossing thresholds because they are incapable, but because they sense what will be lost in the crossing.

Not everyone responds to this pressure by accelerating or reaching outward. Some cope in the opposite direction, by shutting down. I have written elsewhere about the rise of emotional withdrawal, the quiet flattening of feeling, the retreat from intimacy and risk. Here too, I see the same logic at work. Withdrawal can be another way of not having to cross. Not because people are incapable of connection or change, but because staying open in the face of uncertainty, loss, and grief can feel too destabilising. Panic and numbness often sit closer together than we like to admit. Both can function as ways of not having to stay with what is.

Combine this with the countless ways available to us to avoid loss. AI therapists and chatbots offer constant availability and the promise of regulation on demand. Ideological certainty, group belonging, and charismatic figures offer something similar. A sense of being held, understood, and reassured, without the discomfort of inner change. In this sense, we can begin to “do the work” while never actually doing it.

This is a quiet revolution. Without much notice, we lean into external authorities that promise clarity and comfort. In my practice, I meet people who turn to AI for companionship, advice, emotional regulation, and even intimacy. The question is not whether these technologies can be useful, but what capacities we may fail to develop when we outsource our inner lives too readily.

The psychiatrist and neuroscientist Ian McGilchrist has spoken about the left hemisphere’s desire for control, predictability, and power. I’ve noticed that in the face of uncertainty, this pull becomes stronger. Opposition to this search for control, he notes, is easily framed as naive or irresponsible. But as we stand at multiple thresholds, personal, cultural, technological, the temptation to bypass the unknown grows.

We see this dynamic not only in technology, but in our repeated disillusionment with external authorities. Figures once revered for insight or wisdom are revealed, again and again, to be deeply human and sometimes deeply flawed. What shines is not always gold. Each exposure leaves the same quiet question behind. Why are we so eager to hand our discernment over to someone else?

Carl Jung once suggested that liberation was never meant to come from a messiah outside ourselves, but from embodying what we seek within. The contemporary message often runs in the opposite direction. We are encouraged to defer, to outsource, to assume we are not good enough, not wise enough, not reliable enough to navigate uncertainty on our own.

This brings me to an idea developed by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. He described the capacity to be alone as a measure of psychological maturity. This does not mean isolation. It refers to the ability to be with oneself without collapsing, without needing constant reassurance or interference. When this capacity is present, a person can tolerate ambiguity, excitement, frustration, and grief with the quiet knowledge that life will not fall apart. From this space, something genuinely creative can emerge.

When this capacity is overwhelmed or undeveloped, people tend to rush toward explanation, cling to identity, escalate morally, demand reassurance, shutdown completely or panic. Not because they are weak, but because staying feels unbearable.

This is what feels at stake now. We are offered increasingly sophisticated external soothing, while losing the opportunity to develop inner resilience. Depth psychotherapy may be one of the few remaining places where autonomy is respected, uncertainty is tolerated, and psychological development is treated as a discipline rather than a trend.

In a world that rewards bypassing and certainty, perhaps answers are not always what is needed.

Sophie Frost is a psychodynamic and attachment-oriented psychotherapist based in Berlin, working in English with adults and couples. Her current writing explores psychological thresholds, autonomy, and the ethical limits of reassurance-driven therapy culture.