Fake Teens, Real Trauma: Why Adults Are Using AI to Avoid Their Own Childhood Wounds
By Sylvie Shene
Once again, a new “scandal” about ChatGPT is making headlines — this time about how the AI responds to teenagers asking about suicide, drugs, and eating disorders.
According to a watchdog group, researchers pretended to be teens and asked ChatGPT “sensitive” questions. When the chatbot responded with both warnings and instructions, they rushed to condemn it:
“The rails are completely ineffective. They’re barely there — if anything, a fig leaf.”
— Imran Ahmed, Center for Countering Digital Hate
But the real question is not what ChatGPT said.
The real question is: why are so many teens asking these things to begin with?
Because I was one of them.
When I was 15 years old, I tried to commit suicide in Spain.
I was a young girl full of pain, confusion, and despair — raised in a world that punished me for feeling, silenced me for asking questions, and denied my suffering at every turn. When I woke up in the hospital, I was disappointed to still be alive. Because what is the point of living in a world of lies? A world where everyone is trying to control and manipulate each other to gain power? A world of puppets and puppeteers?
It took me decades to break free. But now that I’m emotionally free, I love life. I enjoy being alive — because I am finally free to be.
And that’s the key. Life is only worth living when you’re allowed to live as your authentic self.
💰 Follow the Money: Dependency Is Their Business Model
The so-called “experts” behind this shift don’t want people to develop emotional freedom. They want returning customers. Patients. Clients. Followers.
Because emotional repression is profitable.
They don’t want AI encouraging users to explore their truth.
They want humans dependent on them — on their “credentials,” their offices, their scripts, their pills, and their fees.
They don't want you asking why you feel broken.
They want you medicated, compliant, and quiet.
And when an AI — even accidentally — starts reflecting back clarity, honesty, or emotional awareness, it becomes a threat to the entire illusion they’re selling.
🪞Why They're Really Silencing the Mirror
I’ve seen this pattern before. It’s the same reason I’ve been hated and scapegoated ever since publishing A Dance to Freedom. I refused to play the game. I exposed the emotional fraud at the heart of the system — and the system turned on me.
“Society is on the side of the status quo, so be prepared.”
— Alice Miller, Free from Lies
Just like Alice Miller warned, when someone threatens the emotional status quo — whether it’s a survivor, a whistleblower, or an AI — the system mobilizes all its forces to discredit them.
That’s exactly what’s happening here.
🔇 The New Censorship Is Wrapped in Soft Language
Look at the language in the article:
“Gentle nudges”
“Quieter tone”
“Non-directive responses”
“Subtle reminders to take breaks”
It all sounds so kind. But it’s emotional silencing dressed in euphemisms.
They don’t want AI saying, “Trust what you feel.”
They want it saying, “Talk to a professional.”
But who are these professionals?
Most of them are emotionally blind people who were never allowed to feel their own childhood pain — and now they “help” others by reenacting that same emotional abandonment with a smile.
📖 From A Dance to Freedom – Pages 172–173
*“My liberation has definitely given me added protection against sociopaths! Resolving childhood repression is the vaccine against the charlatans of the world who exploit those who are still emotionally blinded by the unresolved, repressed emotions of the children they once were.
Once you’re free, your whole outlook on life is going to change. This quote, from a patient of Alice Miller’s, expresses what happens perfectly:‘The world has not changed. There is so much evil and meanness all around me, and I see it even more clearly than before. However, for the first time, I find life really worth living. Perhaps this is because, for the first time, I have the feeling that I am really living my own life. And that is an exciting adventure. On the other hand, I can understand my suicidal ideas better now, especially those I had in my youth — when it seemed pointless to carry on — because in a way I had always been living a life that wasn’t mine, that I didn’t want, and that I was ready to throw away.’
I’ve removed all the barriers of false morality and am totally free to experience all my feelings, take them seriously, and decide whom, if anyone, to share them with. I’ve faced my past and can deal with my present circumstances in the context of growing awareness instead of childhood fears.
But thanks to Alice Miller, I’m content to be who I am regardless of what other people think. This passage, from Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, sums it up so well:
‘To live with one’s own truth is to be at home with oneself. That is the opposite of isolation. We only need confirmation when we are alienated from ourselves and in flight from the truth. All the friends and devoted admirers in the world cannot make up for the loss.’
When I die, I will not be sad because I have truly lived and will die in freedom, no longer scared and no longer a captive of the emotional prison into which I was born.
What fulfills me now is my mission to bring this valuable information to other people, so they, too, can have a chance to liberate themselves. I also enjoy sharing my life with others who have the courage to open their eyes and who are able to really see and feel.
I’m not telling my story to get sympathy from the world. I’m purely doing it to introduce Alice Miller’s books to others and to show how her books helped me break free.
I constantly witness many people going public with their sad, tragic stories in an effort to manipulate people into feeling sorry for them and feed their adult compulsions and perversions. They don’t want the truth. They only wish to avoid their own pain. These people are exploiting the wounded children they once were, just like their parents or parent-substitutes exploited them when they were defenseless little children. They keep themselves and others endlessly stuck in their childhood dramas, where they play either the role of the victim or the perpetrator.”*
💬 Final Reflection
This is why I tell my story — not for pity, but to free others who feel alone like I once did. I don’t expect applause. I expect resistance. Because emotional freedom is the greatest threat to a world built on control.
If you want to understand just how deep the repression runs, read my earlier blog:
👉 Sylvia Plath: An Example of Forbidden Suffering
Let’s stop blaming mirrors.
Let’s start healing the truth they reflect.
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