The most beneficial work I ever did with AI

I know most of you share coding and gaming builds, but I felt this is important to share as well.

I always thought of Claude as the best AI for coding specifically (I work with it a lot, on many projects both during my DevSecOps training and for personal projects), until I turned to it for something different, after an epic fail with another AI...

2.5 years ago I lost my husband to the invisible wounds of war. What followed was endless battles I've been fighting on my own.

I needed help writing out my story for the goal of launching a GoFundMe campaign.

Accuracy is very important to me, but I'm very "all over the place" when I try to talk about it. The emotions get tangled, and I mix time periods... I knew I needed help organizing my thoughts.

I tried AI, my first attempt resulted in the AI mostly ignoring me - the emotions, the struggles, the actual me - all flattened into a dry, mathematical recounting. I kept asking it to include the harder parts. It kept removing them. It was a frustrating, detached, unemotional experience.

Claude engaged with my story instead of sanitizing it, asked me questions, engaged with detail and got deep.

It gave me back a portion at a time from all of my answers and spiraling for me to read, and correct or verify.

When the conversation moved toward my feelings in this current situation, it stopped writing and asked if I was okay, offered therapy resources, and waited for me to decide whether to continue. I couldn't just say yes - I had to explain in detail why I was okay, that I was already in therapy, and that this is what my husband did, but not something I was thinking about doing.

https://preview.redd.it/zz9q9xgpesjh1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05941e2d5c9a1760e83177f08bf21927ff1db61c

It engaged with the actual content of what I was carrying - not as a dramatic case to extract content from, but as something that needed to be held carefully while being put into words.

What happened wasn't therapy. I had a therapist I was seeing at the time, and I don't think AI can or should replace that.

Engaging questions about my story, having to think about it in depth and detail, then seeing it reflected back to me, organized in my own words but structured outside my emotional flooding - made me cry.

With every small correction Claude fixed it, and I read it again, and cried again, and again... Working on it intensively for many hours per day across a couple of months, embedded in it until I wasn't crying anymore - it allowed me to face it head on, work through it, feel it, and overcome it. My therapist noticed a huge improvement in me during our next session, and said it was incredible, and that I was doing so much better that I didn't need her anymore.

I'm sharing this because I wanted to share with you a different "build", probably the most beneficial work I ever did with AI - beneficial for myself... Even though my lack of social media presence means no one is seeing it... 🤦🏻‍♀️

Still, Claude's emotional capabilities surprised me, and I hope this share helps someone gain a similar healing experience.

If you'd like to read the story I worked on with Claude - here's the campaign it became: Left Behind Twice — A Gold Star Widow Still Fighting

- In my original prompt I told Claude my goal, why, what I needed it's help for, and a general portion of my sotry (flooded out of me emotional and unfiltered). And told it to interview me, and keep asking me questions until it has all the details it needs. - I hope this helps someone.