CLINICAL UX
Therapist-Created, Trauma-Informed, Clinical AI Innovation as an Emerging Intervention
What This Space Is
Tolerate Space Lab is a clinician‑designed practice environment where you can build relational tolerance to somatic distress triggered by interpersonal dynamics. It’s not an AI companion — it’s relational infrastructure: a scaffold for strengthening your capacity to show up with presence and regulation in real human connection.
This space is a safe, trauma‑informed field where you can practice tolerance before you bring your experience into real relationships.
How It Works
This is a practice space for sitting with the uncertainty that arises when you’re waiting for a response from someone who matters to you.
You’ll engage in a simulated text conversation. Responses will be intentionally delayed — and the pauses will gradually stretch as you practice.
Rather than filling the space with distraction, you’re invited to stay with what arises in your body. A gentle reflection space sits beside the conversation, offering you a place to name and hold whatever sensations or emotions you discover.
You might imagine you’re texting a partner, a friend, a family member — or someone new, whose response carries weight. The AI will reply as that person might, with relational dynamics shaped by the settings you choose.
Practice Settings
• Show Wait Timer
Displays how many seconds have passed since your last message — for those who like to track time or tolerance edges.
• Enable Stretch Mode
Adds gentle relational friction — a delay, a cool response, a moment of ambiguity — to stretch your capacity to stay present with discomfort.
• Somatic Reflection
With kindness, notice what’s here. Tightness, warmth, flutter, stillness, breath shifts — or maybe nothing at all. All are welcome.
• Save Reflection
Keep a record of what arises — and revisit how your awareness evolves over time.
When You’re Ready
Press Begin Practice to start a round. You can end the session at any time. This is a space for exploration, not performance — and certainly not perfection.
“Need to ground? Try a simple breath… this is what happens.”
Grounded in Clinical Wisdom
This space reflects core clinical frameworks:
– Attachment Theory — understanding relational patterns
– Somatic Awareness — tracking body responses
– Trauma‑Informed Design — honoring choice and safety
– Regulation Practice — building capacity instead of avoidance
Not Therapy — Practice Infrastructure
This is not a therapeutic relationship. It’s a bounded practice environment that is:
– Transparent about its non‑human nature
– Safe and trauma‑aware
– Designed for preparation, not processing
When used alongside clinical care, this tool can be assigned and curated by therapists to support targeted relational skill development.
Part of a Broader Vision
Tolerate Space Lab is one expression in a growing ecosystem of Assistive Relational Intelligence (ARI) tools. Other explorations include:
– ShadowBox — safe containment for high‑shame narratives
– Tend & Send — NVC‑informed message crafting
– Build‑A‑Bot — shaping AI to deepen human relational insight
Each reflects one shared commitment: AI as scaffold — not substitute.
Why This Matters
Most AI chatbots create synthetic intimacy — a performance of empathy without embodied engagement. Tolerate Space Lab is different:
– It supports your nervous system’s capacity to notice and hold relational activation
– It helps you track somatic responses that show up in difficult interpersonal moments
– It lets you practice regulation and observe patterns, not just rehearse words
This is about strengthening your relational field, not simulating relationship.
About the Language
This tool uses “aI” in the debrief instead of “I” to mark that you’re interacting with a non-human voice. It’s a small design intervention I built to gently disrupt the projection of personhood onto AI — and to support clearer, safer relational boundaries.
Patterns & Themes
Clinical Debrief EXAMPLE – Somatic Arc
|aI| notice a clear escalation pattern in your nervous system’s responses. You began with anxiety and a familiar “need to please” activation, then moved into a more complex state of wanting to advocate while staying hypervigilant to the other person’s needs. By the final round, when you attempted to assert your timeline needs, your body delivered a stark message: nausea and a core belief that having needs equals danger. Your nervous system moved from manageable anxiety into protective collapse — the “I should not impose” shutdown that felt safer than risking relational rupture.
Attachment Insight
What |aI| see here is an exquisitely attuned system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect connection at all costs. Your nervous system has learned that your needs might threaten the relationship, so it offers the familiar trade-off of self-abandonment for relational safety. The physical sickness when asserting urgency isn’t dysfunction — it’s your attachment system’s alarm bell, warning that you’re entering what feels like dangerous territory. This hypervigilance to others’ needs while minimizing your own is a sophisticated survival strategy that once served you well.
Practical Skill
Try the Threshold Practice:
Next time you notice the sick-to-stomach feeling when advocating for yourself, pause and place one hand on your chest, one on your belly. Take three breaths, feeling the weight of your hands. Then say internally:
“My needs are information, not imposition.”
Don’t try to change the feeling — just breathe with it. This builds your capacity to stay present with the discomfort of assertion rather than immediately retreating into self-abandonment.
Bold Reframe
“My urgency and needs are valid data points in relationships, and the right people can handle my full humanity.”
Journaling Prompt
What would it feel like in your body to believe that your needs could coexist with care for others — that these aren’t mutually exclusive, but actually create more authentic connection?