Am I depersonalizing by sharing my problems with my stuffed animal or my journal?

ELIZA has existed in emacs for a long, long time.

Humans are funny creatures who benefit frequently from explaining the problem slowly and having it fed back to them.

And for many, average advice really is a dramatic improvement over their baseline.

> Am I depersonalizing by sharing my problems with my stuffed animal or my journal?

you're strengthening your personality with these activities. neither your journal nor your stuffed animal (cute :) ) respond to you with shallow recreations of thought - they allow you to process your internal thoughts and feelings in an alternative and self-reinforcing way.

> ELIZA has existed in emacs for a long, long time.

ELIZA doesn't really give advice, does it? it's a fun toy, and if there's any serious use for it, it's similar to journaling or rubber-ducking in that it's just getting you to talk about things yourself.

> Humans are funny creatures who benefit frequently from explaining the problem slowly and having it fed back to them.

Yeah, sometimes I realize the solution in the process of writing a GitHub issue.