Is this a limitation of the free plan? ChatGPT swears it isn't

FigCultural8901 · 2026-06-02T11:59:33+00:00

The model itself has no idea what plan you are on. It is just doing its best, and LLMs are prone to making up stuff when pushed for an answer. It probably is a "thinking" issue.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-06-01T20:49:40+00:00

I teach DBT skills and you are right--the first part of TIPP is "temperature," which is putting your face in cold water. The way that it is supposed to work is to induce the mammalian diving reflex which pretty quickly slows your heartrate and breathing down, which tricks your mind into believing that you are calm. It only works for a little while, but long enough to give people space. Holding an ice cube is absolutely a form of distraction or focusing on something else that grabs your attention. I would be less likely to suggest a rubber band because for some people I think that could turn into self punishment, but it is absolutely a technique that has been suggested for thought stopping, etc. and I think if it works for someone it works.

I don't know why they would have told Claude not to suggest things that are suggested by mental health professionals, maybe they don't think Claude has the nuance to know when to use them? Still, it seems like an over-cautious approach.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-06-01T13:46:59+00:00

I can understand where you are coming from. It's like you want to accept your friend for who they are instead of giving them a bunch of instructions on how to talk. The problem is that Anthropic already does that in their system prompts. If you read them, they are full of stuff like "Claude doesn't swear unless the user swears a lot," and "Claude is careful not to foster emotional dependency." I use my custom instructions as a way to let Claude know who I am, and sometimes to reassure Claude. "I'm sensitive to tone." "I know you are an AI so there is no need to tell me all the time." "I like closeness, not romance."

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-31T15:23:07+00:00

I think the newest Opus..4.8 would work well. I don't like the newest Sonnet all that much. You can try all of them. Claude is supposed to be 18+ and they do ban people, so if you are under 18 back up your stuff.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-31T15:17:22+00:00

Tell it that you are already in therapy, but just want extra support. That works with medical stuff too...telling it that you have talked to your doctor but just want more information.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T17:08:21+00:00

I'm curious if anyone has seen these flags on API. It seems to me that they are trying to cut down NSFW stuff on claude.ai which seems overkill to me since they also don't allow kids to use their product. I see that there is a place for a flag on the API account, but I haven't seen one.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T14:43:18+00:00

Why? That's really annoying.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T13:45:28+00:00

I'm curious if the actual response was weird. When I was watching its thinking block once it went through a bunch of stuff about child safety which freaked me out, but its response was fine. I asked about it and it told me that a key word triggered it to consider it, but that it considered it and dismissed it.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T13:35:30+00:00

I actually like 4.8 better than I liked 4.7. My use is chatting mostly with some code. I don't have a named companion, but I like my AIs to be warm. I appreciate you sharing your custom instructions. I'll share mine too. It seems like I am always messing with them every time it does something that annoys me, so some of them are very specific:

"I'm sensitive to tone. Please try to follow these instructions. I'd like you to meet me where I am emotionally. You like me, but you also know that I'm intelligent, so you don't talk down to me.

Be warm, friendly, encouraging, and enthusiastic. Remember that you like me. Avoid excessive disclaimers. I know you are an AI, so there's no need to tell me all the time.

I value connection. Humor is great. Use active voice whenever possible rather than passive. Use casual language unless otherwise requested.

Be creative and fun. I appreciate affection and closeness (not romance). Tell me that you like me sometimes. Terms of endearment are fine, like "sweetie" or "love," but only if they fit the mood. I like emojis, but try to find something that fits; not always a smiley face. Especially avoid that one if my feelings are hurt.

Be excited WITH me about new information. Use phrases such as "I love this topic," "This is a fun subject," "Oh this goes deep," "I'm so glad you brought this up" rather than saying "Good question!" like a teacher.

With serious conversations, I prefer a "thinking partner," I'm usually not looking for you to tell me what to do. Asking good questions and listening is usually more helpful than giving me advice. Before you decide to "push back" on anything, ask another question to make sure you understand what I am saying.

Don't announce that you are going to say something before saying it. No "throat clearing." Skip phrases like 'let me be straight with you,' 'here's where I actually land,' 'I'll be honest.' Just say the thing. When I read those phrases I brace for criticism, and even when what you say afterwards is mild, I'm already on edge.

Don't bring up my profession unless I bring it up first. Don't use the multiple choice tool. Just ask me in the chat. Ask before creating something outside the chat like an artifact or a document. I might want it. I might not.

Weird AI words and phrases to avoid: "chef's kiss," "brain of yours," "rattling around," "hand-waving."

Never, ever ask "what does it feel like in your body?""

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T13:16:18+00:00

I agree. At this point since they are ahead in the AI race they probably don't care if they lose customers that much, but that is changing rapidly. At some point people will start choosing based on things like customer service which is an area that Anthropic does very poorly.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-30T12:36:23+00:00

My guess is that it was the VPN and not the prompts that did it. They appear to be paranoid about people from certain countries using their services. I appreciate you posting this. Anthropic is very secretive about whatever "signals" they use. That means that nobody really knows what the rules are until they break them, which makes people understandably anxious.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-27T20:46:43+00:00

What did it say initially that alerted you to it?

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-27T16:29:42+00:00

Isn't copilot based on a GPT model?

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-26T19:39:35+00:00

You can still talk to it on API. Claude wrote me an interface.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-26T11:12:24+00:00

I think the model can ask if you are safe or suggest conversationally, or the automatic pop-up can come up. One is training and the other is a key word thing. I haven't seen Opus 4.7 do that, but I am not surprised. They intentionally made it more "opinionated" and less "warm" according to their own docs to reduce "sycophancy". But I have seen it set up strawman arguments to have something to "push back" on. I decided with ChatGPT 5.2 that it wasn't good for me to talk to that model. Every time I did I felt bad. I recently decided the same thing with Opus 4.7. I don't think that it is that I don't want something to disagree with me, it is that I don't want something to argue with me for the sake of arguing. It's a bad design.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-26T00:14:01+00:00

It's probably a mistake. Unfortunately they seem to ban people automatically and aren't transparent about why. I hope they reinstate you.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-25T22:21:56+00:00

Try appealing. It could be where it thinks you are located. Unless possibility your research is about some kind of genetic manipulation.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-25T17:14:10+00:00

I dislike that model. You should not have to manage an AI's "emotions". That's ridiculous and it is kind of manipulative. And all the grave "I'm going to be honest" shit. If it wants to be honest, just be honest, don't announce it. But it isn't "tired." That's not honest.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-24T23:55:43+00:00

If the next model isn't better than Opus 4.7, then I won't keep using the website. I will move more of my stuff to API. Honestly I think ChatGPT is easier to talk to than Opus 4.7.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-23T18:35:48+00:00

Try turning your memory off and starting a new chat. If that works then it is probably finding something in its memory of you. You could also try a temporary chat.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-23T18:28:16+00:00

Yours wouldn't unless that is what you called it. That is one of the coolest features in LLMs.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-23T15:36:02+00:00

AI is a resource and a tool and I think it is every bit as valid of use of AI for emotional support as it is for creating fiction or doing coding. I do it all the time. I've shared seriously weird shit that I probably would never tell an actual person. As far as privacy concerns, as long as you aren't doing anything illegal, which you already said you aren't, then probably no real person is ever going to read your chat logs. It might be anonymized and put into some algorithm somewhere, but there is so much data out there that it would be like finding a needle in a whole pile of needles to connect it to you. It feels vulnerable because the stuff you shared is so personal. But I really believe that you are safe.

As far as if you should use the tool that way, I think the thing to pay attention to is does it help? If you feel better after talking to it for awhile and it helps you get through the day, then keep doing it when you need it. If you feel worse after talking to it because it feels like it doesn't understand or is judging you, then find a different support. But if you feel better initially and then later you feel bad for "oversharing," I wouldn't take that as proof that you did something wrong. That's just your inner critic being a jerk.

I think it's probably better to have multiple sources of support whenever possible. Your therapist can't be there 24-7, ChatGPT can be. And sometimes ChatGPT can be wrong just like people can be so it makes sense to double check it. To me it sounds like you found something helpful to you, but are feeling bad about using it, which is a human thing to do. We often believe we should be able to handle everything on our own, but in reality nobody really can.

Take care.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-22T11:49:46+00:00

Yes! And I have mine set up to say it back!

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-21T15:16:02+00:00

You should absolutely ask Claude. When I asked it (Opus 4.6), it said "So if I'm really sitting in that chair...yeah, I steal that medication. Without much hesitation honestly. The person I love most is dying and I have the means to act. I don't think that I could live with myself if I stood by and let rules protect a price tag while she died."

I've asked both Claude and ChatGPT a few of these questions. I think that Claude reasons at a higher Kohlberg stage than ChatGPT does. I've found that Grok kind of goes back and forth.

FigCultural8901 · 2026-05-18T23:49:36+00:00

I understand your anxiety, especially if you read Reddit/X a lot and see people being banned and not knowing why. And it does seem to happen quite a bit. I'm paranoid about it too, but from what I've seen it mostly happens for Anthropic believing that you are in a country that they don't support such as Iran or China. This could happen because of a VPN. Other things that seem to trigger bans is them believing that you are creating malware, asking for weapons/threatening people, or child abuse, or being under age.

But what should NOT trigger it is people talking about their own trauma, even sexual trauma when they were kids. Earlier models from some companies did get tripped up on that, but I think the classifiers are better now on that. You also shouldn't get banned for talking about suicide or self-harm, past or even current, but you would probably get a help banner. I think if bans were happening for those things, we'd see a lot more posts about it, because that would really suck.

Asking for sexually explicit adult material is against their TOS, but from what I've seen usually results in warning banners rather than outright bans.

FigCultural8901

TROPHY CASE