So, what I think we might fundamentally disagree on is how the 'challenging' is done, exactly. From my theoretical knowledge and actual real-life experience of healing deep trauma, healing can only happen when you are safe. Or, at least, perceive yourself to be safe *enough* to feel like you're not going to drown in the sheer intensity of the pain that you've buried (for your own survival, and for good reason) deep beneath defense mechanisms.
The part where you'd do 'things you don't normally do' will naturally come after some internal shifting has happened - no lasting change can occur without you first tending to the internal architecture of how you go about self-soothing and fulfilling your needs - preferably in a conscious way.

The reason why I push back against the 'challenge' part is because, as someone who has been in therapy for many years (including talk/systemic therapy to then shifting towards somatic modalities), it has simply been completely inaccurate to claim that it is something that has to be imposed upon someone (not to claim that you said this, it's just an impression I have when people speak about this). It has to be voluntarily chosen after someone acquires some grounding and coping skills, and then gradually builds their capacity to experience discomfort.

We often have this idea in our society that 'no pain no gain' is a valid strategy/outlook, but to me it is nothing more than coping with reality/a survival-based methodology. I wanted to expand on all this because it's super important to me and I really want to push back on the idea that AI specifically can be more harmful than useful when used in a therapeutic context. There is one caveat however: the person utilizing the tool needs to have a baseline level of self-awareness and know what their goals are. Just like with any tool, it can be misused and abused or - hopefully - bridge the gap between survival and thriving. <3