In everyday life, ordinarily we experience a constant feeling that our consciousness is firmly located in our physical bodies. Our “Self” is perceived as localized within our physical boundaries, which serves three functions: possession of the body, understanding of our position in space, and processing the first-person perspective.
This habitual harmony is disrupted when one has an out-of-body experience (OBE). In this case, the consciousness (the “Self”) is felt as being separate from the physical body. The person looks at themselves from the outside, from an external point, and not from the first-person perspective.
Out-of-body experience is one of the phase states, along with lucid dreams, false awakenings, sleep paralysis, etc. Many people look for such experiences deliberately. However, researchers from the USA (Weiler and Monti) and Brazil (Moreira-Almeida) chose to look at this phenomenon from a different angle. Let’s assume that a person has experienced an OBE. How can we determine if this is an unusual (but healthy) experience or a pathology? After all, as the authors add, changes in bodily self-perception can be symptoms of some neuropsychiatric conditions.
For example, you can use the following checklist to identify depersonalization/derealization disorder (DPDR):
– Have you ever had the feeling that you are an outside observer of your own thoughts, feelings, body, or parts of your body (as if you are floating in the air above yourself)?
– Have you ever had the feeling that your body, legs or arms are distorted, enlarged, or shrunken?
– Have you ever had a feeling of ignorance of the environment, distortion in the perception of time, distance, size and shape of objects?
The presence of these symptoms is sufficient for a psychiatrist to diagnose a patient with DPDR. However, this does not necessarily indicate a pathology. It is only considered a disorder when such sensations arise constantly and prevent the person from functioning.
Researchers consider it extremely important to be able to distinguish healthy OBEs from psychopathological ones. To do this, the authors plan to study a hundred volunteers who have experienced OBE. The prepared questionnaire consists of twenty-five items, of which twenty are related to neurotic symptoms, four to psychotic symptoms, and one to convulsions.
Have you ever doubted your mental health after experiencing a phase state?
The article was published in November 2022 in ResearchGate.
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