I spent months underwater on a US submarine and felt the same thing. Later the Navy pdoc labelled it dissociation, which is in the DSM.
Common Types and Symptoms
Depersonalization: Feeling detached from your own body, mind, or actions, like watching yourself in a movie.
Derealization: Feeling that the outside world is fake, dreamlike, or foggy.
Dissociative Amnesia: Forgetting important personal information or blocks of time that go beyond normal memory loss.
Identity Confusion or Alteration: Feeling unsure of who you are or experiencing shifts in your personality.
Causes and Triggers
Trauma and Stress: Acts as a defense mechanism against overwhelming stress, abuse, or frightening events.
Everyday Triggers: Loud noises, strong emotions, or reminders of past trauma.
Mild States: Getting lost in a book, daydreaming, or "highway hypnosis" while driving.
I’d be curious to learn about what you were experiencing, what the astronauts experience and the third man syndrome that Everest hikers experience. I don’t know if they are similar but I’d be curious to learn more about how our perception and attachment to our bodies changes while enduring these extreme conditions.
As a side note, it seems pretty naive to believe that humans would be able to handle going to Mars without serious psychosis. I have no idea, but it would not be surprising to find out it is an insurmountable obstacle to becoming an interplanetary species.
I would be extremely surprised if it's insurmountable. It may turn out that this effect is triggered by environmental factors that are entirely controllable that we simply never had any reason to control.
There are so many unknowns when it comes to crewed space travel and habitation that it's difficult to say much of anything with certainty.
I’ve always thought the same thing with regards to early explorers. Being on a ship, sailing into the complete unknown, for months. How would you not go insane?
Back around 2015, I did an experiment where I spent most of my working day in VR (mostly spent iterating on some interaction space designs in TiltBrush). I had many of those feelings directly after. It actually felt uncomfortable to be around people. It felt like everyone was too close and were about to clip though me at any second.
As a high-functioning autistic person, the description of being “a half-step outside the frame” perfectly captures the way I live.
I am, and have always been, aware that I am experiencing the world and my own sense of self slightly removed from how people typically experience the world. It is very much like playing a first-person game with the POV set so the view is through the character’s eyes, but you remain aware that you are controlling an avatar in the game nonetheless.
Edit: interesting how they describe the degraded sense of proprioception as part of the cause, given it is often a problem for autistics.
Being an astronaut seems cognitively expensive. Your time is regimented down to the minute. Your space is regimented down to the inch. The things you bring up and down, including yourself, is measured to the pound. I would imagine you have to constantly be evaluating, assessing, and thinking critically about everything you do all the time. And then to suddenly not have to do that and just live in the moment has to be a massive readjustment.
There's a popular clip from Joe Rogan out there where he says "Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now. ... What would the hero of your life’s movie do right now? Do that. Do those things."
So it's interesting that this cognitive state is helpful for some people to visit in a transient or metaphorical way but becomes weird when it's persistent. But it does seem potentially related in that maybe it originates from a kind of conscientiousness in the astronaut profession
Why would I want to be the hero at the START of the movie? That's when I'm just doing my daily shit and I'm showing off all of my character flaws. That's the worst possible moment of the movie to be aping the hero.
Your comment lead me down a rabbit hole of space micromanagement. OSTPV (onboard short-term planner viewer) is the software they use to basically schedule every minute of your space flight. Basically every day someone from earth decides what you do, when you eat, when you exercise and will make changes in realtime.
I was reading the article trying to find a source cited where I could see where the depersonalization symptoms are better described but didn’t find it. Anybody have a better link to primary sources?
I feel some of that when I return from international trips. Like an outsider looking in. Not to the same degree as what the article describes though.
Being in a different culture, hearing and speaking a different language, different foods, sights, and smells. Then a day of travel later on the return and everything familiar feels oddly new and the same. While dealing with sleep deprevation on top of that because I can't easily sleep more than an hour at a time on airplanes.
I have worked remotely for years after being in the office for years and I get a similar feeling when I go back twice a year. Nothing really has changed but to me it's sort of new so the overall feeling is pretty surreal.
Same feeling when I go back to the village I grew up in. I have been away for decades but at the same time nothing and a lot has changed.
The mind works with benchmarks on a constant basis. Everything is a comparison - to your prior experiences, other people's experiences, your identity, etc etc etc
Introducing a new benchmark creates a new perspective to measure old perspectives against. In essence, de-sycing your perceptions of self, reality, etc until the new and old normalize out.
(You see this with psychedelics a lot which is why it can be such a valuable therapy for depression and PTSD)
It is no wonder that being put in a giant space bullet, shot into the darkness of space, with the light of your world reflected back at you like the ultimate out of body experience leads to an "observer" sensation.
I had that one time. I was kind of ill at the time and it lasted about an hour. That is some freaky shit if you don't know what is going on. My continuing thought was "Is this going to last forever?"
I spent months underwater on a US submarine and felt the same thing. Later the Navy pdoc labelled it dissociation, which is in the DSM.
The observer effect, depersonalization and derealization sound a lot like how many mystical traditions describe awakening of Self-realization
I’d be curious to learn about what you were experiencing, what the astronauts experience and the third man syndrome that Everest hikers experience. I don’t know if they are similar but I’d be curious to learn more about how our perception and attachment to our bodies changes while enduring these extreme conditions.
As a side note, it seems pretty naive to believe that humans would be able to handle going to Mars without serious psychosis. I have no idea, but it would not be surprising to find out it is an insurmountable obstacle to becoming an interplanetary species.
I would be extremely surprised if it's insurmountable. It may turn out that this effect is triggered by environmental factors that are entirely controllable that we simply never had any reason to control.
There are so many unknowns when it comes to crewed space travel and habitation that it's difficult to say much of anything with certainty.
I’ve always thought the same thing with regards to early explorers. Being on a ship, sailing into the complete unknown, for months. How would you not go insane?
Back around 2015, I did an experiment where I spent most of my working day in VR (mostly spent iterating on some interaction space designs in TiltBrush). I had many of those feelings directly after. It actually felt uncomfortable to be around people. It felt like everyone was too close and were about to clip though me at any second.
I was going to comment this also.
Drug use can also cause dpdr
As a high-functioning autistic person, the description of being “a half-step outside the frame” perfectly captures the way I live.
I am, and have always been, aware that I am experiencing the world and my own sense of self slightly removed from how people typically experience the world. It is very much like playing a first-person game with the POV set so the view is through the character’s eyes, but you remain aware that you are controlling an avatar in the game nonetheless.
Edit: interesting how they describe the degraded sense of proprioception as part of the cause, given it is often a problem for autistics.
Being an astronaut seems cognitively expensive. Your time is regimented down to the minute. Your space is regimented down to the inch. The things you bring up and down, including yourself, is measured to the pound. I would imagine you have to constantly be evaluating, assessing, and thinking critically about everything you do all the time. And then to suddenly not have to do that and just live in the moment has to be a massive readjustment.
There's a popular clip from Joe Rogan out there where he says "Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now. ... What would the hero of your life’s movie do right now? Do that. Do those things."
So it's interesting that this cognitive state is helpful for some people to visit in a transient or metaphorical way but becomes weird when it's persistent. But it does seem potentially related in that maybe it originates from a kind of conscientiousness in the astronaut profession
Why would I want to be the hero at the START of the movie? That's when I'm just doing my daily shit and I'm showing off all of my character flaws. That's the worst possible moment of the movie to be aping the hero.
Because the start of the movie is where the hero does the things that lead to their victory
Your comment lead me down a rabbit hole of space micromanagement. OSTPV (onboard short-term planner viewer) is the software they use to basically schedule every minute of your space flight. Basically every day someone from earth decides what you do, when you eat, when you exercise and will make changes in realtime.
Great read here with a video of someone using the actual software: https://blogs.esa.int/iriss/2015/09/09/playing-with-playbook...
I thought this was going to be about feeling watched, reminding me of philip k dick but it's more like being john malkovich which might be scarier
I was reading the article trying to find a source cited where I could see where the depersonalization symptoms are better described but didn’t find it. Anybody have a better link to primary sources?
I feel some of that when I return from international trips. Like an outsider looking in. Not to the same degree as what the article describes though.
Being in a different culture, hearing and speaking a different language, different foods, sights, and smells. Then a day of travel later on the return and everything familiar feels oddly new and the same. While dealing with sleep deprevation on top of that because I can't easily sleep more than an hour at a time on airplanes.
I have worked remotely for years after being in the office for years and I get a similar feeling when I go back twice a year. Nothing really has changed but to me it's sort of new so the overall feeling is pretty surreal.
Same feeling when I go back to the village I grew up in. I have been away for decades but at the same time nothing and a lot has changed.
I wonder how much similarity there is between this and what people describe from awakening experiences.
The mind works with benchmarks on a constant basis. Everything is a comparison - to your prior experiences, other people's experiences, your identity, etc etc etc
Introducing a new benchmark creates a new perspective to measure old perspectives against. In essence, de-sycing your perceptions of self, reality, etc until the new and old normalize out.
(You see this with psychedelics a lot which is why it can be such a valuable therapy for depression and PTSD)
It is no wonder that being put in a giant space bullet, shot into the darkness of space, with the light of your world reflected back at you like the ultimate out of body experience leads to an "observer" sensation.
This article recalls the Steven Wright joke:
“I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.
I couldn't believe it.
I called my roommate in and said, 'Come here, look at this stuff, it's all an exact replica. What do you think?'
He said, 'Do I know you?'”
I had that one time. I was kind of ill at the time and it lasted about an hour. That is some freaky shit if you don't know what is going on. My continuing thought was "Is this going to last forever?"
AI Slop writing