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?
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
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 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 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?"
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 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?
I was going to comment this also.
Drug use can also cause dpdr
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
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 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.
[delayed]
I wonder how much similarity there is between this and what people describe from awakening experiences.
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 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?"
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?'”
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.
AI Slop writing