I'm my own puppet sometimes - it's depersonalisation...

[Gasman]

The American Psychiatric Association defines depersonalization as follows: "Periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality" - it's a dissociative disorder.

 

To put this into real-life terms, it's finding that your persona, the essential you, is sitting outside your body, maybe just above and behind it, watching the body behave like an automaton, continuing to do what it was doing but without you inside its head to control it. You might be passing a wry commentary on how well or badly your body is doing, but you can't influence it.

 

Before last weekend I'd experienced this condition just once before - I used to race UK BRISCA F2 stock cars (little single-seaters, pushing and fencing allowed, quarter-mile oval tracks), and during one night-time meeting I got a flying start in the Final and was out in front, hotly pursued by 20 other cars. Oval racing from the front is a matter of accelerate, corner, accelerate, corner - totally rhythmical, no cars to avoid, utterly fixated on not screwing up, scanning mirror, oil pressure and revs, floodlights flicking past, waiting for the first impact from the cars behind catching me up, intense concentration and stress. After about ten laps of the twenty-five I suddenly went into depersonalisation without warning, and was viewing myself driving from above and behind, criticising the puppet in the driving seat - "you're losing it, cornering's getting sloppy, you never were any good..." and so on. It ended a couple of laps later when my car got whacked from behind, the rhythm was broken and I ended up spun out in the fence - I was back in my head but out of the race.

 

This weekend, I was gigging with my covers band. I was playing bass behind the guitar solo in 'All Right Now', no high-fret stuff, just D-string to G-string then E string, during which I suddenly found myself disassociated from the puppet that continued to finger the frets and pluck and mute the strings.  I was above my head looking down and wondering what the actual muting technique was and how had I come to automatically do this without even thinking about it.

 

Then, while my puppet-self kept playing I started dissing my poor posture, fingering and tone and the fact that I'm going bald (good vantage-point above and behind the automaton still thrashing out the riff), then got around to asking asking myself WTF the two mes were doing there anyway...

 

All the while marionette-me played on... fortunately the he didn't miss any riff notes but I only came out of this fugue when the guitar solo finished and I didn't immediately end the riff - our guitarist solos for a variable number of bars on this one so I missed the nod that it was all over - rapid return to planet earth and re-integration!

 

Has anyone else experienced this weirdness?

[BreadBin]

Wow, that's a weird one! I haven't experienced it, sounds quite disorientating. 

Well done for keeping going 👍

[gjones]

Sometimes my mind will wander off to think about the pizza I'll be getting after the gig but that's about as near to an 'out of body experience' I've ever got.

[Waddo Soqable]

Aparrently a friend of one of my mates ( I've met this guy a few times but don't know him well) used to have the out of body thing very frequently, he'd go travelling around, so called "astral travelling" I believe.

I'm told It even became a bit of a problem to him and he resolved to try and block it, which he did eventually and hasn't done it again. He was teens and early 20s I think when it was happening, but no doubt if he'd not quashed it he'd still be able to do it now in his 50s.

Interesting subject which would be mocked as nonsense by many I'm sure, but like much that you could call "paranormal" there's too many examples reported for it to be simply made up or imagined. 

Sounds quite disturbing and I'm glad I don't experience it. 

[Newfoundfreedom]

That sounds very weird. 

 

I've experienced something vaguely similar but nowhere near as extreme. The best way I can describe it is it's kind of like that scene from Men in Black where the little alien guy is inside the head of the human (puppet) furiously pulling leavers and working the body. 

 

It feels like my eyes are just windows and I'm inside looking out but not really interacting with the world or anything in it. 

 

I just assumed it was a part of my depressive personality and that everyone who suffers from the black dog probably feels the same. Dissociated, yes. But not out of body. Quite the opposite. More trapped inside. 

 

 

[tauzero]

I've had the same thing as @Newfoundfreedom - feeling that I'm observing and giving instructions from inside myself, and also being aware of this, and wondering if I can get back to "normal". It didn't impair me the few times it's happened (which always seem to be when I'm driving) which was something I worried about when it did happen.

[Cato]

18 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

It feels like my eyes are just windows and I'm inside looking out but not really interacting with the world or anything in it. 

 

I suspect a lot of us who have experienced depressive illness will find those lines quite familiar.

 

I certainly do.

[Newfoundfreedom]

1 hour ago, Cato said:

 

I suspect a lot of us who have experienced depressive illness will find those lines quite familiar.

 

I certainly do.

 

That's strangely comforting. 👍

[Woodinblack]

I used to get that all the time as a child, so did my sister - we called it being detached.

I don't get it anywhere nearly as much now, but still get it occasionally, maybe once a year or so.

I do get the other feeling quite often, like 'waking up' (not that I was asleep) and briefly being completely out of normal life, like a 'what am I doing here' sort of feeling.

[SumOne]

I've just finished reading 'A Scanner Darkly' by Philp K D ick, it's science fiction but also semi autobiographical relating to confusing the sense of self. It's worth a read - about someone literally viewing themselves as different persona (undercover cop assigned to investigate himself by immersively 'scanning' recordings of himself acting as a different person) and mentally losing touch with the reality of who he actually is. 

 

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by SumOne
Ironically enough, the author surname is altered by electronic scanning thought police

[BreadBin]

On 16/08/2023 at 19:09, Woodinblack said:

I do get the other feeling quite often, like 'waking up' (not that I was asleep) and briefly being completely out of normal life, like a 'what am I doing here' sort of feeling.

 

I feel like that all the time!

[Downunderwonder]

Something a bit similar minus the self flagellation when I sing BV. It 'sounds' like some other dude is nailing the bass line but no outside vision.

[TheLowDown]

I quite often have that momentary feeling like being an observer of what I'm doing/saying in the middle of a conversation, but I've never had that feeling like I'm physically outside of myself as mentioned by the OP. It only lasts seconds.

Edited August 18, 2023 by TheLowDown

[Bassybert]

44 minutes ago, TheLowDown said:

I quite often have that momentary feeling like being an observer of what I'm doing/saying in the middle of a conversation, but I've never had that feeling like I'm physically outside of myself as mentioned by the OP. It only lasts seconds.

Me too, I’ve had that sensation quite a few times over the years, usually quickly followed by my heart jumping at the thought of what’s just happened and then it slowly dissipates and it’s gone. Weird. 

[Crusoe]

I had this one time after eating some... let's call them enhanced biscuits. I had been in the pub with friends, then left to get the train home. I was talking to the guard in the station, but felt like I was above and behind myself. I was trying to tell myself to stop talking because I was 5alking the biggest pile of nonsense.

[theplumber]

I think it's referred to as being ''on the spectrum'' these days.

[Woodinblack]

3 hours ago, theplumber said:

I think it's referred to as being ''on the spectrum'' these days.

I don't think so, these are individual isolated events

[theplumber]

3 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I don't think so, these are individual isolated events

I suppose so....sounds a bit aspergers to me.

[Baloney Balderdash]

Well, some would call that a realization of actual reality.

 

Though I'd imagine that some might find it frightening or disorienting experiencing it for the first time.

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash

[ahpook]

@Gasman, if these instances worry you then you should seek some help. Not because there is something wrong with you, just to put the ideas into perspective.

 

I think moments like you're describing aren't totally unheard-of, I've had similar experiences too. But if you're concerned about them maybe get some advice.

 

👍

[MrDaveTheBass]

That sounds reassuringly familiar OP. Strangely I'd never considered that anyone else would've experienced this. After a bereavement I went through a prolonged period of bad mental health, and would regularly see myself from above and behind. I actually found it strangely reassuring, though I was obviously rather mentally ill at the time. I treated it like a first-person shoot 'em up computer game, where you can be full-screen, and see directly out of your eyes, or zoom out behind your character so you can better see the baddies hiding behind the corners. Life at that point was so terrifying that it was comforting to zoom out and try and avoid the bad stuff coming along the track towards me. Fortunately, my mental health improved greatly through hypnosis, and I haven't experienced this strange phenomenon since. 

[Gasman]

Thank you for your replies, guys. I'm comforted to know that I'm not alone in experiencing this while under stress. Some folk seem to equate this phenomenon with being 'in the zone' - I see that as a positive thing, internally focussed on something, but being out of your body (although fascinating) is very different, potentially negative and dangerous - I've read that aircrew are usually grounded at any mention of them going into the puppet+watcher state for safety reasons. Funny thing is, I can still remember everything that happened while I was in that state while car racing and bass playing, just like a pin-sharp movie in my head, that is, I can even now see what my robot body did and every remark that I made to my body from above and behind its head. On the other hand, I can't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday!

[EssexBuccaneer]

I’ve not experience what you have, OP - but I have been known to enter a strange state that I call ‘the zone’ - I become hypersensitive to what I’m doing, be it writing, playing bass or suchlike. 
 

Basically outside noises and distractions reduce to a hum. Voices, music etc all become irrelevant. I remember it happening in an exam once where I could clearly hear my pen noisily scratching across the paper as I wrote. When I’m playing in this zone I have time to think about every fret I’m fingering in real time, and hear my basslines above the rest of the band clearly.

 

It seldom lasts for more than a few minutes, in fact I think it stops as soon as I consciously become aware of it.

 

It’s a strange but not unsettling feeling.

[Gasman]

Hey, simultaneous posting on 'in the zone', @EssexBuccaneer - strange or what?!

[Guest]

I had a similar experience in some ways but I've only experienced it once when I was a kid. I think it was caused by being overwhelmed by sorrow (and maybe emotional stress I did not understand).

 

Reading about your experiences revoked the memory of it, not that I had forgotten it, and strangely also the weird sensation I had when I was "out of my body and observing myself from under the ceiling". My tongue is now feeling numb and it has gone numb every time I've thought about replying in this topic. I also feel slightly dizzy. Quite weird. 

 

Anyway:

I had just turned ten years old and we had just moved. We moved quite a distance and the reason that was given was it'd be less travelling to work for my parents. I did not want to move. But I didn't want to cause grief either and understood the decision was made.

 

I felt so much grief and I was in mourning of my earlier life which was now over to put it that way but kept it to myself. I didn't want to ruin it for my parents and my older sister who wanted to move even though I felt that life as I knew it was over.

I was thinking a lot about everything really but most importantly all my friends who I'd never see again. The teacher that I liked, the neighbours I knew, all the kids in the neighbourhood etc. I remember picturing my school desk being put at the back of the classroom to sit there for a few days before being carried out of the room like a casket and then every trace of me was gone. Sad thoughts for a child really now that I think about it.

 

Being in this state of mind I spent some time just looking out the window at this stange new place, feeling numb.

I went to lie down on the bed still deep into my own thought and then after a while it felt like I left my body, and it felt like I was floating in the hight of the ceiling or maybe above, looking down at myself lying in bed from the top corner of the room. My tongue went numb and prickly and I felt a strange sort of calmness just looking at myself in this strange new room that I didn't want to be in. It's almost like I needed to establish that yep, here you are. I don't remember how long it lasted, but there was a feeling of time standing still and it also felt a bit otherworldly to put it that way. I was calm though and not scared. I can't remember how it ended other than I was lying in bed with a numb sensation in my tongue feeling a bit gobsmacked by it.

 

Thanks @Gasman for the topic, good to know that others have had experiences the in some ways resemble mine.

And sorry all for going on and on.