Anxiety, depression and dissociative symptoms are more common in those who have experienced extracorporeal experiences. Which, however, are also an escape route.
The people who have experienced anExtracorporeal experiencethat is, the perception of getting out of their physical body for a few moments and observing themselves from outside, seem to have something in common: they could have a worst mental health Compared to those who have never tried this type of illusion.
This is revealed by a scientific study published on Personality and Individual Differencesaccording to which the extracorporeal experiences offer one temporary escape route from situations of psychological stress, and should therefore be considered as a defense mechanism.
Extracorporeal experiences: what are they?
Extracorporeal experiences (Out of Body ExperiencesObese) are comparable to a sort of “breaking” of self -awareness in space: even if you are awake, you feel as if you were floating outside your body. They can take place as a “collateral effect” of some medical conditions (migraine, epilepsy, cerebral trauma), when awakening from a general anesthesia or in the transition between sleep and vigil, in moments of profound meditation or – on the contrary – when you live a situation of strong stress, danger or physical pain.
Extracorporeal experiences can be accompanied by a pervasive sense of peace, or on the contrary by the fear of not being able to return to one’s body, perceived as a distant entity, which is flying as suspended and that you cannot embody.
Extracorporeal experiences in the laboratory
Extracorporeal experiences can be induced to study them more closely. You can be able to stimulate, during cerebral surgery, The right angular touran area of the brain involved in the integration between visual information and feedback on the position of the limbs in space; or again, using virtual reality To project an interior signallike that of the heartbeat, outside the body of a volunteer (experiment conducted in the past by a group of the Federal Polytechnic of Losanna, in Switzerland).
Extracorporeal experiences and mental health
In the new Marina Weiler study, neuroscientist of the University of Virginia (USA) recruited 545 adults with different experiences and asked if they had ever had extracorporeal experiences, as well as inquiring about their mental health. Among those who had had an obese experience, 80% said they tried between one and four, and 20% in greater number.
Despite the different origin of the experience (meditation, hypnosis, use of psychoactive substances or spontaneous onset), in those who had had this type of perceptions were more common mental disorders such as anxiety or depression. The group of extracorporeal experiences was also more inclined to dissociative symptomsthe set of sensations that make you feel disconnected by oneself, often consequent to trauma.
A defensive strategy
For the authors of the study, if this is the starting point, the extracorporeal experiences could be read as Temporary escapes from stressful realitiesor a way to reconsider the totality of the experience lived from an external dimension. In short, they would not be worrying in itself nor are they to be considered a cause of a trauma: rather, they would be a form of response to a traumatic experience.
