Zoomed out? Depersonalization is Related to Increased Digital Media Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

Abstract

Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or ‘estranged’ from one’s self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to socially distance from others and to change life habits. We have conducted an online study on 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship between digital media-based activities and distal social interactions in influencing peoples’ sense of self during the lockdown as opposed to before the pandemic. We found that increased use of digital media-based activities and online social e-meetings correlated with higher feelings of depersonalisation. We also found that people reporting higher experiences of depersonalisation also reported enhanced vividness of negative emotions (as opposed to positive emotions). Our study also reveals a weak negative correlation between the frequency of physical exercise during the lockdown and the occurrence of depersonalisation experiences. Finally, participants who reported that lockdown influenced their life to greater extent had higher occurrences of depersonalisation experiences. Our findings may help address key questions regarding well-being during a lockdown, in the general population. Our study points to potential risks related to an overly sedentary and hyper-digitalized life habits that may induce feelings of living in one’s ‘head’ (mind), disconnected from one’s body, self and the world.

Addiction, cure or care?

“…To achieve our aim, first we tackle the dimensions of bodily intentionally and bodily actions showing, in particular, a drugged body's diminished attunement to the environment, thereby leading to a subject's perception of its ecological niche as constricted, fragmented and unfitting, and ultimately resulting in few actions performed. Building on this and following, on the one hand, the theory that a healthy sense of self is grounded on these three dimensions being intact (Fuchs, 2007;De Hann and Fuchs, 2010;Ciaunica et al, 2021a;Ciaunica et al, 2021b) and, on the other hand, the disruption of the sense of self in addiction (Kemp, 2019), we show that bodily subjectivity is also disrupted. This reasoning angle allows us to propose a novel tie between addiction, bodily subjectivity, and the sense of self.…”

Losing Touch with Oneself: Depersonalisation Experiences Modulate Vicarious Affective Touch and Self Touch

“…This is an important nding also because it suggests that dynamic and affective self-touch stroking on one's own body may enhance the vividness of one's perceptual experiences, and potentially reduce thereby feelings of disembodiment and unreality in people with DP. These ndings seem to be supported further by DP experiencers' anecdotical self-reports highlighting the positive effect of dynamic proximal tactile interactions with close others and the environment on one's sense of self (Ciaunica et al 2021;Perkins 2021).…”

“…An STQ score is calculated by adding up the values for each item after carefully ensuring that half of the items are negatively scored. (Negative items: 2,3,5,7,8, 10,13,16,17,19). In this study, additionally a 'Get' and 'Give' score was calculated.…”

“…The former score indicates how comfortable a participant is being touched (getting or receiving a touch), whereas the latter score indicates how comfortable the participant is and their attitudes towards giving touch to friends or acquaintances. The 'Give' (Give items: 4,5,6,9,10,13,14,15,20) and 'Get' score (Get items: 1,2, 3,7,8,11,12,17,18,19) were calculated as a sum of their scores for their respective items. 4.2.3 Longing for interpersonal touch picture questionnaire (LITPQ henceforth) is a rather novel method to measure longing for touch.…”

Disintegrating and Reintegrating the Self – (In)Flexible Self-Models in Depersonalisation and Psychedelic Experiences

“…Yet, if an individual becomes fused with a particular point of view, while in some circumstances this could correspond to a "flow"-like deep absorption with experience (Safron, 2016), in other cases it could lead to the severing of connections to the world, others, and the meanings we may co-create/share. Indeed, in such ways, DP phenomena may not only be of potentially increasing clinical relevance (Ciaunica et al, 2021c), but it may also speak to the fundamental nature(s) of forms of consciousness related to personhood and embodied agency.…”