The kind of dissociation you talk about here, where I experience my “self” as unrelated to my body, is commonly reported as spontaneously occurring during various kinds of emotional stress. I’ve had it happen to me many times.
It would not be surprising if the same mechanism that leads to spontaneous dissociation in some cases can also lead to the strong intuition that dissociation would be a really good idea.
Just because there’s a mechanism that leads me to strongly intuit that something would be a really good idea doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually would be.
All of that said: after my stroke, I experienced a lot of limb-dissociation… my arm didn’t really feel like part of me, etc. This did have the advantage you described, where I could tell my arm to keep doing some PT exercise and it would, and yes, my arm hurt, and I sort of felt bad for it, but it’s not like it was me hurting, and I knew I’d be better off for doing the exercise. It is indeed a useful trick.
I suspect there are healthier ways to get the same effect.
A few potentially relevant observations:
The kind of dissociation you talk about here, where I experience my “self” as unrelated to my body, is commonly reported as spontaneously occurring during various kinds of emotional stress. I’ve had it happen to me many times.
It would not be surprising if the same mechanism that leads to spontaneous dissociation in some cases can also lead to the strong intuition that dissociation would be a really good idea.
Just because there’s a mechanism that leads me to strongly intuit that something would be a really good idea doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually would be.
All of that said: after my stroke, I experienced a lot of limb-dissociation… my arm didn’t really feel like part of me, etc. This did have the advantage you described, where I could tell my arm to keep doing some PT exercise and it would, and yes, my arm hurt, and I sort of felt bad for it, but it’s not like it was me hurting, and I knew I’d be better off for doing the exercise. It is indeed a useful trick.
I suspect there are healthier ways to get the same effect.