Anomalies in experience of the self as distinct from the outside world

Disturbed people may experience other people and things as though they were inside themselves. What is happening to someone or something else may be experienced as though happening to one's self. Or they may cease to experience themselves as anything more than part of the environment, even confusing personal pronouns and possessive adjectives. This blurring of ego boundaries has been compared with [nirvana]

, [oneness]

and consciousness expansion, the merging of the individual self with the outside world, where dissolving of ego boundaries is looked on as desirable. Graham Reed postulates that all these conditions are extremes, welcome when expected, feared when arising unexpectedly, but part of two continua - the differences in the degree of discreteness of the ego boundaries within one individual at different times and the differences in the degree of discreteness of the ego boundaries between individuals (personality variable).