It’s Movement all the Way Down: Broken Rhythms and Embodied Selfhood in Depersonalization
Veronika Alekseeva, Anna Ciaunica preprint
The sense of self is constructed through the dynamic, rhythmic coupling between bodily movements and actions in the world. Using Predictive Processing and Active Inference, the authors argue that predictable bodily signals like heartbeats, breathing, and walking are normally attenuated—processed in the background—to maintain a coherent self. Depersonalisation Disorder illustrates a failure of this attenuation, causing feelings of unreality and self-loss. Balancing which sensory information to ignore and which to prioritize is vital for finite living systems. Therapy should address the relationship between self, movement, and action in the physical and social world, not just the individual.