Can I Tell My Therapist About Paranormal or Anomalous Experiences?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Have you ever had an experience you can't quite explain? Seeing something that shouldn't be there, like a ghost or an orb? Knowing something was going to happen before it did, through dream or sudden insight? Or having an experience of a synchronicity that couldn't be explained away by mere coincidence? What used to be considered fringe is more common than you might think. According to a recent study conducted in 2025, 4 out of 5 adults within the United States have had an anomalous experience.

Anomalous experiences are unusual events that go beyond conventional scientific explanations. These experiences include out-of-body experiences (OBE), seeing apparitions, lucid dreaming, near-death experiences (NDE), pre-cognitive dreams, extra-sensory abilities, and alien abduction—to name a few. These experiences deviate from ordinary experience and are often left out of therapy spaces—and for good reason. These experiences have historically been dismissed as signs of mental illness. Traditional, and some modern psychological frameworks, are quick to pathologize and treat these experiences as symptoms of more significant presentations of mental illness. However, recent research suggests these experiences are more widespread in the general population and deserve real scientific inquiry.

In 2025, Olafur S. Palsson, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published formal research on anomalous experiences. He facilitated a series of three studies involving over 2,200 participants from the United States. His inquiry? The relationship between the psychological trait of subconscious connectedness and anomalous experiences.

Palsson had been studying subconscious connectedness for years prior to this formal study. Subconscious connectedness, according to Palsson, is a personality trait that suggests some people are more closely connected with the non-conscious or subconscious parts of their minds. This means that their consciousness and subconscious influence each other more significantly in daily life.

His research produced a number of significant findings. Those with high subconscious connectedness often engaged in creative or artistic pursuits, had greater ability to be hypnotized, and had greater probability of stress-related physical health diagnoses, like irritable bowel syndrome and migraines. And his 2025 study, "Anomalous Experiences Are Associated With High Subconscious Connectedness," like the title suggests, confirmed anomalous experiences are correlated with high subconscious connectedness. Of the two national surveys included in his study, 84–86% of participants reported having one or more anomalous experience.

Anomalous experiences were assessed through the "Unusual Experiences Questionnaire," which asked participants about 13 types of anomalous experiences and how often they occurred. Examples included predictive dreams, meaningful coincidences (synchronicities), sensing someone was watching you before confirming someone indeed was, and déjà vu. His study suggests these phenomena warrant further serious scientific inquiry and should not be dismissed as exceptions. In fact, these results suggest anomalous experiences are a normal part of the human experience. While these findings do not definitively prove subconscious connectedness causes anomalous experiences, it affirms the prevalence of these experiences is quite staggering.

Where All Experiences Belong

So, how are these experiences held at The Unveiled Self? They aren't dismissed, pathologized, or ignored. If you have had an experience you can't quite explain and it feels meaningful to the work you are doing in therapy, those experiences are welcome in this space. Some people have had anomalous experiences that negatively impact their well-being, or the opposite—they provide meaning, validate long-held beliefs, or affirm spiritual practices. If they were distressing and you wish to address the distress, we do that. If they were meaningful and affirming, we make space for that. Anomalous experiences aren't going to be written off here. Whether you're carrying confusion, wonder, fear, or all of the above, if it's part of your story, it belongs here too.

References:

Palsson, O. S. (2025). Anomalous experiences are associated with high subconscious connectedness. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 12(3), 430–451. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000428

PsyPost. (2025, May 15). Study links anomalous experiences to subconscious connectedness and other psychological traits. https://www.psypost.org/study-links-anomalous-experiences-to-subconscious-connectedness-and-other-psychological-traits/