Self-Forgetfulness: A Necessary Perspective on Mental Health

Many people who struggle mentally describe the same quiet problem. It’s not obvious from the outside, but it’s exhausting and distressful on the inside. 

“I can’t stop thinking. My thoughts spin around all the time. My worries are out of control. I think about myself in relation to others and my problems.”

• How am I doing?
• Am I doing this right?
• Is it my fault? 
• Why do I feel like this?
• What do they think about me?

In metacognitive therapy, this self-oriented mental activity can be described as rumination or worry. Not because thinking is problematic in itself, but because sustained self-referential thinking reliably intensifies distress rather than resolves it (see my post on depression).

Over time, this mode of thinking can become so habitual that it is mistaken for identity—experienced as who we are, rather than something we are doing with our thoughts and attention. It helps to separate the self from the thinking. 

So what if psychological well-being has less to do with turning further inward—and more to do with moments when the self steps out of the spotlight? Let’s call those moments self-forgetful moments. 

In my clinical work, I have repeatedly seen how such shifts and moments improve people’s lives. What has been missing is a term that captures this change in how attention is organised: away from the self and toward participation in the world.

The study I present next helped me formulate three forms of self-forgetfulness. If you want to read more about self-forgetfulness and how it is different from related concepts, please read my full article (pdf).

How I Define Self-Forgetfulness

“Self-forgetfulness is the absence of self-referential thinking and self-focused attention, describing a mode of attention in which the self is no longer in focus.”

Self-forgetfulness does not mean losing yourself. It does not mean dissociating, zoning out, or not caring about yourself. It’s moments where attention is no longer centered on you and your self gets a pause from:

• evaluating yourself
• managing impressions
• monitoring how you feel
• scanning for threat or reassurance
• narrating what the moment “means about you”
• rehearsing what you should say, feel, or become next
• trying to regulate your inner state before acting
• treating experience as a problem to solve

Often, these self-forgetful moments may pass without us noticing because there is no “me” standing there to take note of them. You are available to the situation, task, or person in front of you.

Three Ways We Forget Ourselves

1. Forgetting Yourself in Tasks — Functional Self-Forgetfulness

This is what many people know as a mental state of flow.

You are absorbed in something: working, building, creating, learning.

Time moves differently. The inner commentary fades.

For a while, there is no need to check your phone, or check how you are feeling.

This kind of self-forgetfulness can feel both relieving and satisfying, and most people experience it on a regular basis. 

2. Forgetting Yourself With Other People — Relational Self-Forgetfulness

This form of self-forgetfulness shows up in moments of genuine contact—when you are with someone and:

• you are not evaluating yourself
• you are not monitoring how you come across
• you are not rehearsing your next sentence
• you are not adjusting yourself in real time

When relational self-forgetfulness is high, you are present and responsive to others.  Attention is directed toward others.

Awkward moments are not treated as personal failures to be corrected, but as ordinary features of real human contact.

Many people notice, when reading this, how infrequent such moments have become. And how much energy is spent living as a social object—slightly outside oneself, monitoring appearance, tone, timing—rather than being inside the relationship as it unfolds.

3. Forgetting Yourself in Existence — Existential Self-Forgetfulness

This form is the hardest to name. I’ve named it existential self-forgetfulness. 

It’s moments when:

• you feel connected to nature, music, or meaning
• the boundary between “me” and the world softens
• life feels larger than your inner dialogue

It’s a sense of being a part of something bigger, rather than standing apart from it.

It’s looking at the universe and feeling small. It’s relating to something greater than yourself, where the self no longer defines the scale of the experience.

The Self-Forgetfulness Scale and Psychological Well-Being

A closer look at the data (n = 80, Danish sample) showed that relational self-forgetfulness was moderately to strongly associated with psychological well-being (r = .51, p < .001), as was existential self-forgetfulness (r = .49, p < .001).

This pattern is consistent with a broader literature showing that loneliness and disconnection are reliably associated with poorer mental health outcomes, whereas relational presence and a felt sense of connection tend to support psychological well-being.

In contrast, functional self-forgetfulness—absorption in tasks—showed no meaningful association with well-being.

Note: This does not imply that functional self-forgetfulness is irrelevant.

Rather, it appears to be broadly distributed: people who struggle and people who thrive report similar levels of task absorption. Functional self-forgetfulness can reflect engagement and competence, but it can just as easily reflect distraction or avoidance.

Many people cope mentally by keeping themselves busy: By working more. By staying productive. By filling time with activity or distraction.

But if self-monitoring returns the moment one is with other people, or alone with oneself, the relief tends to be short-lived. In that sense, staying busy may offer moments of quiet, without addressing what keeps pulling attention back to the self. It is possible to function well and still feel unwell.

Total self-forgetfulness was moderately to strongly associated with well-being (r = .50, p < .001), as measured by my newly developed Self-Forgetfulness Scale (SFS-12) and the official WHO-5 Well-Being Index.

From this study alone, it is not possible to conclude that self-forgetfulness causes well-being. The findings demonstrate an association rather than a direct causal relationship.

However, a substantial body of research in clinical psychology suggests that reductions in self-focused attention and self-referential thinking are associated with improvements in mental health outcomes.

When considered alongside this broader literature, the present findings make it plausible that increasing the capacity to step out of persistent self-referential thinking—becoming more self-forgetful—may contribute to greater well-being, even though this causal pathway cannot be established within the current study.

We Need Self-Forgetful Moments

This perspective shifts the focus away from the question: “How do I control my thoughts and feelings more effectively?”

Toward: “What do I usually pay attention to—and how often does it have to be me?”

It turns out that psychological well-being may have less to do with becoming a better-regulated or better-performing self.

Self-forgetful moments can be invited, but they occur in contexts rather than through effort.

The moment it becomes something to perform, the self is already back in charge. It is more a way of being in the world:

• through relationships where there is no need to manage or monitor yourself
• through activities that feel meaningful rather than merely distracting
• through experiences that remind you that you are part of something larger than your own inner narrative

Self-forgetfulness is not opposed to self-care. It may, in fact, be one of its deeper forms.

Not because the self disappears—but because it no longer has to carry everything on its own.

Since you’ve read so far, please let me know what you think about self-forgetful moments.