Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (12 page)

Friends and family often struggle to accept personality changes, but they may also put the NDEr on a pedestal, expecting an all-forgiving personality to emerge, with the patience of a saint, miraculous healing powers, and the gift of prophecy. And if the NDEr fails to meet these unrealistic expectations, disappointment and rejection ensue.

People are transformed by their NDE. And nobody feels this more acutely than a spouse. The NDEr is no longer the partner he or she originally married. It is on account of such relationship problems that Nancy Bush cites a divorce rate of up to 75 percent.
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However, a number of social factors also play a role in divorce: a loss of interest in money, “social death” caused by the loss of a former job, estrangement within the family, and an inability to function in our material and competitive society. For all these reasons, people with an NDE struggle to resume their former role in everyday life and find it difficult, and in some cases nearly impossible, to maintain human relationships, with all their earthly limitations. Because of the negative reactions from those around them, people may gravitate toward repression and denial, which make the integration process even harder. In fact, some NDErs begin to doubt the veracity of their experience and keep silent for a long time.

The problems that affect people primarily on the inside, known as intrapersonal or intrapsychic problems, include constant anger and depression over the forced return to life.
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The difficult and painful acceptance of the return is called the reentry problem. Other problems may include reconciling the NDE with previous religious and philosophical beliefs or overidentifying with the experience and seeing oneself first and foremost as an NDEr. Some people doubt their own sanity, afraid that the NDE is a manifestation of mental instability. At times, the NDE and the ensuing personality changes seem scarcely credible. People feel different, occasionally even better and more privileged than people without an NDE, but keep their distance for fear of being ridiculed or rejected. It is very difficult for NDE survivors to explain to others how and why they have changed so much. What follows is a period of intense loneliness coupled with feelings of depression at the rejection of what they perceive to be the most impressive experience of their life. The awareness of being back in the sick body, with all its physical pain and limitations and sometimes permanent symptoms, causes frustration and keen nostalgia, whereas the NDE itself had been a beautiful, blissful experience. Physical and psychological adjustment to everyday life can hinder the integration of the new values and insights and lead to a posttraumatic stress disorder, and even (though seldom) to suicidal tendencies.
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Coming to terms with a frightening NDE is even harder because such an experience is often accompanied by strong feelings of guilt. Just like a positive NDE may leave a person feeling privileged, a hell experience may prompt revulsion and in many cases self-rejection. People have a tendency to fully identify with the negative experience rather than acknowledge that every experience, including a frightening NDE, merely represents one aspect of their personality. Talking to others about the frightening NDE is virtually impossible. The result is total silence, which generally precludes any chance of integration and actually increases the fear of death.

If the NDE was experienced during a (failed) suicide attempt, people usually refrain from making a second attempt because the experience taught them that they remain burdened with the problems they tried to escape. They come to realize that it is better to solve problems in this life because the other dimension offers scant opportunity for solving their earthly problems.
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The Effect of Time on Processes of Change in People with and Without an NDE

What is the role of time in the process of coming to terms with both the psychological problems and the positive changes? In 2004 the psychologist Igor Corbeau carried out a survey in the Netherlands, asking 84 people about their problems coming to terms with their NDE. The effect of time on easing the problems received ample attention, and as far as I know this study is the only published research on specific psychological problems and changes after an NDE. The participants in this carefully executed but retrospective study were asked about interpersonal and intrapsychic problems in the first year after their NDE, in subsequent years, and at the time of the survey. The NDE had occurred at a mean age of twenty-nine (as early as two and as late as sixty) while the average interval between the NDE and the survey was twenty-four years (from three months to seventy-seven years). People were asked to indicate whether they had experienced minor, moderate, or major problems in coming to terms with certain aspects of their NDE. During the first and subsequent years, more than half of the people surveyed experienced moderate to major problems in nine of the fourteen subjects addressed: urgent need to talk about the NDE; anger, sadness, or depression at being back; a feeling that the NDE was everything and normal life had lost its appeal; feeling rejected by others without an NDE; fear of being considered crazy by others; other people’s difficulties accepting personality changes; inability to communicate the meaning of the NDE; absence of unconditional love in human relationships; and discomfort with enhanced intuitive sensitivity.
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By the time the survey was done, an average of twenty-four years after the NDE, most of the problems had been dealt with to some degree of satisfaction. The results also show that the higher the percentage of positive responses to their personality changes, the better the NDErs were capable of dealing with the problems. That said, at the time of the survey, more than half remained incapable of communicating effectively about their experience. The absence of unconditional love in human relationships also continued to be a problem for more than half of the respondents.

Until the Dutch study that my colleagues and I conducted on survivors of cardiac arrest, there had never been any prospective, longitudinal research into the effect of time on processes of change in cardiac arrest survivors with and without an NDE. The published studies were all retrospective and often failed to mention the period of time elapsed between the NDE and the interview. In our study patients filled in identical questionnaires based on Kenneth Ring’s life-change scale two and eight years after the cardiac arrest. The table on Chapter Three contains the answers to twenty-eight of the thirty-four questions asked. The answers to the remaining six questions revealed only minor change (up to 36 percent) after eight years.
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Over time, change increases in nearly all cases. After
two years
more than two-thirds (66 percent) of the people with an NDE cited an appreciation of ordinary things and a sense of social justice as the only positive changes. However, after
eight years
at least two-thirds of the NDErs had experienced positive change relating to: showing emotions; wanting to help others; accepting others; showing love; compassion for others; empathy with others; involvement in family; interest in meaning of life; importance of nature and environment; appreciation of ordinary things; and sense of social justice (see table “Life Changes After a Cardiac Arrest”). In many cases the positive changes had gotten under way only in the course of eight years because the problems of coming to terms with the NDE gradually ease as communication improves.

What struck us was that in due course cardiac arrest survivors without an NDE also showed change, albeit much later and to a much lesser extent. After eight years, more than two-thirds (66 percent) indicated changes relating to: listening to others; empathy with others; interest in meaning of life; what matters in life; and meaning of faith.

After eight years there were still some big differences between cardiac arrest survivors with and without an NDE. At the eight-year follow-up, the occurrence of or increase in enhanced intuitive sensitivity was only reported by people with an NDE. Another noticeable difference was the importance of a higher standard of living, which usually decreased among people with an NDE and increased among those without the experience. I have already mentioned the sharp decline in interest in spirituality among cardiac arrest survivors without an NDE compared to the greater interest after an NDE. Church attendance, by contrast, was clearly down after an NDE and slightly up without one. One surprising finding was that after eight years people without an NDE were often better listeners than people with an NDE while people without the experience attached more importance to the opinion of others.

To recap: after eight years, people with an NDE scored significantly higher in the following areas: showing emotions; less interest in the opinion of others; accepting others; compassion for others; involvement in family; less appreciation of money and possessions; increase in the importance of nature and environment; less interest in a higher standard of living; appreciation of ordinary things; sense of social justice; inner meaning of life; decline in church attendance; increased interest in spirituality; less fear of death; less fear of dying; and increase in belief in life after death. These different levels of change are a consequence of the NDE and not of surviving a cardiac arrest.