In addition to gaining note in the spiritual community, Segal became a model case of the dissociative condition known as depersonalization disorder (DPD).
She started studying Transcendental Meditation and found the experience similarly awakening, but left the organization when she began to dislike the rigidity of the format.
Buddhism intentionally cultivates loss of ego and a sense of emptiness and oneness, and spiritual teachers tried to help Segal see her condition positively.
"[9] A 2008 graduate dissertation by Arvin Paul used Segal's experience as an example of "Shift/s in the Locus of Identity Upon Initial Awakening", "a shift from the conventional sense of self to the uninvolved witness, and/or allpervasive presence, and/or boundless spaciousness, and/or pure awareness, and/or Being, and/or emptiness/void, and/or the Self, and/or the simple recognition of nonseparateness.
"[10] Segal was interviewed for the chapter devoted to her in the 2003 book The Awakening West by Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins.
Segal went on to read up on depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation, finding some related to her experience but none were a perfect fit and they ultimately failed to capture the sensation of lacking a self in conjunction with normal, or even improved functioning.
[13] Segal's story was profiled in the 2006 book Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self by Daphne Simeon and Jeffrey Abugel.
In the afterword to the 1998 edition of Collisions, Bodian gave his personal opinion, "Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization.