Aliens in the Classroom:Openness and the Hope for Post-Ontological Shock Growth

By Daniel Frazer, LCSW

I first learned that people were scared of aliens when it was my turn to share my current events homework in my 2nd grade class. A few days prior, President Clinton had made his big address about an asteroid found in Antarctica that seemed to have remnants of microbial life from Mars. My classmates mostly chose articles about favorite music artists or sports teams, but coming from a Star Trek and science-fiction home, this article about potential first contact—even if “boring” as microbe fossils—thrilled me, and I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking anything other than that.

It was my turn, and as soon as I read the souped-up, sensationalized headline, loud protests erupted from my fellow seven-year-olds. While no stranger to rejection from classmates, to have such a strong reaction to my article shocked me. One classmate even left the room, plugging his ears and shouting in an attempt to not hear me.

“Go on, Mr. Frazer.”

My teacher, Ms. Pierre, a matronly woman from Haiti with a no-bullshit attitude, asked me to continue after pulling the other kid back into the classroom. Something in her tone or her expression made me sense that she wished I had picked something else to share. I didn’t understand why, but I began to feel some level of shame, that I was missing a rule that everyone else had picked up on—an early experience of social attunement, belonging, and emotional threat—my elbows on the dining room table.

As I kept reading, the same “hear no evil” kid yelled that aliens weren’t real, and the class joined him again in loud ridicule of my article choice. I didn’t realize it initially, but he was scared. The teacher then interrupted my reading and ordered me to take my seat.

“Mr. Frazer, why did you pick that article?” asked Ms. Pierre, her eyes slightly narrowed as she loomed over my desk.

“It’s interesting. Every star has planets, so some of those planets have to have aliens.”

“But why did you pick that article to share?” she pressed again.

There was some answer I was supposed to have, but I didn’t know what it was. I realize now that she thought I was being purposely incendiary, but my usually good behavior was likely confusing as to why that would be.

“Okay, if there’s aliens, they’re not in this classroom.”

And with that, Ms. Pierre shut down the conversation—my adolescent hecklers satisfied—and took her place at the front of the classroom.

I didn’t realize it then, but this was likely the first flirt with ontological shock that many of my classmates had. Ontological shock is the state of shock one might feel when their belief system is turned on its head and that which they’ve trusted to be real or imaginary is suddenly called into debate—a phenomenon frequently encountered in psychotherapy when identity, belief, or safety assumptions are disrupted.

While the Martian asteroid was later found to not be as conclusive as President Clinton initially made it sound, in recent years we’re increasingly seeing talk of off-planet life and vehicles, the topic now increasingly discussed with Congress. These moments of collective uncertainty mirror the internal experiences many people bring into therapy when familiar frameworks no longer hold.

So why did my classmate plug his ears when I likely went home hoping to hear about first contact on the evening news? I wonder about openness and early experiences and what impact this has on our preferences, fears, and ways of making meaning. What if I hadn’t been so exposed to Star Trek, Art Bell, and Unsolved Mysteries as a child—would I have then, too, been so scared to even hear about the existence of life off-planet? Thirty years later, I am still fascinated by the concept of life off-planet, and most of the media I consume is still science fiction.

Thinking of these differences, the trait of openness comes to mind. Openness is understood as one of the “big five” major traits in personality, the others being conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Generally, belief in the paranormal, extraterrestrials, religiosity, and spirituality would correlate with generally “high” openness, meaning the individual is more likely to be curious, be open to new experiences, emotions, and adventure—qualities that often shape how someone engages in therapy, growth, and psychological change.

One could hear this about openness and extraterrestrial life and think I am criticizing my classmates back then, or anyone else who struggles to hear things about extraterrestrial life. I am not—ontological shock is a very real thing—and often shows up clinically as anxiety, avoidance, rigidity, or distress when core assumptions are challenged. So much so that our own government has invested millions of dollars and countless hours of research into the potential impact that a first-contact event would have on not just American society but the entire world.

Most research shows that our big five personality traits are roughly half inherited and half related to nurture. For myself, there’s something about extraterrestrial research that has always felt “right”—does this imply I am “immune” to ontological shock? Likely not—it’s one thing to believe, and it’s one very different thing to know. But it does seem reasonable that ontological shock would likely vary in its presentation to the degree of openness within one’s personality—a distinction that becomes clinically relevant when helping people integrate destabilizing experiences.

One encounters ontological shock in the context of psychotherapy. One relatively common example is the individual’s discovery that their parents may not be who they thought they were, such as their original birth parent displaced by shame or shunning in a religious community. Another way ontological shock may happen in the therapist’s office is after a client has experienced a near-death experience or even psychedelic usage. The role of the therapist, regardless of their own personality traits, is to practice openness and to allow the client to formulate meaning from these experiences—not to close the door on it the way Ms. Pierre did to establish a collective norm. The therapist is there to help ease their client back to Earth and to help them figure out what life looks like now after such a punctuating event—supporting identity, emotional regulation, and psychological integration.

Interestingly, while ontological shock may disrupt one’s held faith or sense of knowing and potentially lead to psychological contraction or even trauma, it may also create a new sense of what could be called “experiencer’s faith.” This is defined as a belief in one’s own internal resources and ability to restructure identity after ontological shock. It is common that after ontological ruptures—such as near-death experiences or psychedelic experiences—an individual may develop a profoundly changed sense of self, having suddenly lost their fear of death, developed a sense of connectedness to community, and formed a belief in the veracity of their experience.

Considering that these life changes are often built around felt experiences rather than empirical facts, the individual must now live in a state of belief. It seems fair, then, to say that ontological shock may potentially upregulate openness in a meaningful portion of people and perhaps be more readily integrated by those who are already high in openness—especially when supported through reflective, insight-oriented therapy.

Looking back to my classroom thirty years ago, this seems like a quick model for how the potential rupturing of our understanding might look. While the student yelling with his ears covered remains strong in my memory, and Ms. Pierre steering the classroom back to banality, I do recall a few fellow classmates quite curious. My closest friend, more of a Star Wars fan to my Star Trek, joked about the asteroid being from Tatooine.

The generally held consensus, should first contact or disclosure of extraterrestrial life eventually happen, is that the result would be pandemonium. Considerable governmental attention and resources have been devoted to studying how such extraordinary information might be processed psychologically, emotionally, and socially—questions not unlike those explored in therapy when someone’s internal world is suddenly altered.

However, like how we value life more when it’s fading and how we appreciate water with great thirst, is it possible that the discovery of extraterrestrial life could make humanity value ourselves more deeply—not as diminished by cosmic neighbors, but as uniquely conscious among whatever life may exist? In this, ontological shock becomes less about the collapse of hierarchies and more about post-ontological shock growth—a process of meaning-making, resilience, and psychological expansion.

Rather than the end of life as we’ve known it, disclosure or first contact could be understood as a sacred rupture that deepens consciousness, strengthens resilience, and enhances what it means to be human.

-End

This essay reflects a psychotherapy-informed perspective on meaning-making, belief, openness, identity, and psychological integration after disruptive or destabilizing experiences. It draws on clinical work with adults navigating anxiety, existential distress, sudden worldview shifts, and identity change.

This work is informed by contemporary psychotherapy practice supporting adults seeking therapy in New York City and Portland, Maine, particularly those exploring anxiety, uncertainty, belief, identity, and personal meaning in the aftermath of life-altering experiences.