Editing Openai/6962fa4e-4250-8000-95c2-0355d0b7a22a (section)

=== Assistant: You’re pointing to direct self-experience vs. ===
You’re pointing to direct self-experience vs. vicarious or observed experience. The cleanest synonyms depend on how technical you want it.

===== - First-person experience – the standard, exact term =====
* Self-experienced – clear and intuitive
* Directly experienced – emphasizes immediacy
* Subjective experience – happening to oneself
* Lived experience – common in philosophy & social theory
* Experiential firsthand occurrence – very formal

===== - Vicarious experience – experiencing through another =====
* Second-hand experience – reported or observed
* Observed experience – witnessed, not lived
* Empathic experience – felt emotionally but not physically

===== - “I experienced it firsthand.” =====
* “It happened to me personally.”
* “It was my own bodily experience.”

===== - Self-experience (philosophical) =====
* Autopathic (rare, medical/philosophical: affecting oneself)
* Ipsative (technical; self-referential)

Best all-purpose synonym:
👉 First-person experience

If you want it framed medically, philosophically, legally, or poetically, say the word and I’ll refine it exactly.