(title removed for blind review)
One of the key markers of the so-called flow state, as described in positive psychology, is a seeming loss or diminishment of our ordinary consciousness of self. However, psychologists and philosophers have provided various inconsistent interpretations of what this feature of the flow state amounts to. Some, like Jay Garfield in his work Losing Ourselves, (2022) have argued that loss of self-consciousness in flow supports a no-self account of experience as ultimately selfless, authorless, and ownerless. I argue against Garfield’s interpretation and show that flow states are not cases of loss of self-consciousness but are rather instances of altered self-consciousness. I give a Husserl-inspired phenomenological account of the experiential structures that jointly constitute this altered and diminished sense of self-consciousness.