You want to establish whether a patient is experiencing passivity phenomena. Before revealing the answer, decide what you would ask.

Ask directly whether the patient ever feels that their own movements, actions, or feelings are being controlled or made to happen by someone or something outside themselves, rather than arising from their own will. If they endorse this, ask them to specify the mechanism they believe is responsible, since this is often attributed to something concrete, historically hypnosis or radio waves and in contemporary accounts sometimes the internet or other technology. Establish the degree of conviction, since this is held with full delusional certainty — the patient 'knows' rather than merely feels this is happening — and distinguish this carefully from the alienation of thought itself by asking separately about actions and feelings versus thoughts, since these are recognised as distinct, if related, experiences.