Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder.

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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

Many people have experienced this, feeling like they're floating above their body or seeing their body from the outside or feeling a dreamlike detachment from their body and surroundings.

It's called an out-of-body experience, almost as if they move from the first person to the third person

physically in real time. They're part of folklore, mythology, and spirituality in ancient

and modern societies. Out-of-body experiences fascinate me, because they are a surreal

version of human adaptability. I'd always associated OBEs with near-death experiences, but that's not the

only time that people experience them.

It can happen as you're falling asleep, waking up, or during times of extreme stress or trauma.

In fact, researchers have found high levels of childhood trauma in a study of people who experience

OBEs, suggesting that out-of-body experiences may be a response to overwhelming stress or emotional

pain.

In other words, these experiences may reflect a person's subconscious

attempts to dissociate and distance themselves from grief or trauma. In this sense,

the disconnection is a kind of escape hatch.

The present reality is so distressing that it feels safer to exit it, to find a way out psychologically, if not physically.

Humans have plenty of escape hatches that help us pull away from our lives and survive trauma.

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