I’d like to talk generically about the labels and symptoms that cluster around anxiety and OCD — where they often come from, what they can mean, and what you might usefully do with them — without getting stuck in endless detail.

Back when I still had full-blown anxiety and OCD, depersonalisation was one of the symptoms that frightened me most. Driving on motorways I would sometimes feel as if I was not the one driving, even though I clearly was. That sudden detachment and sense of separation from my own actions would make me pull over or leave the motorway until I could calm down and feel “in control” again.

These days the same sensation still visits me from time to time. I no longer mind. I understand it better, and it actually improves my life rather than diminishes it.

I can only explain what might be happening through metaphors and everyday examples. I hope they give you a new perspective.

When we fall asleep at night we detach from external reality and shift into a different mode of consciousness — from the outer world of form, matter and the laws of physics into the inner world of thought, dream and non-linear experience. In that inner world we can fly, live impossible scenes, or feel things that would be absurd in waking life, yet while we are there they feel completely real.

We see a milder version of the same shift when we “lose ourselves” in music or a film. Time distorts. We become absorbed. Someone who dislikes the same film or piece of music may stay firmly anchored in ordinary external awareness.

Athletes, musicians and writers often describe a deeper version of this — the flow state. They say things like “the music just played itself,” “my body simply knew what to do,” or “the ideas arrived from somewhere else; I was only the observer.” In those moments they have temporarily dissociated from their everyday self, yet they perform more effectively and creatively than when they stay tightly locked in normal conscious control.

In genuine emergencies people frequently report the same phenomenon: “I just responded without thinking. Afterwards I was surprised at what I did.”

The pattern is consistent. Although we like to believe we are consciously in charge of every thought, action and word, most of the time we are not. The unconscious systems that run the body and keep us alive usually do a better job than the slow, wordy conscious mind. (Think of a medically induced coma: the fearful thinking brain is quietened so the deeper biological systems can get on with recovery.)

So one useful question becomes: can we learn to trust the unconscious a little more, and begin to notice when awareness is simply shifting from an outer-reality perspective to an inner-reality one — two different modes, neither of which is broken?

We can take the metaphor one layer deeper — Mind, Body and Soul.

This is only a working model, but I find it helpful for reducing the fear that perceived dissociation often creates.

Imagine that at birth a Soul enters the body, and at death it leaves. That points to the Soul being energetic rather than physical. The brain and body can run perfectly well on their own through conscious thought, unconscious processing and ordinary biology. The Soul, however, needs the body (rather like a rider needs a horse) in order to move through the world, engage with life and learn whatever this particular Earth experience has to teach.

The Soul cannot completely control the brain and body, but it can influence them. Some riders are controlled by a nervous horse; other riders stay calm and guide the horse where they want it to go.

From this angle, depersonalisation or derealisation can be seen as awareness simply toggling between different levels — brain, body, and the quieter energetic perspective we might call Soul. If that is roughly what is happening, then the experience is normal, and in some ways quite advanced. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. At the end of life we will all dissociate completely back into the wider field of consciousness we never left.

Even if you do not believe in an eternal Soul, the story itself is still useful. It gives the unconscious mind (which, as we explore throughout the course, operates with roughly the logic of a young child) a calmer narrative to run. When the old fearful story is replaced with a less alarming one, the body stops treating every shift in awareness as a catastrophe.

The Calmness in Mind process spends a good deal of time offering exactly these kinds of practical, workable perspectives. They are not mystical decoration; they are tools that allow you to live with more calmness, courage and genuine optimism while the deeper biological and emotional systems rebalance themselves.

That is the direction we travel.