Another kind of out of the body experience

It was a sort of out of body experience, though I didn't see myself while floating near the ceiling! It was when I used to give speeches for ASSAP that I noticed something very odd. I was listening to myself speaking without any conscious feeling of talking. I wasn't aware of talking and had no idea what I was about to say. It was as if someone else was talking while I was just listening. I didn't feel like I was out of my body more like I wasn't in control of it. It felt very strange indeed! Interestingly, I was not obviously gabbling or talking nonsense. So some part of my brain was clearly in control.

It would be easy to see this as a paranormal experience - my consciousness detaching from my physical body in some way. It could be seen as an out of the body experience but without actually seeing the world from a different viewpoint. But I think instead it was a brain trick, something called depersonalization. In this case it was as if my consciousness had split into two, one part talking and the other listening. I have only ever experienced this while doing public speaking. I find giving speeches incredibly stressful and I think that is what triggered my strange experience. Intense stress is a typical cause of depersonalization.

I think we generally underestimate just what the human brain is capable of. Certainly some strange experiences, like near sleep experiences (see here), can give us apparent paranormal occurrences. I would certainly wonder about anything odd I experienced if I was in an extremely stressful situation.