1One of the earliest signs that you are drifting out of the present is that your hands and feet go vague. Not numb exactly, just less there.
It tends to happen before you notice you have gone anywhere. If you learn your own version of it, you get an early warning: a chance to press your feet down, hold something cold, or say out loud where you are, while all of that is still easy. Someone sitting with you may spot it before you do, in how still you have gone.
Islamic evidence
We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves (Quran 41:53). Some of the signs worth reading are as close as your own hands and feet.
“We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything”
Qur'an 41:53
Psychological evidence
A meta-analysis in schizophrenia found that dissociative experiences and difficulty identifying one's own emotions were both raised compared with people without the diagnosis, at moderate size. That is a specific population, and the study does not test which comes first. So treat the hands and feet marker as a clinical observation worth watching for, not as something the literature has pinned down.
O'Driscoll C, Laing J, Mason O. (2014). Clinical psychology review · doi
Review detail
Why it works. The sense of where your body is fades before your sense of the conversation does, so it warns you first.
Feedback
none yet2When what is happening inside gets too loud, turn outward. Name what you can see, listen for the furthest sound, press your feet into the floor.
This is not avoidance. The outward senses and the sense of where your body sits both carry information about now, which is exactly what the flooding is missing. Stay there until the volume drops. You can go back inside later, and often you will want to.
Islamic evidence
when their very souls closed in around them (Quran 9:118). The verse names that shut in feeling exactly, and what follows it there is mercy rather than blame.
“And to the three men who stayed behind: when the earth, for all its spaciousness, closed in around them, when their very souls closed in around them, when they realized that the only refuge from God was with Him, He turned to them in mercy in order for them…”
Qur'an 9:118
Psychological evidence
A conceptual review draws a line between attending to bodily sensation and worrying about it, and argues the two have opposite implications for wellbeing. Flooding sits on the worrying side of that line. Stepping out to the room is a way of stopping the worried kind of monitoring without having to suppress anything.
Mehling W. (2016). Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · doi
Review detail
Why it works. The outer senses report on the present, so they crowd out a signal that is coming from the past.