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Some People Can ‘Absorb’ a Richer Version of Reality, Scientists Say. Are You One of Them?

Susan Lahey, June 2026

An interview with Michael Lifshitz

On the flip side, researchers have uncovered a correlation between absorption and early trauma, according to Michael Lifshitz, PhD, who has studied absorption extensively.

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However, researchers still don't know what causes some people to be more absorptive than others. They've learned that it does run in families and that many highly absorptive people experienced early childhood trauma. Those—of course—might be connected, since trauma often affects whole families. Trauma might also explain absorptive people's vivid imaginations. In a traumatic moment, people's brains often protect them through dissociation, allowing them to "escape" into alternate imagined worlds, Lifshitz notes.

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Lifshitz tried to find brain behaviors that would explain absorption, but that was a dead end, too. They compared functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of people who were high on the Tellegen absorption scale and similar personality scores. "Interestingly, we weren't able to find anything in the structure or kind of resting state function of the brain that was consistently predicting absorption in both samples," he says. "We found some patterns that looked kind of promising, but then none of them replicated in the other sample."

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He believes that through experiences like nature exposure, psychedelic therapy, or practices like creating a Tulpa, people can train themselves to be more absorptive. And that, from his perspective, would create a better world.

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