Last year, I stumbled upon an article about something called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, a temporary neurological condition during which the brain incorrectly interprets signals coming from the eyes and delivers a time-, size-, or shape-distorted view of the world. I was stunned as I read more, as I periodically experience this effect!
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) is named after Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking Glass. In one scene, Alice eats cookies that change the size of her body, causing her to alternately be too small and too large for her environment. AIWS is temporary, and many report that it is more common after waking or when exhausted. Some experience their body changing shape (uniformly or just certain parts), and others feel that the objects or the world around them have changed size. Some even experience temporal disturbances, like feeling like they’re moving really quickly or really slowly.
Here is how I experience it.
It almost always happens to me when I’ve just woken up or when I’m very tired. Darkness can increase the chances of its onset. Reading can also be a factor. The most common scenario, by far, is that I’m tired, it’s dark, and I’m reading something up close for a long time. It’s as if my brain becomes uncalibrated for the 3-D world. This happens maybe four times a year, and each episode lasts between 15 minutes and two hours. Except for when I wake up with it, I can always feel it starting to come on. It is a variable effect, both in its onset and in its disappearance. Its severity varies.
My disturbances are of micropsia — I feel that the world around me has shrunk. The effect varies with distance away from my eyes. Standing in a large room, I feel as though I could reach out and touch all four of the walls without moving my body. If I try, my arm seems to stretch out for many feet and almost reach the wall (in reality, it may be 10 feet away). If I look down, it’s as if I’m looking off the top of a skyscraper. My feet look small and far away. My legs converge like two railroad tracks stretching off to the horizon. These two effects (the walls looking close, but my limbs feeling long) are hard to reconcile. Everything is distorted, like I’m viewing it through a wide angle lens.
This still from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland film is a fairly close representation of what it looks like when I look down.
Normally I have excellent distance vision, and can read things very far away. When I’m experiencing this syndrome, I have to bring things in very close to read. At close distances, things appear almost normal. I can read text if it’s within two feet, and it looks almost normal-sized about 8 inches from my face. I’ve attempted to trick my brain out of the syndrome by focusing on an object close up, where it appears almost normal, and slowing moving it backwards. It doesn’t work.
Moving around is a bizarre experience. It seems as if I can span any distance in a step or two, so when I try (and it takes more steps) it seems as if I’m moving in slow motion. In fact, due to my distorted view of my body, the entire experience almost feels out-of-body. There’s a sense of haziness or blurriness. Despite the strangeness of it, I don’t have much trouble walking around. I’m not dizzy or clumsy.
The surest way to make it go away is to sleep. Otherwise it’s just a waiting game. The effect wears off more slowly than it comes on. At the end of it, things just feel a little distorted. Sometimes it’s hard for me to know when it’s gone, since I’ve spent a while in this distorted world that even a diminished distortion seems like a massive improvement.
It’s not frightening or all that inconvenient. It’s just strange.
Something similar used to happen to me when I was younger. At bed time, in the dark, it progressively made me feel like I was big enough to barely fit in my room. My body was feeling big and round, like a barrel, but it was more a body perception than a visual experience. It was an interesting and fun experience actually, not frightening or disturbing (because it didn’t last, probably) and trying to reconnect with reality was an interesting process I was always try to analyze as it occured.
I’ve had exactly the same experience! I felt my body growing enormously, in the dark, in bed, while trying to fall asleep. In my case, it scared me a bit, so I switched on a light and the feeling was gone – until I switched it off again…
Same here – triggered by reading, but I haven’t experienced it in quite a while. It wasn’t as persistent as Mark’s though. Most of the time I could snap out of it easily, so I actually often tried to make it last longer – the foolishness of youth O;)
wow, I’ve never heard of such a thing! I think it would scare the hell out of me. I get these strange visual hallucinations before a migraine, totally freaks me out, so something this huge would flip my lid right off ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶
When I was about 13 at school, I was watching and listening to a teacher when he suddenly seemed as though I was watching him through the wrong end of a telescope. His voice also seemed to come from a distance. Since then I have had various experiences, as though I enter a dream world. Also, after a serious accident I had an operation and felt as though I ‘came out of my body’ and watched the operation. I have also had symptoms of a mini stroke with slurred speech weak hand etc. Recently I went to a lecture by a leading neurologist given to a group of people who suffer migraine. Many of the people in the group raised their hands when he asked if anyone suffered symptoms very similar to mine, and to those mentioned here. He related virtually all of the symptoms to MIGRAINE and even used the expression ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’. Makes me wonder if Lewis Carrol had migraine!
I can confirm, it is scary! I first experienced this when I was at school during morning assembly. Suddenly my right arm became very distorted – it seemed to be really really long and as if it ‘didn’t belong to me’. I was too scared to look at it and it frightened the hell out of me. Very quickly after, I got a bad visual disturbance and, ultimately, what I now know to be, a very bad migraine. The right hand side of my body was as if I had had a stroke – numb; nausea and, when all that was done, the headache from hell which lasted for days. Often all this was preceded by a feeling of well-being. This may seem crazy but for years and years after, I ‘mistrusted’ my right arm – being scared to look at it in case it did ‘that thing’. I had a few more occurences but, hopefully, grew out of it. I feel so sad for that 13 year old with no diagnosis and not knowing that I was not alone and it was physiological. In my 30s I experienced a feeling tiny when I was particularly tired or hungover. This wasn’t so scary. Anyway, hope it helps other people – wish we’d had the internet then…
when i first started to notice it i was scared and i didn’t want to tell my parents!
i first got it when i was 4 or 5 years old i was in bed and everything was getting smaller than bigger it was scary!!!!!!! i first told my sister and then she told my parents! i went to see a docter about it to find out what it was and it was alice in wonderland syndrome!
That happened to me a lot when I was a kid, but I haven’t experienced it in a few years that I can remember.
I had several forms of it. The “really tall” thing happened a lot, and came with the fun “really long arms” thing as well. The long arms thing comes with a really odd disconnect, like if I’m typing it feels like it’s not really me doing the typing, because how can I type from that far away?
I’ve also experienced the “moving very fast” sensation, sometimes even while lying still on a bed. That one can be very interesting because sometimes it even came with audio hallucinations. Not actually hearing things, but having the feeling that you’re hearing things (specifically, a whooshing noise like you’re moving fast through air). It’s hard to explain how you can feel like you’re hearing something without actually hearing something though.
The thing that always struck me though is that I don’t actually see or hear anything different than normal. I can tell that things are the same as they’ve always been, but that my brain is just interpreting the signals differently than normal.
Side note: If this happens to you frequently, then you already know pretty much what an LSD experience feels like. Think of it like the same feeling, with an additional component of having an *extremely* narrow focus. Shifting subjects or changing what you’re doing becomes very difficult.
Like I said though, I haven’t experienced it since I was a kid. That went away. Annoyingly, I kept the occasional migraines. 🙁
Otto… if you could email me I would very much appreciate it… my email is karinatwork AT gmail DOT com. I’m sure my son would love to hear from you. He suffers from the same thing and he feels very alone. Nobody seems to understand what he has… Thank you.
Karin,
I felt that I should email you about your son. I had this as a child and through my teens. I didn’t tell anyone until I was about 17. I thought I was losing my mind and scared to death I was suuering from some mental issues. I didn’t have the feeling that I was getting bigger or smaller but I felt as if time was moving slow and speeding up. If someone was speaking to me during this time they sounded really slow. I use to have this aweful fear over take me at the same time. Infact I remember hearing voices that were not really there…as if some man was speaking with a angry tone to me. I remember feeling so alone, this really affected my grades in school and my selfasteem. I remember how alone I felt and when I did talk to my doctor she looked at me as if I were crazy…I never spoke about it again until now. I was thinking about it last night and googled it. I was surprised to see so many others like myself. I am 31 now and can’t remember the last time I had this happen to me. I hope your son grows out of this soon and I hope he has found someone to talk to. If there is anyway I can help please let me know.
Nicole
WOW i didn’t know this existed i have had this happen to me too on occasion also had the feeling of everyone going slower than me like i was super fast but never thought it was a condition. I must say that will give a new dimension to the movie that is coming out. No wonder i love the book so much.
I have some similar tripped out artwork of “Alice in Wonderland” check her out here!
ASK ALICE!!
I haven’t had any of the things mentioned here happen to me but have experienced migraines and another really distubing visual problem and am not sure if this could be another variable of this syndrome. It happened a great deal as a teen riding the public bus to school. I would look at the poles that people hold on to and the poles would appear to turn from horizontal to vertical and grow longer and point towards. They would feel like they were right in front of my eyes and about to poke me in the eyes. My eyes would start to tear up really bad and hurt and I’d have to keep them shut the whole ride to school because if I opened my eyes the poles would “poke” me in the eyes. I felt like I was being stabbed through the eyes with these poles. This was usually accompanied or followed by a migraine. I’m sure people on the bus thought that I was crying because of how much my eyes would tear. Now it doesn’t happen as often but sometimes while I’m driving I can’t look at oncoming traffic or the light poles because I get the same feeling. It is very disturbing to feel like you are about to get stabbed through the eyes with something like a big metal pole or a car or a house.
I just learned about this yesterday and am amazed that what I thought were just strange childhood memories have an actual name and diagnosis. I had this happen to me until I was about 8, when I seem to have outgrown it. I would first have the sense of “receding” away from everything around me, and then everything around me seemed to be getting “too big”. This happened most frequently after I went to bed, but before I had fallen asleep. I had only one episode as an adult, when I was exhausted following the birth of my son. This one lasted for a day and a half, and I was terrified I was never going to return to normal. I thought it was triggered by the medication they gave me in the hospital. I was a migraine sufferer throughout my 20’s, and have a family history of severe migraines.
I have just returned from a Neurlogist appt for my son who was diagnosed with “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome”. He is 9 years old and the “episodes” began about a month ago. Usually these are occuring in the evening aroun 6-9pm, sometimes while reading. This is how he explains it:
“Suddenly objects I am looking at start bouncing back & forth, getting closer then farthur away as if zooming in and out with a microscope. Then I have the feeling as if the air is pressing down on my body from above (hair feels heavy, tops of arms and legs and inside mouth). When I touch something it doesn’t feel like I’m pressing down when I am, like it is soft. Sounds are like someone yelling from a distance (muted roar).”
These “episodes”, as we call them now, usually last from 5-20 minutes. There is no headache or pain before, during or afterwards. The Dr. used phrases like Migraine Aura without headache (looked it up and believe it is called Acephalic Migraine), Visual Migraine and Motor Aura (“heavy pressure feeling”).
He does suffer from motion sickness which is common for someone who later gets migraines. I myself get motion sick and suffer from migraines and was told it is hereditary. Was told he may or may not get the headaches in the future.
I had never heard of this before so I am going to do more research which I was doing when I came upon this site. I was so relieved it wasn’t anothing more serious (I feared “tumor”).
Hope this information from my sons point of view helps.
I started experiencing AIWS when I was a about 9 years old. It usually happened at the onset of falling asleep and lasted most of the night. It was an incredibly strong sensation and very dreamlike. My experience was that my body is abnormally large, ie I could pick up the couch and roll it around between my fingers. This happened about once a week. In my late teens it became less and the sensation was not as strong as when I was a child. I have found a way of “controlling ” this. I don’t necessarily need to be falling asleep for it to happen now, I merely need to focus on something and I can “bring on” AIWS. Its something like those silly 3D pictures which are all swirly and you have to concentrate in the middle and then the picture would “magically appear”. If I focus on any point, it is as if I start the sensations. It is incredibly difficult to explain. As I am typing this e-mail I am focusing on my screen and in the distant my eye is catching my filling cabinet and I can feel the sensation starting. When I look up and take a deep breath it stops. I have suffered from migraines all my life but I have found that there are some things that trigger my headaches. Food in particular. Chocolate, coffee, alcohol, sugary and fizzy drinks. I have started eating what I consider food. Anything created artificially or processed is not food. This has reduced my migraines to once a year. The worst headaches are when I am dehydrated and I have not had enough water in a day. I drink at least 1 litre of water a day. When I do however get one it is bad enough to render me useless for a day. I am very hearing sensitive, high pitched metal sounds (like car keys or metal money being shaken) hurts my ears. I have tried to find more studies about this particular “syndrome” and I have found a vast amount of people who have experienced this but no real medical research other than the fact I already know. I have come across a number of people who have experienced this and yet there is not a lot of medical reserch. I have been told by more than one doctor that it is quite common in childhood, is somehow associated with migrains and that kids outgrow it. I am 35 with two kids! No one else in my family has ever experienced this but some family members do suffer from migraines and depression.It is most certainly not a pleasant or enjoyable sensation.
Almost all of my siblings and I have experienced this sensation, especially as children. When I was very young (three years old) I would have episodes during nightmares, and then afterward when I would remember the bad dreams. I still have episodes every once in a while.
My symptoms are not distortions in visual perception, but manifest themselves as a feeling of body parts (particularly my tongue, fingers, and lungs) being too small and too large all at once. It can be so severe that I have to concentrate on breathing because my lungs feel too heavy. I have also had one frightening experience when I woke up from a long nap and felt like time was moving not fast, slow, forwards, or backwards– but sideways.
These symptoms used to alarm me as a kid, especially because I was always at a loss when I tried to explain them to my parents. It wasn’t until recently during a conversation with my sisters that I realized they had also experienced similar episodes, but had never said anything because they thought they were imagining it– and I suppose we all did.
What is interesting about my symptoms is that over time I have learned how to control them. If I concentrate, I can induce or stop the symptoms. To get them to stop, I simply have to close my eyes, shake my head and flex my fingers (that’s where it feels the most severe).
I’m glad to hear that I’m not alone in this. It’s an adventure, I suppose, but also a disorienting and sometimes alarming syndrome. I haven’t heard of any serious or dangerous neurological or other symptoms.
Christina,
I don’t know about my brother, but for as long as I remember it’s been exactly as you describe, right down to flexing my hands or rolling my head to alleviate symptoms, and the development of control over it.
For me it’s most common with fever-induced migraine, but more recently with just migraine, which led to my discovery just today of what to call it!
Also I determined that the distortion of feeling is reverse to the distortion to appearance, and with practice learned to mentally balance the two and function normally.
Next time you get a headache, take whatever pain relief is most effective, and see how easily you can induce and control AWIS
My 9 year old son recently reported this phenomena—distorted noise, size/depth perception and I told him I had same thing happen to me as a kid. Episodes would be last for a few minutes and then stop. Maybe once every week or two for a period lasting several months. Often it would happen while I was at school sitting at my desk. It was hallucinatory and I came to understand it as a quasi- spiritual/religious experience. I am amazed to find this information!
My 8 year old son is having the same problems. No pain, 2 or 3 times daily at various times or occasions he will experience “everything is getting smaller”, or “louder” or even he seems to grow taller. I am scared SHITLESS! I got an appointment with a paediatrician but we will have to wait 2 months to see him. Nobody seems to know what it is, nobody seems to CARE and I am so very scared. I cry constantly because I’m so worried about him… He was scared at first but then I told him about the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and I read him an article about it, and now he feels a bit better. But he still is alone, and he wishes he knew at least ONE other child that experiences the same things…
Hi Karin,
Maybe my son, who is actually 8—almost 9, would be willing to communicate with your son about this. Its still happening to him. We are seeing the doctor this week. He had a very bad stomach virus about 5-6 weeks ago and we are thinking that maybe these strange symptoms are related to that week-long virus.
Mary
Karin,
I just watched a show on tv that was discussing the AIW syndrome. I couldn’t believe that what they were talking about was exactly what I experienced as a child! I thought I was crazy. I am now 37 years old and do not experience any of the symptoms anymore. your son is not alone and it will go away. I have just found out this past year that I have always had food sensitivities/allergies and have not known it. If there is a chance that he could be experiencing food issues, there could be immune dysfunction, GI problems and his system is compromised. It is worth checking out. He will be ok, but I know how he feels. It is a very odd feeling while it is happening–time would distort for me. Everything would move very fast or very slowly. I could feel my head expand like a balloon, my hands grow large, the floor would move up to meet me. It will go away as he gets older. Check for the food issues though, that could be the trigger.
Yes, everything is louder, and everything feels larger and more intense while at the same time farther away. It’s like becoming a giant in a giant world. I still get it with fevers and migraine headaches, though I’ve learned some techniques to control my blood pulse(and blood pressure) a little bit, and the giantness varies significantly with that.
The timing and adjustment, along with the fact that an appropriate amount of anti-inflammatory pain killer for migraines will usually eliminate the sensation, suggests along with the nature of the symptoms that brain stem pressure is the base cause, so ibuprofin(since he’s too young for aspirin) would probably be an effective treatment, remembering how scary it was at that age. (Now I’m fascinated by it.)
@Mary: when I was young, it would only ever happen when I was sick and had a fever high enough to give me a bad headache, so it very likely is related to his physiological response to the infection. With me it didn’t matter what the bug was, just that it was a painful fever.
It is comforting to finally find that others experience this and that it is medically recognized. Forty-five years ago I frenquently dreamed in aiws mode, then the distortions of sight, sound and son sensation would persist after being startled awake. And at times I would simply wake in aiws mode, or notice it creeping up as I lay laid down to sleep. The initial onset was associated with nightmares, so my parents told me it was night terrors and not to worry. I learned to minimize the effects with various concentration or stimulus tricks, but often to no avail so I just lived with the episodes. Mine were mostly at night. Frequency dropped at adolesence, then again in my 30s, but still persists on rare occassions. Yes, I also had migraines (aura and pressure without headaches) and have food allergies. I self diagnosed a link with Nutrasweet (the stuff is poison foisted on us by Don Runsfeld in his private sector days — google it and see for yourself). When I quit Nutrasweet products, the migraines nearly disappeared. Later I was tested for food allergies and after modifying my diet accordingly have been virtually migraine free, and virtually aiws free. The doctor advising you look into allergies is likely giving good advice for many of you.
Meant to add that when I was old enough to research night terrors, I realized that wasn’t my affliction. Over the years I mentioned it to a few of my personal physicians, but all they knew was night terrors and said mine was possibly a variation. From what I read here, aiws seems fairly separate from night terrors.
For those who are wondering the cause, remember that the symptoms can also be indicative of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Not all people who have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy suffer Grand Mal Seizures, and some suffer the visual hallucination ofthinking objects are melting away from them (telescoping) or getting bigger. It is a common aura that precedes a seizure in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.
Good point there. Also that AWIS is triggered apparently often by migraines, and some of the temporal lobe epilepsy symptoms are the same as those of migraines, it would make sense it’s also an indicator of that.
If you’re on the border between the two, consider if the treatment you need for migraines is also a treatment for seizures or if you can treat them with regular OTC painkillers. (Glad I’m on the painkiller side and don’t get the wobbling sort of visual distortions.)
Wow! I just thought I was kinda crazy.
It is cool to know that either I am not crazy, or that there are whole bunch of crazy people out there just like me.
@Barbara: I experience conscious Grand Mal Seizures and this experience is part of the Aura I have prior to the onset of a seizure. Other components of my seizure are extreme deja vu, and a ‘wobble’ in on=bjects being veiwed, like everything is made of jelly, and my head feels like it is super-charged with electricity. It is actually quite awesome to experience.
I never knew that’s what they were until I had a cluster of seizures over a couple of weeks and went to my doctor — when I arrived I was having my ‘hallucinations’ and as I was telling him about it I went into full seizure. Then I could not talk, but I was conscious of what was happening. Until then, I had no idea there was such a thing as conscious seizures.
If this Alice in Wonderland thing is linked with epilepsy and is part of an Aura, then it would pay to take note and get yourself into a safe place, so that if you have a seizure you do not get hurt.
i have this syndrome. it doesn’t feel good but i am happy to know i am not crazy. i used to think i was crazy
Hey, I say that you people are lucky enough to get to look at reality in a unique way. Sure it might be a little disturbing/disorienting depending on how often it occurs, but your left with a pretty unique perspective after each event.
I would guess that many artists have abilities like this.
Hey,
Just been reading through all the comments, had never heard about AIWS before! Brief story of mine: was diagnosed with migraines when I was 12, then after having my son at 18 it seemed to ‘cure’ them. Had temp birth control (didn’t get migraines/periods etc. Sorry if tmi!) Had it removed early part of this year, which caused the migraines to come back… What I found was that things seem to be further away from me than normal, looking at my phone, it looked really small, so did my hands etc anything if I brought it close to look at. Felt like I was taller just cause everything seemed further away. Was put back on medication due to migraines, and this ‘feeling’ stopped. Found had side affect with the meds so stopped taking them, and have recently found that its happening again – things seem further away than what they actually are, does tend to happen more when I’m tired/headaches etc. Is this AIWS too? Or just my eyesight going funny?? Lol (though have been to opticians, eyesight is fine!) Sorry for the long post but just would like some info about it before asking the doc and them thinking I’m mad! Lol!
Xxxx
A few years ago my daughter Lilly suffered from these symptoms; she was 3. I began to worry and the doctors brushed it off as her imagination. I was so worried. Then the migraines started… I would cry almost every night and my husband was worried sick. Till one day when Lilly was 5 we took her to a doctor who finally gave us some answers. I was so happy to finally know what the cause of these problems were!
She still suffers from it and now she has started school we had to tell the teacher about her condition and migraines. But we make it fun. Her favourite book is Alice in Wonderland and loves wearing her blue dress around the house. She always asks me “Mummy, are we in Wonderland yet?”. She is such a joy and now she watches the movie with her younger brother Ben who she dresses up as the White Rabbit. She deals with it so well and now when you ask her what she wants to be when she’s older she’ll always reply “the Mad Hatter”…
Im going to apoligize for my spelling ahead of this…..When I was a child 5 years to 13 years i used to get migranes with vomitting high fever and the same nightmare that takes place in fast forward ….My family is in a space shuttle with a open top and every time in fast forward i would be trying to get in and it would shoot into space ……leaving me crying in my dream and in real life sweating high fever….after the dream would repeat itself over and over in fast forward 100s maybe 1000s of times i would wake up mostly by my mom, without the headache fever going away fast and my mom would tickle my back till i fell back asleep….this has happened 100s of times and has stopped as i got older….seems like it was yesterday……Why
My five year old gets this. Three times in the past two weeks now, and he hasn’t had anything night-terror-like since he was two. I don’t know what has brought it on lately, but every time it was when he woke from a nap. It scares the crap out of him.
He is freaked out, crying/screaming, and only able to start his sentences when he tries to talk. After a few words it crumbles into incoherence. BUT after the second episode, almost a week ago, he was able to explain that things looked too small. He had been staring in terror at my arm, reaching out and tentatively poking it. He said something like it wasn’t there or something (but now I know he meant it was too small and didn’t look right.
Yesterday he woke from a nap and everything looked too big. The ceiling fan totally made him wig out. I finally showed him his little brother and asked if he looked too big, but he said he looked the right size, so I had him snuggle his brother to help him calm down (I was too big and my eyeballs were freaking him out, apparently).
I am SO RELIEVED to have found some information about this. Thank you so much for posting!
I feel your pain! Growing up I dealt with these. But they never happened during the day (full blown anyway). But they always happened at night. Sometimes they would be connected with dreams or with a fever and when I would wake I would deal with all the things you descibed. Along with slow motion screaming that would get louder and louder in my head?? Not sure how to describe it…but very frightening as a child.
I’m now 28 and certain things once in a great while will trigger just a second of it during the day, Anything from a clip in a movie to checking email or hearing someone say something…I don’t understand it. Crazy stuff!!
I used to experience something similar to this when I was a kid. It would always be in the morning after i woke up. when i talked to people it seemed like everything was happening really fast, everyone was talking fast, but everything was happening in slow motion at the same time. it was like the moment sped up, and then happen really slow at the same time. i cant really explain it. when i was in high school i would experience it while i was getting ready for school. i would be putting on my make up and it was like things happened really fast, the thoughts in my head were really fast but then when i actually did the action it was in slow motion, and my thought would kind of echo. my thoughts would echo in my head it would happen really fast and really slow at the same time. kind of repetitive. it would last for about 15 -45 minutes, after i got to school it would usually stop. i dont know if this makes any sense but it what you are describing sounds similar to what i experienced.
My wife has this all the time. They actually told her that it is a common issue for those with Fibromyalgia (which she has). The funny thing is, while you say that sleep makes yours go away, hes usually bothers her the most when it happens as she’s trying to sleep. She finds it nearly impossible to fall asleep while it’s going on, and often has me turn on a light to help.
All in all, it doesn’t seem scary or dangerous (especially not compared to all the other things my wife is dealing with), but it does really annoy her!
I also have AIWS, and have had my entire life (am now in my 30s). I experience it just exactly as you describe it. However, I have an additional very strange occurrence which affects my perception of myself. During an episode, I perceive myself (my own body and indeed my mind) as something else entirely. Most commonly I feel myself become a piece of of corrugated cardboard. Sometimes I feel like a piece of flat hard plastic. Sometimes I feel like a piece of fuzzy fabric. I am not crazy and at all other times feel like a human being, just like everybody else! It’s truly bizarre.
Hey, so glad I finally looked this up because it’s scared me for years. Mine mainly occurred when I was very young at night time but I’ve noticed it reappears when I’m stressed. My symptoms include a weird either taste or feeling on the back of my Tongue and everything seems to be either smaller or abnormally large, and sometimes everything will suddenly sound like its going far too fast, like my breathing or my heart(which is particularly scary) or any noise around me and I have to really focus or cover my ears to make it stop. Mine can’t be that bad though because my larger and smaller perception is mainly when my eyes are shut and I can just feel it, or if I’m picturing someone or something in my mind their size and shape etc is all warped. And the time speeding up thing (always speeding up never down) happens very rarely now (but when it does theres never a pattern with the other times, it can literally happen whenever) at least, but still freaks the hell outta me. I’m just glad I’m not the only one experiencing this. I never told anyone cause I was (and still am) worried they would think I was making it up for attention or just imagining things and wouldn’t take me at all seriously.