Strange spatial phenomenon I experience

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This hasn't happened in a long while, I can't say whether it's been a matter of months or years, but last night I had a pretty maddening spate of it. In the past it has usually come when in bed, before sleep or after waking up halfway through, but last night I wanted to break out of it.

So, has anyone suddenly realised they're prey to this bizarre warp in spatial perception? You have the same range of view and everything. However, if you're reading, some words on a page may enlarge as you read through, and some may really leap out. The words on a page as a whole seem huge. Then you may look from your bed to a door over a metre away, and the door will look like it's planets away, yet you have the feeling that if you stretch our your arm you could easily get a finger to it. I noticed a cupboard door was open three metres away from me last night, and I was half-convinced that I could reach out and close it without stretching from where I was lying. It's quite a haunting feeling at times, as if something suspicious is playing a prank on you, as if you're not alone in your mind. I can't actively self-induce this, nor do I want to and nor does it particularly matter, but it's curious.

I had this sort of thing happen to me on regular occasions when I was a child, but have forgotten about it until now. I'm not going through stress or trauma or anything like that. Other times I remember having it happen when I was little include in primary school assemblies, when the teacher appeared to be an ocean away from me, both me and others seeming small but huge. I also remember being sat on a settee as my father gave me a stern talking to, looking into a corner between the seats, the arm rest and the back, and feeling as if it was a cavernous space I could get up and walk into, despite being consciously aware of my actual size also.

Very strange and hard-to-describe situation. At one point I tried to explain it to myself as feeling like someone the size of an ant being simultaneously over 5' in height. This may sound ridiculous but can anyone relate?

My mom describes things like that. She is about as NT as one can be though, but she does have a chronic, debilitating neurological condition. Actually, she can understand many of my son's sensory integration issues like why stairs are hard for him, why crossing unfamiliar thresholds is difficult and other visually-related things. Do you suppose it is related to a sensory integration dysfunction?

Very interesting. I'm probably reaching a stalemate though as my motor skills aren't particularly bad or good, rather quite average. Well, let's just say I haven't broken any glasses/crockery in a few years, I can pick up individual grains of rice with chopsticks, and I haven't fallen over in a month despite running up and down hills regularly. What confounds that suggestion is how it always has hit me in the past when I'm sat down for a while or been in bed for a while, and don't need to perform any exacting visual-physical tasks. When the phenomenon struck me last night I got up to close a door, and although it was a little disorientating I didn't struggle to do so.

Not sure. But as a kid when eating food in the morning I often would get this feel.that I was a lot further from.my plate. Like I was many many meters above it. It's a very odd feeling. When you're mind plays tricks with the distance.

This happened to me once when I was young. I had the flu really bad and remember sitting in a big red leather chair in our living room. I was 'down in' the gigantic chair so far it felt like there was no way out of it. The TV was miles! away.
But my hands on the arms of the chair were huge. Like cartoon hands. My brother spoke to me and the sound came from a tunnel or deep-deep hole to my ears.

The whole thing really freaked me.

I must have been about 5, but have never forgotten this. I have always thought it was because I was so sick. But dude it was for reals at the time.

Since then and very rarely I will start to experience a silmilar 'falling' back to that state. When it starts I quickly steer my mind elsewhere and get up and move from where I am sitting to avoid the damn thing. I have no desire to feel that again.

I used to have an experience, very much like you describe, from when I was quite young through my twenties. If I am very tired or under stress it can still happen, but now it is quite rare.

Usually what happens is I am in a conversation with someone and if feel as if the space between me and the other person is expanding rapidly and yet the person remains the same visual size. It's a bit like the dolly-zoom effect that Hitchcock used (I believe it was in vertigo) and Spielberg used quite well in Jaws. (the camera Dolly's back while the zoom lens pushes in (or vice versa)... The visual effect is that the foreground stays the same size while the background perspective changes dramatically.)

I also had two strange sensory hallucinations that I would get from time to time. One might best be described as sliding down a very smooth cloth surface that becomes bumpy and rough as I reach the bottom. The other was the sensation of a texture that seemed like greatly enlarged Velcro. Both these sensations would only last a few seconds at a time. When I had them, I would briefly zone out, but I was still aware of my surroundings. These both lasted into my early twenties but stopped before I was out of college. A neurology professor suggested at the time that it sounded like a form of epilepsy that is common in the young and goes away eventually.

It sounds like your experience is subtly different from my own, but they seem like, more or less, the same essential sensation.

This makes me think of "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd.

This always happened to me on ephedrine withdrawal, things would appear tiny and sometimes big although they weren't, especially if trying to sleep or tired or stressed out. It is like the size/distance evaluation mechanism in the brain is broken and it can make you anxious, even cause the brief illusion of fast physical acceleration.

Ephedrine pretty much only increases noradrenaline activity in the SNS and some parts of the brain, here from wikipedia:

So I guess that stress exhausts your noradrenaline reservoir, rest/sleep further decreases noradrenaline blood levels, and that causes the phenomenon by deficits that are similar in ephedrine withdrawal.

EDIT: Try eating l-tyrosine or more meat to rise catecholamine reservoir. I never had the phenomenon again since I eat 0.6kg meat a day.

I might have had this as a child. I remember it happening a few times, and it was always in the evening or night time in bed too. It was like I was looking at everything through a tunnel, and it was simultaneously big but very far away, my vision was abnormal. It terrified me. I found out many years later in adulthood, that my half-brother used to get this too, when I described it he knew exactly what I meant. It really used to frighten me. I've had some vague 'threats' of it in adulthood too, but I quickly divert my mind onto something and it seems to stop it.

It only used to happen to me when I took magic mushroom's in the 80's.

Alright, I'll get to these messages. I think those of you who've mentioned something similar probably have something either similar or the same. Since I find it quite indescribable and inexplicable I can't be too sure of any of it.

Jagatai, I can't really relate to your other apparent hallucinations, apart from perhaps something I've had a few times. I last had it this Christmas when I had a horrendous 24-hour flu while on holiday. Had the worst night for sleeping in my life and found at one point around 3am that the soft folds in my duvet and sheet suddenly felt like they were so tough and sharp that they were cutting into me and hurting. I went outside and sat on a corduroy-style settee and the tiny cord textures started piercing into me as well. Horrible, horrible. As is usual for me when I'm quite sick though I was a little delirious and my brain had turned to mush anyway.

C0MPAQ, I can't say I was any more tired than you'd normally be after a fair day following eight hours' sleep. I don't know of I-tryosine, or much chemistry, and I'm vegetarian with little experience of this phenomenon in my seven years of it.

It's a fascinating experience but by no means enjoyable when going through it. A little like a vivid nightmare, or finding out something grim in your waking hours. Perhaps it's a bit like sleep paralysis, or perhaps sleep paralysis is worse. Don't take drugs either other than alcohol in moderation.

Because I've had it the most while in bed I haven't worked out how to switch out of it despite trying, so I've just slept it off.


Thanks for all your replies.

I usually get the symptoms that the OP describes within about 20 to 30 minutes before a migraine.

Hello,

I suggest you have a look at derealization on wikipedia and see if this sounds like what you are describing. I have experience similar phenomena. I do have migraines without headache - I don't know how it all fits, truthfully, though. This just might help you track it down. If I have time later, I will look it up in some resources I have access to via the university.

Best wishes

I think the phenomenon of derealisation may go too far and is a more severe version of my experience. This smaller phenomenon doesn't seem to go much further than the "vertigo" effect and I have never suffered migraines. Again it mentions the dolly zoom effect which I am starting to understand as similar. I don't think it's ever been severe enough to be a real problem, but it's unpleasant to go through anyway.

This may just be coincidence, but I too get migraine related blindness (krenelated vision) without headaches. These were most common in my late teens through my twenties. I still get them on very rare occasions... Perhaps less than once a year at this point.

And I agree with Aalto, the entry on derealization sounds much more extreme than anything I have experienced.

And here's a YouTube clip of the dolly-zoom shot from jaws...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB4bikrNzMk[/youtube]

Here let me step out of the box for a minute. Instead of researching it why don't you speak to a doctor about it and try to determine whether it's something you should really worry about.