What is this? Is it anything to do with AS?

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I get two slightly different but strange 'alterings of perception' at times. The first one I remember getting when I was very small, then it seemed to go away, then came back sometime in my twenties. It lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes. Sometimes real objects seem to be both very close up and very far away at the same time, and/or simultaneously very large and very small. There's no actual visual distortion of surroundings; rather a *sensation* of there being one. Sometimes there's the impression – as opposed to actual visual hallucination – of there being another object right in front of my nose, which again appears to be both simultaneously very large and very small. Although I am unable to ‘see’ it clearly, I get the feeling of something like a grey sphere. At the same time I get a slight dizziness and nausea, and a feeling of numbness in my hands. On a discussion board I visit, there was actually a thread about this once, and other (NT) people described exactly the same kind of thing. For lack of a better name, we dubbed it 'The Big/Small Thing'.

The other is what I can only describe as spacing out; suddenly having the feeling, in a familiar location, that I am somewhere else or don’t recognize my surroundings – more accurately, that I am in two places at once and the ‘layer’ of the second place is making the real one seem strange. The feeling's sometimes so clear of being somewhere else that I could describe to you where it is that I feel like I am. Again, it might last from between ten seconds to a few minutes, before I feel my perception slowly slide back and things look normal again, although the memory of it lingers for a while. I can operate and think almost perfectly normally while this is happening, to the degree that I can find it quite fascinating at times; I can only describe it as a layer of other-consciousness over the real world.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm very puzzled. I mentioned this to a psychologist I saw, and she said it sounded like 'dissasociation'.

Yeah I think I experience the latter. I work from 9-5 where my colleagues work from 08.30-4.30 so what happens is I get left in the office on my own at the end of the day. During this time it has calmed down and becomes very quiet and I start to relax and ease off the work and I hop onto the Net and start to space out. It is like i'm easing off my social front and slipping into an introverted state in which all I feel is within my thoughts, the monitor and the sounds of doors next door paranoid of when the cleaners are coming in and I can hear the hand dryer through the wall of next door and then I track the noise of doors from the corridor back down to finally someone entering the office and I jump out of my skin! at this point I have to shake myself up in trying to interact successfully with them, on occasions I just stare at them and nod gormlessly as i'm pretty caught in my own world at that stage.

is this similar?

Hey there, I may be way off.... but have you ever thought of having an EEG done?? I'm not sure, but seizures can come in all different shapes and forms. My little sister has epilepsy and sometimes her seizures are visual, with things in front of her eyes etc. She can also have seizures that make her feel strange and spaced out. She doesn't necessary lose conciousness either. Also, some people that get migranes describe a numbness in the hands etc. I dont know, but the brain can do some pretty strange things, sometimes!

You must be going through Depression of some kind, either that or you PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

I get something a little like that and used to have seizures and still do have migraines.
I have read that there may be a connection between migraines and seizures.
You could get checked out for both.

sometimes when i go to sleep and close my eyes, i get a "white out sensation" like eveything on the inside of my eyelids and brain turns white. but you can see it because it moves closer to you and pulls away from you. it use to scare me but now i think its cool and sometimes i laugh when it happens because i swear it tickles it really does. haha

Yes, I think it does have to do with AS.

Sometimes, we perceive things differently. There is a big difference between the way things look, and the way they feel.

Let's take a peach for example. A peach is very soft and delicious, but when you bite into some fuzz, you just want to spit it out, I know how you feel. The way things look and the way they feel is a far cry, I know that for sure.

Also, I understand how you feel about being "in space." If I am in a totally familiar place in which I know very well, I start daydreaming and suddenly someone expects me to talk, I feel like I am not there. I feel like I am wherever I am in my daydream.

I am capable of doing a lot, so if someone wants me to put the pedal to the medal and do a skill-variant task, I'm not sure if I can do something like that.

This is called "spacing out," or, someone else I know calls it "zoning." This is an AS trait, and I think it's about certain things we are passionate about.

It's all about our intellect.