New term I came across..

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I was reading an essay in Aquamarine Blue 5, this book with true stories from people with AS. One of them mentioned he gets micropsy, which I had never heard of.. then he described it, and I was amazed. I have always had this condition & never knew a name for it, or that others experience it. I'm not sure that it's really linked to the AS?

What it means is seeing people or objects as much smaller than they are, and them seeming farther in the distance than they are too. The author noted experiencing it whenever he's tired or stressed. For me, it has happened whenever someone was sharing some very personal and emotionally charged information with me. They were upset, the mood intense, and I didn't really know what to say or do.. and all of a sudden it's like Alice in Wonderland. They seem to shrink before my eyes. I never wanted to talk about this to anyone because I didn't want to seem crazy.

What do you all think? Ever experienced anything like it?

i entirely understand the experience though I never had the visual aspect of it, only the physical. Though I guess If i think about it, I tend to kinda zone out and get lost in say the pattern on the couch across the room to such an extent that I could miss someone walking past in the background. So maybe zooming in?

I have a lot of trouble judging distance...but thats a little different I think. There are sometimes, under extreme stress, where it feels like my brain feels like it shuts off and my eyes can't focus on anything in particular...it's like I'm intensely focused on everything at once, and its almost like looking through a fishbowl. That's as close as I get to what you described.

there have been a few times when i had a high fever, & felt like everything in the room was tiny & miles away.
curiously, in later manifestations this came to resemble i place i had returned to (rather than a state that was recurring).
even now i can half-remember, half-imagine what it was like...

For me, it's kind of like the person gets bigger!

I think the author from the book might have spelled it wrong.

I believe the correct spelling is Micropsia. Macropsia is when things look big.

I've experienced it, but this is the first time I have heard of anyone else with AS having it. I couldn't find it linked to AS anywhere, but here is an excerpt from Wiki:

Micropsia:

I remember first getting it when I was young watching TV; not only did everyone look small but they longer looked human to me, if that makes any sense, but that may be related to the disassociative state related to it. I also experienced it during periods of stress and when conversations got long, at times. And, I also remember it when I was very sick with a fever.

I also experienced tactile sensitivity and a related condition where you can will a feeling in your hand that feels like an object with no concrete texture or shape that can be manipulated at will. Someone else reported this phenomenon on this site; I still haven't found a word for that; I'm guessing it is related to tactile sensitivity because the other person that shared it with me on this site has tactile sensitivity, also.

When I was young I didn't dare mention any of this, outside of my family in fear that someone might think I was crazy; many years later I met someone with tactile sensitivity. But this is the first time I have even come into contact with anyone with Micropsia.

Interestingly, my wife apparently had partial complex seizures all her life that are part of epilepsy. She also didn't know what it was until later, when she was in her late thirties and had a grand mal seizure during labor.

She managed to hide it from everyone, or so she thought, until she was diagnosed, she also thought that people might think she was crazy. All that time her family thought she was willfully not paying attention to them and making faces at times.

When I first found Micropsia on the internet I was surprised that it can also be associated with epilepsy.

Thanks, aghogday.

Also taken from that wiki article is this:

.

I think mine is just psychological rather than medical. I couldn't find any connections between this condition and autism. The fact that both the author and I have experienced it is probably pure coincidence.