Shrinking and expanding pictures in your mind? (sleeping)

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I have had this wierd thing I get once in awhile...used to get it alot when I was a kid. Where usually when I am sleeping, a bunch of random images would flash through my mind and shrink to really big then to really small- usually accompanied with some kind of imaginary noise to establish the change in size. And it would happen rappidly over and over in my head, used to kind of scare me and still strange to this day because I have no idea what it is or whats going on there.


Anyone know what i mean?

does it ever happen when you're awake?

you might want to look at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIWS

you got to be kidding me, lol.

OMG I think I have definately experienced this. I remember it mostly from childhood but I have had it in adulthood as well. I never knew there was a name for it.

I have had it many times when in bed (usually when ill), the bed quilt seems very heavy and the touch against my body is so stark and even oppressive. It is as though I can sense every single stitch in the quilt. I also get the sense that everything is way to close to me. It always happens with strange and unnerving thoughts.

I can't believe they called it Alice In Wonderland Syndrome! LOL. How many syndromes is it possible to have!

I used to get that when my father would yell at me. His head woudl get smaller and smaller and his voice would get fainter and fainter until he was just a little white dot against a sea of blackness and then he'd pop out of existence and I'd be left alone in complete silence and complete darkness, completely terrified yet paralyzed.

When I told my father about it years later, I don't think he grasped the seriousness of it all. I mean, I was paralyzed with terror! But his comment was, "I always *thought* you weren't listening to me."

what?

Interesting link, but I think that AIWS only occurs when the person is awake and conscious. AIWS is also a disagnosis of exclusion.

Liveandletdie, have you considered that you're probably just dreaming?

Those sound like fun dreams. Would be nice to dream.

I get that sometimes. Sometimes I wake up and feel paralyzed. I also hear conversations and music (not actual songs)

while my eyes do have to be closed for this to occur, i wouldn't say that i am sleeping...takes a while for me to sleep- could be my mind getting ready to sleep. But I can anticipate when it is going to happen before I go to sleep or try to go to sleep because this can sometimes keep me up. I can hear the size changing noise of it zooming back and forth between sizes, not loudly but definately there. It would maybe be like if you were to slide a sliding glass door back and forth over and over and faster than humanly possible.

usually happens when i'm tired or angry to the point where it becomes overload.

I find that sometimes I can feel myself falling asleep- there's a lot of shifting between real and not real, kind of like when you wake up mid-dream. It can be quite unpleasant (and I suppose where the phrase 'dropping off to sleep' comes from). Maybe you just have a variant of that?

Also, I find the colours have a 'pulsing' sensation when I try to sleep with a headache. I'm not a neurologist but headaches are associated with changes in bloodflow in parts of the brain so that may explain that, and it might also explain why you get these shifting shapes when stressed or angry (increased blood pressure and possibly also a headache too)

Is it new or have you always had it?

Nah, I rarely get it these days- used to get it a ton when I was a kid. Just happened to have it a couple of days ago and made me wonder what exactly is happening there. Both of your suggestions seem valid, probably no way to pin point it exactly just thought i'd see if others had experienced it.

The sleep transition would make sense because our sleep quality is supposed to decrease as we get older I believe? just like the rest of our body. Maybe it just changes to a different function-instead of your body growing your body is now just recovering atleast for me I need less sleep as I get older, and if I get too much then it has the opposite effect of turning into a zombie with no energy.

Well... I'm only throwing out a few ideas. If you notice it getting worse and occuring all the time, probably best to get it checked out, but if it's just the odd time, it's probably just physiological.

Yes, this is fascinating. As a child I would almost always experience hypnagogic feelings of images of strange size. Like a very large person or a very small object (smaller than it is supposed to be). that's when I knew I was finally about to be asleep, when the huge people began to fill my mind.

I've since studied lucid dreaming and I think I have more adjusted hypnagogic experiences now.

I have the same thing, the images sometimes expand and shrink like crazy, and they're the most random things and I can't think of anything else, my whole mind is filled with them. I've never actually worried because of this until now, because yesterday I had the same thing but it became serious, so the images were crazy like never and I felt like glued to my bed and then my heart started pounding faster and faster, I had cold sweat and my teeth started shaking, I couldn't swallow and started crying. Idk how but I got up and runned to my dad but I couldn't talk so just said that I can't breathe and landed on the floor breathing so heavy trying to catch breath and thought I was dying. After like two minutes I got better so I went to the toilet and drank some water and my teeth were still shaking like crazy. I went back to sleep but couldn't, I'm 15 and obviously not scared of monsters and s**t but that night I couldn't even close my eyes that's how scared I was...