Medical Strange Sensation starting to fall asleep

[fleem]

Good grief. All these years I thought it was just me that got this!

I started to grow out of it around 35-40 years old, and now I never get it (early fifties).

Its an unnerving experience and I'd have to think about something else, get up and drink some milk and read a book, etc. With me it was infinitesimal to infinitely large, at slightly faster than 1 Hz. Its not anything visual--just the thought of something (not necessarily myself) that toggles between infinite and infinitesimal. Getting something in my stomach almost always helped. Sometimes associated with that sensation (really, thought or impression--not sensation) was the thought of a sharp object/large needle embedded in the small of my back. Ain't the brain fascinating? It is loaded with feedback paths with gains and delays barely adjusted to prevent oscillation (usually). It seems neurons adjust their gain just below that threshold, ideally. Somehow keeping things barely below oscillation improves brain utility, I suppose--kinda like a regenerative radio receiver--makes it more sensitive and discriminating. Maybe a lot of simple thought processes can be accomplished by iteratively processing the data.

 

[schism]

I'm 51 and have asked people about this all my life. (in fact, I thought, did I start this thread and then forget about it?) It seems fairly common. For me it was vacillating between the two extremes of big and small, sometimes with the sensation of much complexity (someone's earlier mention of dirtiness) I "felt" the presence of many voices (although unintelligible and not exactly hearing) and an out of body experience like hovering above. I can still feel it if I think about it (even now) and movement does not disrupt it. I've had it while driving! It doesn't happen as frequently or intensely anymore. But there have been plenty of lesser incidents.

Mostly, these are a disconnect between head and hands. I look at my hands, feel them and they are working but they do not feel like a part of me. But also as feeling like I am hovering just a foot or so above my body. As a child, I had out of body experiences and other visual hallucinations in a fever delirium, and tried to do OBE through my teens and twenties with no luck.

I do get frequent headaches although I have never been diagnosed with migraines (I don't think they are that severe) but very long lasting. No other visual disturbances other than "seeing" little vibrating and flashing dots that are infinitely small against the sky or a blank wall at all times.

 

[Rusalke]

I used to have exactly the same thing as a kid now and then: big and little at the same time. I thought it was weird, but it also felt cool, and I would try to encourage it once it started, but that would wreck it.

Anyway, it's a Migraine Aura.

You may object that you don't get Migraines, but Migraine is actually a four part syndrome, and a person can have any of the four parts in the absence of the other:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=305792
As Mentor Evo attests in that thread, a person can have Migraine auras without ever having had a Migraine headache. (But maybe you have have the headaches at some other time.)


Here's a description from a Migraine site:


http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e43013/e46075/index_en.html

It seems to happen to people at any time, not just when lying down on the verge of sleep:



Descriptions of other body-image disturbances during Migraine aura:

http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e43013/e46067/index_en.html

Sense of body position and location in space is processed in the parietal lobes of the brain so this is most likely some migraine activity in one or both of those lobes.

did you ever experience this when you were experiencing any kind of stress? Also, dd any images come to mind when it was happening?

 

[Moonbear]

I'm 51 and have asked people about this all my life. (in fact, I thought, did I start this thread and then forget about it?) It seems fairly common. For me it was vacillating between the two extremes of big and small, sometimes with the sensation of much complexity (someone's earlier mention of dirtiness) I "felt" the presence of many voices (although unintelligible and not exactly hearing) and an out of body experience like hovering above. I can still feel it if I think about it (even now) and movement does not disrupt it. I've had it while driving! It doesn't happen as frequently or intensely anymore. But there have been plenty of lesser incidents.

Mostly, these are a disconnect between head and hands. I look at my hands, feel them and they are working but they do not feel like a part of me. But also as feeling like I am hovering just a foot or so above my body. As a child, I had out of body experiences and other visual hallucinations in a fever delirium, and tried to do OBE through my teens and twenties with no luck.

I do get frequent headaches although I have never been diagnosed with migraines (I don't think they are that severe) but very long lasting. No other visual disturbances other than "seeing" little vibrating and flashing dots that are infinitely small against the sky or a blank wall at all times.

Go see a neurologist or psychiatrist. These can be symptoms of a neurological disorder (not just migraines...we have too many people here who would like to push their own pet diagnosis on everyone here, but are not qualified to make any diagnosis, and should not be making any diagnosis anyway).

 

[sas3]

I have gone through all the links and it seems like this is what I have been experiencing however for me it doesn’t seem to be associated with anybody parts getting bigger/smaller.
It more of an illusion of a thing such as a speck of dust or small pebble that seem very large or the point of a pin that is holding back some incredibly large force.
I have never had the headaches associated with this, but do have the pulsing sensation and an increased sensitivity to sound and light at times.
I do find the experience quite enjoyable and it doesn’t seem be brought on by any type of stress.

Thanks again for all the replies and comments.

 

[bcbg]

I used to get the shrinking/expanding sensation as a kid. Basically, it feels like you're going from tiny and dense to large and light. Almost like a throbbing, but not in the physical sense. It's nearly impossible to describe. I think that it's probably quite common, but few people have actually felt concerned (or articulate) enough to try to research it. It's like trying to describe a color to a blind person. It took me several failed attempts at googling to find something that I felt best fit my experience.

 

[whs]

Hey! I thought I was the only one that felt like this at random times at night. Happens more if I go to bed drunk.

 

[stsolid]

I can't believe i finally found someone who knows what I've been tryin to explain for years now.I get the same big and small phenomenon.I also feel like time is moving frame by frame.it stays with me even if i get up and move around and i also can make it re-occur.it feels similar to some sort of obe but there is no snapping back sensation and is a more subtle feeling.it happened much more when i was a child also and i could will it by thinking about it before i went to sleep.thank you so much for helping describe this and any more descriptions would maybe help us figure this thing out finally as it is very hard to describe.everyone I've told about this don't understand and looks at me like I am crazy.

 

[sas3]

Welcome to the Physics Forums STSOLID, what did you do a search for to find this thread?
I know what you mean by saying that everyone looks at you like you are crazy when describing this sensation.
If you haven’t already take a look at some of the links about Migraine Aura in the replies above.

 

[FredericGos]

OH MY GOD!

I've been on this forum for a long time browsing treads etc. How come I never saw this!?

When I was around 8-9, I started to have a reccuring dream. It was basically me walking around what can best be described as a desert. All sounds and movement felt exagerated and I felt some kind of pulse. A bit like when your heart beat increases, allthough my heart was beating normally. At the time, after some month of dreaming this 2-3 times a week, I described the feeling to my mother, but she could not understand. After a couple more month I started to experience this feeling while fully awake. That scared me a lot I remember. It scared me to the point that I started not wanting to go to bed because I was afraid of having the dream...

So, for a long time in my childhood, I had this. I can say yes to many of the descriptions in the thread (small/big, exagerated noises, etc). I eventually learned to live with it.

At the age around 20 the dreaming stopped and I haven't had the dream ever since. But I still get the feeling once in a while. Often it is when I can't fall asleep, get up again to drink some milk or something, then go back to bed. boom. It starts and lasts for 5 minutes or so. Normally it is quite a disturbing feeling, especially if I lay still in my bed. When the feeling doenst stop after some minutes, I usually get up again to move around. (movement seems to dampen it)

These days this happens to me 5-10 times a year or so. I am 43 now and I know its not something dangerous. So sometimes, when it happens, I try to analyse what I feel and find an explanation. Thats why I learned that the pulse sensation is not my heart beating faster.
Last time it happened, I noticed that my vision also gets a bit distorted. I immediately concluded that what I am actually seeing is the quantum fluctuation of space. ;)

For all my life, I never found anybody who understood this, and then I see this thread :)
Nice to know I am not the only one out there.

br
Frederic

 

[kathrineder]

i have had the seize - sound experience too. many times when i was younger, and often fever related. i am a very detailed dreamer, but these strange sensations were different from dreams.

my "visions" usually manifested as huge massive massive bomb like objects in space, who were about to crush a tiny small house that was floating around between them. the visuals came with very low rythmic sounds of under water metal.

then I fully awake and my body feels like it is made of 100's of cubes. i ran to my mothers room, screaming, cryoing, tryng to explain what was happening to my body. i couldn't touch anything now could i shake off that feeling. i usually ended up throwing up.

thats what i remember from my childhood. nowadays, i have the sound sensation and a mild size sensation a few times a year.

has anyone found an article yet?

 

[riio]

I've had an extremely similar experience while trying to sleep and it's made me wonder about it since it happened, not sure my age but i remember it being well before teenage years, I was maybe 7 or 8.

I could have woken up from sleep or been trying to fall asleep but I remember being awake in bed, the feeling of everything around me being very large and almost far away. I remember at first a confusion of if i was feeling large or small compared to my room. It was a visual perspective as well as physical in that i felt a magnetic feeling that added to the feeling of being way out of proportional size with my environment. My hands felt like they needed to hold something and I couldn't get rid of this perceptive feeling by holding a baseball or round object for some reason or anything smaller than my hand so i had used two hockey pucks, the feeling of the edges of the pucks helped the weakness in my hands and the over all feelling I was experiencing. It's hard to explain the mangetic feel as It wasn't as if i felt i was being pulled or pushed it was an overall feeling of weakness you could say. I also remember hearing sounds before I had figured out holding on to something helped, the sounds were as if a needle or something high pitched was scraping or falling into a bathtub or something of that material. I did not see a bathtub or anything like that it was just a feeling of that sound and spatial perception you get when you hear this in a normal situation.

I havn't read every reply to this post but some of the descriptions are shocking and bring back memories of some of the feelings i was experiencing, I think someone mentioned a particle of dust, that was one of the first things I thought of when I was in my bed. I remember thinking of a large maybe empty metal gas furnace in my old basement with dust under it, maybe because of the metalic sounds i was hearing that are similar to echos giving enormous spatial perceptions. Another feeling i remember was that i was in a small space but my body was enormous in the capacity of that space. All this was mentioned to my doctor at the time who i think mentioned claustrophobia which I've never had a problem with till this day.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? I've also had a history of sleep walking and possibley lucid dreams where I feel conscious and awake but can't move. This has all stopped now that I'm older into my 20's but I still experience very realistic dreams.

 

[334dave]

i don't have the realistic dreams so often at 56
but when i do i enjoy them..
i rarely have the close eyes and open them awake and refreshed
once in a year if lucky

 

[atlantan]

hello everyone,
i'm new to the forum. apparently i finally found the right search words to find others that have this same experience. I've had it since childhood. to me if feels like I've suddenly become less dense and blown up. like the space between my atoms has expanded. very uncomfortable. i also have aural migraines occasionally with flashing prism circles in my sight. the difference is that i don't have to be falling asleep to feel this. it is always when I'm in bed, but sometimes wide awake. and i have the incredibly intense and detailed dreams. like being on a different planet... stuff like that. honestly, I'm just happy to see that there are others with the same feeling. really thought i was alone in that one! oh yeah, the sleep paralysis too. waking and seeing things in my room (dreaming) but being unable to move. quite terrifying. anyway, thanks for posting. made me feel a lot better.

 

[Count Iblis]

I have this every time when I have a fever. It will start after two or three days, unless I lower the fever using paracetamol. I will also have dreams while being awake.

 

[liberal]

I just remembered one more emotional aspect of the dream - the tremendous difference in size between the small (which incredibly gentle and harmless) and the gigantic (extremely brutal and forceful). And then I remembered the Dr. Seuss/Chuck Jones cartoon "Horton hears a who", featuring a tiny dust speck and a struggle against terrible odds ;)

 

[Count Iblis]

I think that extreme sleep deprivation can also cause this. Some years ago, I was traveling and the combination of jet lag and travel schedule left me awake for more than 70 hours. During that 70 hours there were opportunities to sleep, but I could not fall asleep at those times. After 50 hours or so, what happened when trying to sleep was that after closing my eyes, I would dream but I was still awake. I would also get similar sensations as described in this thread.

When walking outside I thought I was hearing people talking. But it later transpired that this couldn't have been the case, so I was dreaming at that time too.

Finally, after more than 60 hours, I got a proper two hours of sleep. I went to bed, closed my eyes for what felt like just a minute, and then opened my eyes again, looked at my watch and was shocked to see that it was two hours later. I had absolutely no idea how two hours could have passed in what seemed like a blink of the eye.

Since then I had trouble sleeping properly.

 

[hl_world]

I thought it was just me that got this too. Sometimes happens when I'm sick and really tired. To describe the feeling accurately, I suppose I would have to say it would be like taking a tiny sewing needle, stabbing something big, dense and soft like an armchair and picking it up with the needle. It seems I also alternate between focusing on big and small objects i.e. the needle & armchair. Not a hallucination that looks like you're seeing it with your eyes but with your imagination.

Even further back in my sleep-life I dreamed of large events that were extremely insignificant in relation to even larger events they lead up to.

Sometimes I dreamed of interacting with people before they operate heavy, loud machinery like a pneumatic drill or a chainsaw and they concentrate so hard on it while shaking violently backwards and forwards with the machine in a blur. They no longer seem like people more like machines themselves & I can't talk to them. But sometimes they stop for a few seconds and return to normal but without warning suddenly start again.

 

[Johanna M. G.]

Hello. I believe I have the same weird sensation you guys have being describing. For example I have being experiencing this sensation since I was a small girl. It usually occurs in the night. At first I did not know what triggered it, or how it started but ever since I have being getting older it seems like I, myself trigger it. I’am 19 now and today I experienced it once more, it had being like a year since the last time. But that's how it is, it happens like once or twice a year, the most 3 times. For example today i was laying in my bed and i started thinking of objects, light objects, like a needle, or a skinny twig and then i start picturing it in my mind, then something heavy like a heavy mattress, or a heavy metal, rock, etc came into my mind also. when i put them together in my mind i start getting nervous and my heart races faster. I start thinking of the needle or twig holding the heavy object, then my hands feel fake, they feel skinny than thick. I have to get up and go drink water or do something because i feel like crying, i want to run and just make it stop. usually needles come in my thoughts and i try washing my hands with hot/warm water to stop the weird sensation, and sometimes it helps but it last almost like 7-10 minutes. I call this my "panic attacks", and when i was younger i would run and cry to my mom, she would massage my hands and tell me nice stories so i would calm down. now I’am older and i don’t want to worry my mom, so like today, i just went to the restroom and tried to calm myself. Every time i try explaining it to someone they think I’am crazy, and usually they think my hands went numb and i’m experiencing the tingling sensation BUT is not that, I can assure that is not that, i can definitely tell the difference. I have gone with doctors, and they think I’m just going trough a phase! I don't believe that. I’m glad I found this cite. I hope someone can talk to me and we can eventually find out what this whole thing is.
I have written journal entries in which I’am experiencing this weird sensation, I want to talk to someone about it, someone that understands me, that is going trough the same stuff. thanks. i hope this helps someone

 

[zoobyshoe]

Hello. I believe I have the same weird sensation you guys have being describing. For example I have being experiencing this sensation since I was a small girl. It usually occurs in the night. At first I did not know what triggered it, or how it started but ever since I have being getting older it seems like I, myself trigger it. I’am 19 now and today I experienced it once more, it had being like a year since the last time. But that's how it is, it happens like once or twice a year, the most 3 times. For example today i was laying in my bed and i started thinking of objects, light objects, like a needle, or a skinny twig and then i start picturing it in my mind, then something heavy like a heavy mattress, or a heavy metal, rock, etc came into my mind also. when i put them together in my mind i start getting nervous and my heart races faster. I start thinking of the needle or twig holding the heavy object, then my hands feel fake, they feel skinny than thick. I have to get up and go drink water or do something because i feel like crying, i want to run and just make it stop. usually needles come in my thoughts and i try washing my hands with hot/warm water to stop the weird sensation, and sometimes it helps but it last almost like 7-10 minutes. I call this my "panic attacks", and when i was younger i would run and cry to my mom, she would massage my hands and tell me nice stories so i would calm down. now I’am older and i don’t want to worry my mom, so like today, i just went to the restroom and tried to calm myself. Every time i try explaining it to someone they think I’am crazy, and usually they think my hands went numb and i’m experiencing the tingling sensation BUT is not that, I can assure that is not that, i can definitely tell the difference. I have gone with doctors, and they think I’m just going trough a phase! I don't believe that. I’m glad I found this cite. I hope someone can talk to me and we can eventually find out what this whole thing is.
I have written journal entries in which I’am experiencing this weird sensation, I want to talk to someone about it, someone that understands me, that is going trough the same stuff. thanks. i hope this helps someone

Hi Johanna,

I wanted to ask you what kind of doctor you went to. Was it a neurologist, or just a general practitioner?

 

[Johanna M. G.]

it was just a regular doctor, i went in for a physical check up and i told her and she just said not to worry that maybe i was going trough a phase :/

 

[Johanna M. G.]

Hi Johanna,

I wanted to ask you what kind of doctor you went to. Was it a neurologist, or just a general practitioner?

Hi Zoobyshoe

it was just a regular family doctor.
i went in for my regular check up and I decided to just speak about the problem.
she just told me not to worry that i was going trough a phase.
but its not a phase, i mean c’on i have beeing experiencing this since i was like 5.

 

[zoobyshoe]

it was just a regular doctor, i went in for a physical check up and i told her and she just said not to worry that maybe i was going trough a phase :/

OK.

Explain in more detail what you mean when you say your hands feel fake.

 

[Johanna M. G.]

yeah for example it feels fat then skinny as if my fingers were needles or twigs and my skin around it was fake. if i start thinking about it, i start getting it. its really freaky. and scary. as i talk about it i feel like is happening but not strongly. theirs a another website were a lot more people explain it a little better than i dohttp://www.steadyhealth.com/confusing_feelings_on_fingers___thick__and__thin__at_the_same_time__heart_beatin-t149789-0-asc-0.html

 

[Johanna M. G.]

Hi Johanna,

I wanted to ask you what kind of doctor you went to. Was it a neurologist, or just a general practitioner?

OK.

Explain in more detail what you mean when you say your hands feel fake.

yeah for example it feels fat then skinny as if my fingers were needles or twigs and my skin around it was fake. if i start thinking about it, i start getting it. its really freaky. and scary. as i talk about it i feel like is happening but not strongly. theirs a another website were a lot more people explain it a little better than i dohttp://www.steadyhealth.com/confusing_feelings_on_fingers___thick__and__thin__ at_the_same_time__heart_beatin-t149789-0-asc-0.htm

 

[zoobyshoe]

yeah for example it feels fat then skinny as if my fingers were needles or twigs and my skin around it was fake. if i start thinking about it, i start getting it. its really freaky. and scary. as i talk about it i feel like is happening but not strongly. theirs a another website were a lot more people explain it a little better than i dohttp://www.steadyhealth.com/confusing_feelings_on_fingers___thick__and__thin__at_the_same_time__heart_beatin-t149789-0-asc-0.html

Wow, there were a lot of people with the same thing: all mostly in the hands.

I think the kind of doctor you have to see about this kind of thing is a neurologist. I have the feeling that it's something they will have run into before and have figured out. If all those people on that one site have it, I'd figure there are a lot more, and if it's that common then neurologists will have treated people for it.

What country do you live in?

 

[Johanna M. G.]

Wow, there were a lot of people with the same thing: all mostly in the hands.

I think the kind of doctor you have to see about this kind of thing is a neurologist. I have the feeling that it's something they will have run into before and have figured out. If all those people on that one site have it, I'd figure there are a lot more, and if it's that common then neurologists will have treated people for it.

What country do you live in?

yeah and in this cite i also found the other part of how i start thinking of light/heavy objects. For example a needle holding a mattress up. Usually is needles that roam in my mind. and i found that many people in this cite seem to have tat in their head once this weird sensation starts. I live in the USA

 

[zoobyshoe]

yeah and in this cite i also found the other part of how i start thinking of light/heavy objects. For example a needle holding a mattress up. Usually is needles that roam in my mind. and i found that many people in this cite seem to have tat in their head once this weird sensation starts. I live in the USA

OK. What you need to do is get an appointment with a neurologist. A regular doctor isn't going to have heard of anything like this, and you're right: if it's been happening since you were a kid it's obviously not a "phase", whatever the hell that means anyway. These episodes are clearly upsetting you and I think if any kind of doctor knows what they are it will be a neurologist.

 

[Monique]

zoobyshoe is right, it will be best to make an appointment with a neurologist to discuss your feelings.

 

[sas3]

This feeling is called macrosomatognosia and microsomatognosia, here is a site that explains it.

http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e43013/e46020/index_en.html"

Hope this helps, personal I enjoy the feeling, though I have had it so intense that it became a bit scary.

 

[Hobart]

I have had this sensation and was trying to describe it to someone today and it's how I ended up here. There are few things however that I had that were not mentioned by anyone and I wanted to know if anybody else had had these symptoms/sensations as well
1 Fingers feeling incredibly thin and everything you touch feels immense followed by the reverse where the fingers feel very fat and everything you touch feels tiny.

2 During the onset of the sensation I have a smell that I can only describe as stale nuts.

All the explanations about denseness are exactly what I felt as well. My whole body was totally absorbed in the sensation and as a kid it used to really scare me.

 

[slider142]

Interesting, I didn't know this sensation was so popular. It's similar to my momentary feeling that a book or small item is ridiculously massive, not in size, but in some sort of phantom pseudoweight (doesn't feel heavy as in difficult to hold/lift, just incredibly 'massive'. I cannot describe the sensation accurately).
Ie., you can open the cover of the book without physical difficulty, but there is a nonphysical massiveness to the cover that makes it disconcerting to work with, like a sinister rumbling bass sound (perhaps it was a moment of synesthetic hallucination between the sleeping and waking states). As I grew older the frequency of this sensation, as well as hypnogogic sleep paralysis, waned.

 

[Meegz]

It's so reassuring to find others who have experienced this sensation. I'm 24 now but I haven't felt that feeling since I was about 12. That big/small feeling was bizarre and a lonely experience because my parents wouldn't really understand when I ran to them crying about it.

I've also experienced some things that I feel are related to this sensation. It sounds strange but occasionally as a child I would hear this ominous calm male voice when it was quiet. More often than not it seemed like it came from an unplugged radio in my bedroom. I would hear it mostly while I was in bed so I would have to hum loudly to drown it out. It scared me a lot but went away eventually. Ever since then I've feared that I had latent schizophrenia and it would reoccur eventually. I would also sometimes experience a feeling that tiny people were walking on me, and that my fingertips were soft and mushy like foam.

I'm now concluding that perhaps these sensations are just a side affect of our brain development during childhood, but I would be very interested to read more articles about it.

On a side note, there was a night where I took a tab of LSD having no idea what I was getting myself into. All these sensations I experienced as a child engulfed me, albeit with 100 times the intensity and duration. After that night I've never been more thankful to be on this solid plain of reality. I get the feeling that beyond our bodies there is nothing but a swirling sea of hysteria and our brains are sophisticated enough filter out most of it.

 

[nismaratwork]

There are many manifestation of hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations, and they are quite common. It'a thought that this is often the cause of the "alien abduction" experience of paralysis in bed, lights, and strange figures. For some it's mild, others never experience this, and for some it's quite terrifying. You are certainly not alone in this, and it's not a sign of mental illness or damage

 

[Monique]

This thread has run its course. We've found out the name for the strange sensation that has been described by the majority of people in this thread, which is macrosomatognosia or it's opposite microsomatognosia. Also known as Alice in Wonderland syndrome. More information can be found here: http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e43013/e46020/index_en.html"

I'm closing the thread, because we don't encourage personal accounts in this forum. If you want to know more about the science behind Alice in Wonderland syndrome, feel free to start a new subject.