confusing feelings on fingers, "thick" and "thin" at the same time, heart beatin

I am a 27 year old female. I was talking over the phone today when my lip started to feel extremely thick, too thick to handle,  my heart started racing and then my whole face including my phone started to feel massive. It felt like I was having a panic attack. When I was a child, right before I went to sleep I would get the same sensation. I would see a massive planet against something extremely small and i would freak out and run to my parents. Today was the first day since I was a child it happened again and it was awful. I guess it's stress? 

I get the same sensations of my senses being confused. My fingers and hands will feel very heavy and thick, but at the same time light and thin. I've been having these episodes a few times a year since I was probably 12, usually just before I'm about to fall asleep. It will start in my fingers then spread to other parts of my body, including my mouth/tongue/teeth. Then I have to get up and walk around to get the feeling to go away; episodes last anywhere from 5-20 minutes. I was having an episode just now and decided to look it up online. It's interesting that so many other people have similar experiences, but I've yet to find a really good explanation.

Hi, don't worry about this. I have had the same or similar sensations from time to time ever since I can remember. Look up 'Alice in wonderland syndrome'. That's what I put mine down to anyway. When I read about this syndrome it stopped being a concern to me. Just one of those things. Hope this helps.

Thank you. It does.

I have it too ive had it since i was 5-6 years old and now im 13 and it still happens

This is called Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. I've just found the name for it after searching for about ten years.

My experiences with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome began at age 9 or 10.

My first memory of it was the sensation, upon falling asleep, particularly if I was hot or sick with fever, is a hard/soft sensation. The only way to describe it is to say that I suddenly perceived myself, my surroundings (and often, a mystery object that I was holding for which I have no name and no visual descriptors for, it is merely a sense of 'holding something') as incredibly hard, solid, dense and heavy. Almost simultaneously, as I would try and focus on the qualities of the object or become more aware of the sensation, the object would rapidly dematerialize into something light, gaseous and almost fluid. My brain would rapidly run through comparisons of what this sensation could be representing (an ice cube melting, holding a heavy paperweight etc) but then quickly dismissed them because nothing seemed to 'fit' with what I was experiencing.

Although during these times I was usually sleepy, I was also hyper-aware and very alert consciously. It feels like my body is asleep but my brain is awake.

At the same time, I felt a sense of me, my surroundings and this 'object/entity' rapidly expanding and shrinking. In an instant the item and everything around it would rapidly grow (within what seemed to be less than a second) to occupy the size of the entire universe. A split second later, and maybe even at the same time, all of that occupied space would suddenly zoom inwards, collapsing in on itself in a vacuum of sound, into the most tiny singular point on the earth right in front of me. A tiny, pin-prick of a black dot that held all existence inside it and was very very very heavy.

It reminded me of a television screen shrinking into a single dot before turning off but again this metaphor doesn't fit at all because it's only one object doing that, not every single object/person that has ever existed doing it simultaneously.

This sensation in particular was completely unnerving and terrifying to me as a child. I wanted to tell a grown up but I had no words for it. I've mentioned it to my siblings or friends and they had no idea what I was talking about. I suspected it was a paranormal experience, a psychotic symptom or some sort of residual trauma I might have suffered as a child. Even at about twelve I was concerned that the hard/soft sensation may be an indication of repressed memories of early childhood sexual abuse (scary, I know!)

I also felt a sensation, however not concurrently with the previous sensations, of rapidly being hurtled through space and time even though I was laying perfectly still in bed. This only happened once or twice but the feeling was of moving very very fast, horizontally in the direction toward my head, for about five seconds. I compared it to train travel at the time because it felt bumpy and had a slight kick of inertia at the end, rather than a perfectly fluid sense of motion.

Hi I am also another person that feels the same/similar way. I am currently feeling it and this is the closest post I can find which best describes the feeling so I decided to post!

This used to happen to me a bunch when I was younger, I’m currently 19. It used to start off where I would wake up from a dream which used to have very specific but unusual imagery and visuals and I would feel weird in the dream and wake up feeling really weird and light. The way I would describe it is all of your senses are kind of distorted and everything you touch feels lighter or heavier, and it is most current when you move slower. One sense I remember getting as a child which isn’t as current now is everything that happened felt like it was slower and like, if somebody spoke you’d pick up every little sound but in a slower speed and it used to reallyyyyy scare me, I felt separated from reality almost.

It doesn’t scare me as much now because i kind of just deal with it as it passes but when I was little it used to happen so frequent I went to the doctors because my parents were becoming concerned and I was obviously just unable to describe how it felt. The doctors put it down to something they call “Alice in wonderland syndrome” but I think they put it down to this is because of my inability to describe it which just made me feel more separated and scared.

Anyhow, if anybody knows what it’s called, how to deal with it or anything about this please reply because it still worries me and I’m hoping somebody can finally understand what this is, thanks!

Regards
Owen

I just finally decided to try to research this.
It happened to me as a child, usually in dreams which I would wake from in a severe panic. I was never able to explain it well until it happened while I was laying down for bed a few weeks ago.
I was laying in bed and became extremely conscious of my breathing. It started to feel huge. I felt like I was sensing extreme distance between myself and everything around me, but closeness at the same time. At that point I felt I could have snapped out of it if I chose to, but I waned to examine the feeling, so I honed in.
I felt a sense of extreme mass within small space. Extreme smallness and massiveness. Small/big, light/heavy, near/far. The feeling wasn't really focused on any singular thing. It gave me almost a sense of falling. Extreme dread. I wish I knew what exactly it was.

Same! This has all happened to me before multiple times and it is so confusing!

Guys, i used to feel this every time I was asleep with a fever. I called it puffy fingers. I think maybe it happened again for the first time a few weeks ago and again while driving. I noticed that i was really thursty. I think maybe it has to do with dehydration or low electrolite. It could also be blood sugar or change in body temp.

I always liked it. I would concentrate on my fat fingers, close my eyes, keep my breathing fast and short.
I would then start exploring other items to see how they felt.
My mom, brother, and I had it. My brother freaked out, but I would try to make happen, some times successful.

It is so good to read all these posts. As a small child I would sometimes have what I now refer to as my thick and thin dreams. I used to feel as though I was holding something really thick between my thumb and index finger felt yet, conversely, it felt thin at the same time. I no longer have the dreams but the sensation of thick versus thin still comes back to me at times if I am over tired or very anxious. An even stranger part is that it is also triggered when I look at large rocks or boulders such as those found in many a garden rockery. The boulder seems to represent the thick feeling in my dream. To this day (some 40 years after my childhood dreams) I still find it an unpleasant and bewildering experience. Whilst my own version may be slightly different from other individual experiences I now firmly believe I suffer from the same condition as all the other contributors to this thread. The relief to know I am not alone is huge. I only discovered the term "Alice in Wonderland syndrome" some 15 minutes ago and do not yet know much about it but it does seem a likely possibility. I have no history of any childhood trauma or drug use so have no idea why it happened - I guess it is what it is!

My 9 year old is complaining of same thing. She says her fingers and heart feel thin. She says it is hard to explain. I took her to Dr., the Dr had no answers. has anybody figured it out?

Yes i was known as a daydreamer and often caught not paying attention.Sometimes before bed I had the experience of fingers feeling massive and also maybe not at the same time but right after feeling very small and spindly and easy to move. I am not sure i actually moved them at the time. I think i was just imagining them moving. I also would feel a sensation behind my teeth or in tip of tongue that seemed to coincide.

How many of you have also had ANOTHER very unusual life experience that most other people don't believe was real, but lots of people report? Not sexual abuse , something else.