Disterbed vision, almost like virtigo, everything seems a million miles away

My eleven year old son has been complaining if the same thing.  He usually developed these when he lays down togo to sleep or when he wakes up.  It realupsets him him.  He alsmains plains that everything seems to be going really fast around him.  Hkidded of described it like you were to watch a house being bubro from the very beginning to then end in super fast motion like when the speed up a movie.

Wow, I'm glad to find this.  I remember having this often during childhood, at least as early as about 6 years old and my parents dismissed it as my imagination so I just stopped telling them about it.

Pay attention to this discussion, parents.  It might make no sense, but how often is "imagination" the inability to describe symptoms that you are teaching them not to talk about for fear of embarrassment?

The reason I'm here now is because I'm in my early 40's and this just happened to me for the first time in decades as I woke up.  Doing it now after so long alarmed me, although it had become a comforting distraction as a child.  I haven't been feeling well for a few days so this may be related.

I remember having this spontaneously while fully awake or near sleeping. I had a lot of severe headaches as a child and often these happened close to or during the headaches that I would now describe as migraines.

Unless you've experienced it, you won't possibly understand the feeling.  Your perception of spacial reality is so far off that you can't help but focus on it and try to make sense of it.  When the "far away" problem happens, it's almost like distances are inverted.  I feel simultaneously large and small.  Things that are close to my face (like a pillow) seem massive.  Objects in the room and other people seem distant and I feel tiny, but at the same time I feel larger than them and like my head is far above the floor or pillow.  Distances are exaggerated, but only perceptually, you know the actual distances and sizes. Perhaps not as a near infant, but by 6-7 you get it.  Your own hands or feet seem as distance distorted as other random objects.  You are very much centered in your head if that makes sense. Almost like your perception is originating from a tiny point deeper within in the center of your own head.

After a few years of this on and off, I started to notice tactile differences as well.  I would focus on single tiny "grains" smaller than grains of sand that (I'm not convinced they were even there) I felt by lightly touching my thumb to my finger or the tip of my tongue to my front teeth.  It was as if the more slightly I could touch the two points together, the smaller the grain I could feel and manipulate.  I could relax sensing that for quite a long time and it was oddly comforting, almost like meditation.

For a while after it almost completely stopped happening (late teens?) I actually missed it and wished I could experience it again.

In today's instance (which I haven't 100% recovered from, but it has almost completely faded) I noticed that holding my hands together with my fingers interlocked, my fingers felt very short and fat even though they are actually long and skinny.  That's something I don't remember from childhood but that I also see listed here.  I think I was so conscious of it and surprised this time that I shortened the effect.

Later in life I don't get the severe headaches anymore, but I have "normal" headaches more often than I think most people do.  I do occasionally see spots in my vision (actually spots where I can't see) preceding a headache, but the headaches are nowhere nearly as severe.  Interestingly I've found that I can read things in these spots as long as I don't try to "see" in the spots.  It's like part of my brain is processing it but it's another distortion like this topic.

I mentioned before that it's a lot like meditation and I have often wondered if this isn't just a very relaxed meditative state.  Considering that it's often seen around severe headaches and/or sleep, is the body trying to relax itself and the brain isn't quite "online"?  Is that why some people who practice deep meditation feel like they can float or leave their body?

I'm just relieved to find this discussion.  Thanks everyone.

I'm not sure how this fits with others, but for the concerned parents, I'm doing fine with no side effects that I can see. (I'm the previous poster, in my 40's)

I still have a lot of normal headaches that are generally treated as sinus/allergy problems, but I'm honestly not sure that is the case.

I'm overall very healthy and have been the same weight for about 25 years even without any real exercise. I've never been hospitalized and rarely even sick enough to see a doctor. I rarely take a sick day from work.

In the last few years I've developed very slight high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I'm improving my eating habits (less salt and grease) and I am a smoker, so having only these two symptoms is amazingly good health IMHO.

I'll try to keep this short, according to my neurologist

it is called the 'alice in wonderland effect' and is related to aural migraines, the hallucination of objects appearing far away is in 10% of cases accompanied also by it 'appearing in your face'. Most people get it ~15 minutes before the onset of migraine headache. 

However:

I never got migraines and always had both the far away and close effect. This is the first thing I can remember, I called it little-Big when I wasn't having it, but the name was so much more accurate while happens.  

Someone else described it as crumpled paper, I see it as everything not smooth, ie. a wrinkle in your shirt, a knife on your tongue, ice on your cheeks. Ideas like those combine in a unique but indescribable way to form a name of It.

I have a weakened conception of time during this 'little-Big', swinging my arms might be instantaneous or it might take an hour, impossible to tell. Only recently I noticed a bleeding of thoughts across my senses, the feeling of wrinkles in my clothing come into my mind as a 'sensation' on my cheeks, my unpronounceable name for it 'comes into my mind' through the back of my tongue as a sensation. The wrinkling is the loudest, it is similar to static noise except you know you are not actually hearing anything.

After it ends and the visual effects finally stop, you return to your normal patterns of thought and forget that name you use to describe this thing, that has no translation in any language.

You do feel insane when it happens, I can assure you I am not physiologically messed up, I'm half-way though a b.s. in Physics and was Prom King in high school. I had bad anxiety and headaches(not migraines) until i was ~14 and my neurologist put me on some drug for a year to control the serotonin levels in my brain. I attribute my current discipline and happiness to that treatment.

I still get it this 'alice in wonderland effect'/little-Big ~2-3 times a year and each time is stranger, but is always over in 15 minutes.

Wow! Google brought me here. this is my first time attempting to research this sensation/nightmare/vision experience. I thought I was the only one. I too started experiencing this as a child, especially while ill, and I'm so amazed to find out I'm not the only one. For decades I thought I was alone, or just weird. outcome to this site only expecting to find an answer about the "smalls" (further away) sensation, and was in awe when I read all these posts

Cont'd from above...Its amazing how so many people reported the same thing...and the touch sensations ( small objects feeling larger) ...and how it's all somehow connected with fever, weird nightmare/dream...and begins in childhood. Every time I heard comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd I thought " he gets it too!" .... (Lyrics:when I was a child, I had a fever, my hands felt just like two balloons") ....

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I have this too. It's kinda fun, it allows me to concentrate on my work much better, almost as if I'm in the "zone". I used a bit of google-fu and came up with this. Also check out the Dolly Zoom Effect link, further down in the description of Derealization. Hope it helps

Here's the link, sorry I forgot to post it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization

It's called macro/microsomatognosia... look it up -christa quezada

This happens to my 7 year old son also.  He wakes up crying saying everything looks very far!  It happened to him last night and also about 18 montas ago when he had a really high fever.  Tooh him to a neurologist it is called micropsia.  She thinks his is caused by migraines?  He doesn't complain of headaches, but this is how it presents.  

Thank you lord for the internet. I have only shared this with two people in my life at the risk of sounding crazy in describing what happens. My symptoms are much like what everyone describes. Usually when I have been watching television and if the back grounds are white. I also can be sleeping litely, reading, playing a video game or similar focused on an object intensly. Sometimes the vision problem will involve the phenomenon where I hear like a million conversations, distinctly and individually but at the same time it is extreamly quite. Things are huge, but small at the same time. I wear glasses but everyting has detail. If I relax and try to focus on a object passes it goes away. This started when I was five or so and happens less the older I get. In fact tonight I woke up from the episode and was able to find you all here. I have a Dr. appointment tommorow and I will show my Dr. this forum.

I have the same thing, I get maybe 5-6 episodes a year, they only last a few minutes, usually when watching tv or just talking with someone.  I'm currently in medical school, and on a recent rotation with a pediatric ophthalmologist, a patient (maybe 9 or 10 years old) said he had the same exact problem.  I couldn't believe that he described the same symptoms I had but never discussed with anyone.  The ophthalmologist thought we were both crazy.