unusual 'fast feeling' in my head

Wow i cant believe there is so many people like me who have/had this, im 17 and have had them since 9 or 10, the first one i remember was when i was 9 or 10 i was feeling very ill and trying to get to sleep but could not due to the 'fast feeling' or loud thought i was getting, evrything seemed slow and ALOT louder, though i was ill that night so i assumed it was something to do with that.

Well... I have read almost every comment on this post and I would like to give everyone my insight on this. First and most important.. this is NOT Alice-in-Wonderland syndrome (AIWS), also known as Todd's syndrome. I have been experiencing this from the time I was about 9 years old and I have found others (including one of my children) who experience this phenomenon. It DOES taper off as you get older, and become less terrifying when you learn to have fun with it. To make it STOP you need to do what you probably have been avoiding when it occurs.... Go to a room and talk to someone, or turn on the TV and watch something with random sounds rather than something repetitive.... MUSIC is not typically good due to RHYTHM. If you stay in a quite room where you can hear background white noise or have something that causes RHYTHM it will continue indefinitely. Rhythm is the key here.... one person spoke of it happening while playing the XBOX..... this is because of the repetitive nature of game playing and the sound that it creates. You can CAUSE this phenomenon to happen and I actually find it quite fun to play around with nowadays. You can either find something like a fan, or something that make a low rumble consistent noise, or you can simply GENTLY touch your index finger to your thumb and concentrate on to the point it feels as though your fingers are going to press through one another.... it is important to do it in seclusion, in a quiet room, preferably dark so you can concentrate. with a little practice you can make it come and go as you please.

I do not have an answer for anyone on what it is. As a matter of fact I do not think anyone has come up with a name for it. I find after I "exercise" with it, after I am done, I have a very calm peace about me. A little wore out, but calm none the less....

Well, i was just going through what you are talking about...I wanted it to stop so i was looking up maybe some technique you could do to calm the fast feeling down, and came across this site.. A little comforting that alot of people have this same problem.. Maybe we are all slowly going crazy.. Could be the water ;) ...Still don't know what it is though. It did finally stop. I'm 22 years old, and have had this same problem since i was a youngin. Maybe one day.. someone smart will give us an answer lol :)  

This used to happen to me all the time when I was younger. Sometimes, certain things in my life would trigger it like songs and things like that. I'm almost 19 and they have started up again. I always tried to slow everything else down in my life to compensate for the 'fast' feeling. I'm very happy I am not the only one.  I hope that doctors can figure out why this happens if it is something to do with anything. I feel better know that I'm not the only one looking for an answer. And to reassure me that I am not crazy.

Really interesting. However, I DO think it's Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, or something closely related. Actually it seems to me that this is what some neurologists call 'time perception disorder' (a form of AIWS). I've had it all my life - though much less so now - and my six year old seems to have developed it recently too. The 'tonal' change to the sense of movement,hearing and in my case touch, has a lot in common with 'classic' AIWS symptoms - everything is amplified, heightened and distorted. It's associated with migraine and temporal lobe epilepsy in some people, but the majority don't seem to develop these conditions. I'm sure it's benign - I always think of it as a neurological 'glitch', a fairly rare anomaly that, yes, you just grow out of.
Does anyone remember it starting with a high fever (but recurring ever after when you're perfectly well adn fever-free)? The high fever thing seems to be a common thread (AIWS can be 'triggered' by Epstein-Barr virus, but symptoms very rarely last more than six months in that case).

A quick addendum to my last post (above) - when you search for 'time perception disorder' online you come up all sorts of weird and wonderful psychological conditions! I'm not suggesting we have any of these! Better to call it a 'distorted perception of time' - check out the AIWS sites online; one in particular describes movement speeding up or slowing down as a recognised symptom of AIWS.

I also got this feeling , That as a child i too dubbed "fast feeling" and it would come on when i was alone mostly, i would feel such shock and i never liked it, and i always have panicked when it happens. I am now 20 and live with my boyfriend but when he goes home and im in the house on my own like tonight it comes on. ive never had it happen when im occupied or around people. 

I had these when I was a kid and our 8 year old son has been having them for over a year now.  Most often when he is in bed trying to fall asleep but did happen in a darkish loudish restaurant last night.  The symptoms seemed a little stronger in that environment than in his bed. Good to know it's fairly common. 

Hey, I was planning on writing a paper on this for my English class and wanted to do some research. I was surprised to find out that there are so many other people that have the same experiences. These attacks usually begin for me when I am alone and there are soft repeating noises in the background, for example a clock or fan. All of the sudden I will feel as if thing are moving faster and the room I am in is much smaller, almost like I can magnify anything I look at. As well I hear sarcastic voices in my head. If other people are around everything they say sounds sarcastic as well. Thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

im sitting here reading and going out of my mind,I need help and l can't seem to find it.

My daughter who is 5 has been having what l thought where nightmares/terrors for the past 2 years (give or take), she'd wake up screaming and crying... unable to walk properly, not able to recognise me or the things around her. This happens up to 3-4 times a week.

Aboout 12 months ago, she would get fizzy (later l found she meant dizzy), things fster and faster, falling over, scared. This lasted about 2 weeks (maybe 4 times total) and then stopped so l didn't think anymore about it. I thought maybe it was because she was just starting kinder and she was scared and didn't want to go, and those feelings caused her to panic. I did have her eyes and ears tested and everything was ok.

6 days ago it all started again, during the day. Things going faster. Things bigger and smaller all at the same time. Not able to walk properly, scared, frightened, normal everyday noises like the car starting and the doors closing would make her scream amd scream. I took her to GP and say ears and everything is fine. Maybe it's stress of starting school. She had an episode whilst in the waiting room (sent her out to watch TV so l could "talk" properly to doc). He checked her over and found her eyes were distorted and told mr that maybe it was a migraine and bigger smaller meant her head was throbbing. Referred me to paeds which i have to wair another 2 weeks for.

It's happened everyday for the past 6 days and getting more frequent. Nights are pure hell. Bigger, smaller, faster faster. Today has been the worst. 7 times thru the day, although when it does happen in daylight hours now, she seems to shrug it off. and even laugh. Like tonight we were sitting down at the table eating and she just started to laugh. Hubby, brother and l all just looked at her and asked what she was laughing at. "jack is eating faster and faster.. it's so funny" after a while we worked out she was seeing him eat in fast forward.

Tonight we're on our third episode.. Screaming, crying, faster and faster.. bigger and smaller. I am literaly going out of mind because l can't help her, l can only imagine how she ( and everyone on here) are feeling.

How can l help her?? Is there anything l can do. She just seems to want to cover her eyes and hold me.. and lf course turn the telly on.. She's finally drifted to sleep now but for how long i don't know.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, ajandj (jane)

This is amazing. When I was younger, I used to have a similar feeling. Everything would be moving 100x faster than they should have. My movements, thoughts. Even in the simplist actions like cleaning or doing my homework. I'd become so aware of myself and feel so small compared to my surroundings. I knew that it wasn't normal. I became scared and closed my eyes until the feeling had passed.

I'm 16 now and I still get these "episodes" but not as often. I suffer from terrible migrains a lot and faint quite often too. I wonder if there is a connection. I'm curious to find out if there's a medical condition or a reason to what everyone here has experienced.

I'm so glad to find out I'm not the only one. Thanks!

This is fantastic!! I always thought I was some sort of freak, because noone ever understood what I meant by 'everything rushing'. Even the doctors tried to give me pills which didn't work, because they thought it was worth a try. It is so comforting to know I am not the only one!

The best thing you can do is sit with her when it happens, remind her it will pass, and try to distract her. You will want to take her to a neurologist, she should have an EEG. Because she sees things getting bigger/smaller she probably will be identified as having Alice in wonderland syndrome. The fast/loud/hypersensitive type episodes are probably just a version of Alice in Wonderland syndrome.



As you can see on this thread, virtually everyone had the symptoms diminish or disappear in adulthood, so hopefully that will be the case for her. Because this seems to run in my family (my mother had identical episodes) I fear that my future children will have it, in which case I'll only be able to do what I listed above. Good luck.

Hi jane, you were saying how she tends to have these attacks at night. If she had any clocks or fans in her room that make distinctive ticking noises I would either replace it with one that is quiet or just remove it completely. For myself when I was younger it would tend to begin when I was sleepy and if there were any repeating sounds in my surroundings. By the way cars would make me start feeling fast as well. Just to let you know what she might be feeling since everything that you talked about I experienced... she may hear voices in her head, i remember distinctive conversations and phrases that would keep repaying in my mind again and again. The zoom in and out thing also happened to me a lot. I remember my room seeming either incredibly close or supper far away. When it would happen if I sat in a chair and had a small candy bar, that tended to help. I'm not sure if talking to her is the best thing when she is having an episode, because people that would talk to me would see supper loud and sarcastic. Maybe just some quite time may help her! I hope this will help.

seriously, l can't see ahead 20 minutes let alone days weeks or months for this "thing" to stop. This episode has been going now for 12 1/2 hours constant. It's not so bad in the day, l can console her by just sitting with her but in the night she just screams and screams. There is no noise in her room we don't actually have a tick tock clock in the house. We do have a ceiling fan in the loung but it is silent. I can't send her to school like this and l think that is making it worse because she just wants to be there. I have another GP appoint in about an hour and l'm going to tell him if he can't get me into the paeds within 24 hours, then l will go to Childrens hospital and "camo out" til they help my baby.. i feal as l am failing as a mother.. my job is to protect and make things better and l can't even do that. "Mummy, just make it stop.. make it go away.. why aren't you helping me"..

Oh man, it's cutting  me to the bone.....