What’s that? Is it some kind of sensory issues?

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I was once writing about it in the past here but now I have decided to post a thread on this. It happened to me many times during last years when I was in bed with my eyes closed but not falling asleep yet that I suddenly got a feeling things were getting bigger and in the same time getting closer to me at full speed or on the opposite - that their diameter was getting smaller until they were only a small point and they're getting closer to me fast as well.

And simultaneously those things were getting darker or brighter in the same time even though I couldn't REALLY see this because my eyes were closed as I mentioned. I even have no idea what's the frequency of this interesting phenomenon but if I were to guess, I'd say it may happen to me once a month or two (yet now I haven’t experienced this for a long time).

Do you have similar experiences?

I know the feeling when I'm at the edge of sleep & my sense of scale goes all wonky. I go from a tiny speck in the universe, to filling the universe (or so it seems.) The sensation has also come upon me when I'm wide awake, but to a lesser extent. I will be looking at someone on a TV screen & they will suddenly fill my perception - as though they are in the room with me, regardless of the size of their image on the screen. When I was much younger, I tried to explain this phenomenon to adults & they thought I was ill (even though I felt completely fine.) So I quickly learned to just not talk about it.

Is that similar to what you are describing?

This is why I love these forums. All the random crap that I've never talked about because I figured it was just me experiencing gets brought up by someone else!

I do this a lot when I'm getting close to falling asleep. My memory is very visual, so if I think about anything the proportions of things in the image will be all out of whack and they'll keep shifting.

I’d say so but contrary to your experiences, mine concern ONLY the bedtime, it never happened to me that I felt it while watching TV nor under any other circumstances. And it’s not like that I’m talking about things that really exist and are in my room with me, I was thinking about something like small spots, points existing only in my imagination, changing their size.

What do you mean by saying that adults thought you to be ill? Ill like mentally ill, crazy enough to have some weird delusions or ill like for example having a fever and hence those strange feelings?

Thanks, you just gave me an idea for a new thread! I'll post it later.

They were concerned that I might have a fever & be hallucinating.

Often in the hypnogogic state (that transition between wakefulness and sleep) I would feel like I was floating and sometimes slowly spinning.

I get that too except my version is sparkies (little tiny, fuzzy colored dots floating towards & away from me & sometimes making swirly patterns). But this can be almost constant for me. Though I have seen images or heard dreams in my head b4 I have them (I usually try not to sleep 'til these images/auditory waking dreams pass so I don't dream about them when actually asleep).

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp2384362.html#2384362

Anyone else who has it?

It sounds a bit like Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_W ... d_syndrome

It's not a syndrome (at least for what the OP described).

Often in the hypnogogic state (that transition between wakefulness and sleep) people (both AS and NT) expirience the following sensation:

- moving
- falling
- floating
- resizing of body part
etc...

all of them have the same reason and around 20% of the population experienced them at least once in their life. Basically it's a shortcut of the usual brain routine to fall asleep. Usually the routine cut off the consciusness and THEN cut off the sonse of the body. Sometimes the routine break and go the other way. So when suddendly your consciusness can't percive or percive in a "distorted" way your body or environment you have the previously said things.

This is interesting because now that you mention it, I did experience something very much like what the OP described and at the time I did have a very high fever. It was definitely sensory overload or something akin to that. It involved a sound, like a buzzing, in my head, like a motor perhaps, and a feeling in my entire body that was strange, pins and needles all over, but somewhat pleasant. It also involved a speeding up or sensation that my mind was traveling somewhere very fast, faster than it ever had before. The only unpleasant part of this experience centered on my teeth, which felt enormous and hard as cement in my mouth and touching them together, top and bottom, was painful but exquisite at the same time. If that makes sense to anyone.

Now, the thing that is really interesting about this is that I was able to duplicate and re-experience the original episode any time I chose to for many, many years afterward. I would be in bed, about to go to sleep, and say to myself, "Let me see if I can do it again." Of course, I never spoke of this to anyone. I referred to this state of mind as "going fast". I can still do it if I have the mind to, but I haven't tried it lately. It doesn't just happen. I have to initiate it or give myself the suggestion.