Going to sleep and seeing objects getting smaller and larger
Posted , 23 users are following.
Hi there I am 28 years old and ever since i was a little girl i have had this reoccurance that has always annoyed me and it wasnt until today i actually spoke of it to my mum and she also claimed that she has had this aswell over the time.
Basically when i am off to sleep and my eyes are closed i can see a black background and objects in a distance that a very small and then they are moving/bouncing around and getting closer to me and becoming so big its untrue. I have seen and felt my thumb enlarge and then move around and then get smaller etc, my tongue and legs and also random other objects too. But when i come to open my eyes i am feeling really dizzy and faint and obviously the objects etc have stopped but then asoon as i reclose my eyes it happens again and again. Then i don't have this again for another year or so and is exactly the same thing that happens. It not a nice feeling but very strange. Just wondered if anybody else knows exactly what i am talking about and had this experience aswell?? Would be very interesting if you had.
I am not into drugs, hardly drink, have depression but this started when i was around 5 years old onwards.
Thanks
Emz xx
2 likes, 31 replies
lily65668 Emzleeds
Edited
Someone is bound to come in and tell you that you ought to see a neurologist urgently because this can be a sign of various neurological diseases. Although this is true, it really isn't the case when it's been going on for years with no other symptoms. Neurological diseases advance quite quickly and, as you say, you've had it for 23 years now, with no ill-effects. I've had it since early childhood too and am in perfectly good health at age 72. (I'm a former neuro nurse, btw.)
I agree that it can be annoying, as it can wake you up with a jump if something seems to be zooming at you. But it's no more than that, especially if it's not happening every single night. And if it's any consolation, it gets better with age. It started happening less frequently from my late 30s and dropped off very sharply after the menopause, together with another (probably related) sleep disorder that runs in my family. These days it only happens once or twice a year.
Emzleeds lily65668
Edited
23mgarmon1 lily65668
Posted
I'm 17, female, and had this since I was about 10 or younger. I have ADHD, depression (for about 2 years now), and I'm sure some anxiety condition.
Zigangie Emzleeds
Edited
I think you are describing hypnogogic imagery, it's the state between awake and sleep.
You are seeing it rather soon though.
I used to be able to induce this at will when I was younger. Then go on to have very lucid dreams (where when I was dreaming I knew I was and could to a degree affect the way the dream turned out).
I think some people have it who have sleep paralysis problems as well.
Emzleeds Zigangie
Edited
LivD_88 Emzleeds
Edited
I am fifteen years old, and i have had this dream many many times. i think it started when i was around 4 years old. i remember seeing a sort of black and white background type thing, then seeing an object. it could be anything. at one point i remember it being a bag of Halloween candy getting insanely big to the point you cant even comprehend. and then a little while later it would get insanely small to the point where you cant imagine. another time it was my Mom. she would get really big and really small. of course i could never explain this as a young child, however i would scream at the top of my lungs. my parents would run into my room and try to snap me out of it, but it was difficult for them. i dont remember this, however i do remember waking up in my moms arms but falling onto my bed and sweating a lot. everytime i opened my eyes, i was okay, but it was there every time i closed my eyes. My mom called it night terrors but im not sure if thats what it was. i used to get it every few nights and sometimes multiple times a night. it lasted about 5 years or so before i started to get them less frequently. i dont get it anymore, however if i think about it enough, can still see it. everytime now i think about it, it makes me cry. im not sure why at all, because a childhood dream shouldnt be something i cry about, but i cant hold back my tears. i hadn't explained the visual to my parents until i was 14, and they had said that neither one of them had experienced anything like it before. another thing i forgot to mention that i havent seen or read from anyone else, was that i had really loud ringing in my ears when this happened and i had to wear ear plugs to bed. i think that was another reason why i screamed at the top of my lungs when i was experiencing this. Also i know it sounds bad, but i feel kind of comforted by knowing that im not the only one who has felt/seen this.
lily65668 LivD_88
Posted
LivD_88, you really don't need to worry about this. It really isn't anything to worry about at all. The general name for odd things that happen to us, or that we do, associated with sleep is a parasomnia.
There are all sorts of parasomnias. I have two different ones myself. These things really aren't all that uncommon, I think it's just that most of us have learned not to talk about them for fear of being thought crazy! (Which we're not, of course.) You just need to accept that these things occasionally happen to you.
I also have the ringing in my ears sometimes. In my case, this is associated with something called sleep paralysis, which you can google if you want to. Not everyone who has sleep paralysis is actually aware of the paralysis during episodes, but may have all the other symptoms.
Incidentally, ear plugs are very bad for your ears, and won't make any difference anyway, as the ringing is generated inside your head.
It may well be that this will go away as you get older, as many people have temporary sleep disorders in their teens. Even if it persists - as it has in my case - you just need to accept it as normal for you.
And I don't see why you should feel bad about being comforted by hearing that others have the same thing. This is perfectly natural. When my own sleep disturbances started they were much scarier than yours, but that was more than 50 years ago, when there was no internet, so it took me a long time to find out that others had the same thing. I remember being very relieved too when I did find out!
makenzie42719 LivD_88
Posted
This also happened to me when I was young, one time I remember I was sitting in the back of my mom's car and I was holding a small piece of wrapping paper that had a cute design on it and then suddenly the piece of paper starting growing larger and larger until it was taking up the whole back seat and suffocating me. It is hard to describe, I'm not sure if I was dreaming or not because it felt very real and I remember being very scared and gasping for air and trying to explain what happened to my mom. Obviously it was traumatic enough for me to still remember to this day and at one point I thought that I might have experienced Alice in Wonderland syndrome, but seeing these replies I think that this is linked to sleep paralysis. I'm 21 now and haven't experienced the paper incident since I was a child but now I have very chronic sleep paralysis to the point where I have insomnia and fears of sleeping. My mom also has sleep paralysis so I'm guessing I got it from her because they say it's hereditary. I can't find anyone on the internet who had my exact experience though, most people say that objects or their surrounding will get larger or smaller but I haven't heard anyone who has felt suffocated or panicked like I had when I was a child. If this has happened to anyone reading this, I would love to hear your experience so that I can try to better understand what I was going through.
taija21211 LivD_88
Posted
i know exactly how you feel i hardly slept as a child and when i did i slept with the lights on, one time i had this happen to me and i woke up screaming and ran to my mom to tell her that my sisters boyfriend took her but i never told anyone that i would have these things happen to me and now im 19 and found out my mom and sister both had this happen too its called hypnogogic imagery. It made me tear up talking about it too. My sister explained it to be some sort of a mind seizure but nothing that can harms you
dylan87114 LivD_88
Posted
this is exactly what happends to me thanks you for letting me know im the only one
LivD_88 makenzie42719
Posted
I'm 17 now, and for years i've been doing research. I do understand the suffocating feeling. I used to get that too when i had these "episodes". sorta like the object, in your case, the wrapping paper, takes up all the room, and all of the air. feeling almost clausterphobic. even if the object isnt shaped the way that would accurately take up space, it still makes it so uncomfortable to the point of panic. that feeling was similar to mine, however i was always asleep. i could imagine it when i was awake, but it never gave me the sickening feeling unless it was brought on by itself when i was sleeping. For a while, i too wondered if it was the Alice in wonderland syndrome, however i believe that with that, it happens quite frequently throughout the day aswell. i still don't have a solution to what it was/is, but it still is very unsettling to think about.
LivD_88 dylan87114
Posted
Thanks for your reply! yeah, there are many people who had similar experiences. its been like 10 years for me since i last experienced this, but i still remember it like it was yesterday.
LivD_88 taija21211
Posted
I have wondered many times about it being a type of seizure. My mom told me that while this was happening to me, i would be completely dead weight. she said it seemed like my body was there but my conciousness was somewheres else. my body never shook like that of a seizure, but my eyes would be wide open. if she moved something in front of my face, my eyes would never follow it because i couldn't see it. i guess from an outsiders point of view it can be very scary aswell. i remember that as i was coming out of it, i would try to listen to my moms voice. when was able to see again, i would look around and the world would be like shape shifting. it was like the whole world was moving. everything was blurry but also my vision was totally distorted. parts of my vision was getting bigger and other parts smaller. similar to looking through a fish eye lense except instead of one big ball in the centre, it was like there were a ton of mini fish eye distortions all over the place making everything move around and change shape. this would last maybe 2-3 minutes before things would go back to normal again. after that i remember my father holding a mini garbage can up to me and i was like projectile puking. there was also this extremely, obnoxiously loud ringing in my ears that would increasingly get louder and louder and more and more high pitch. i remember i would sleep with ear plugs in because i thought it would help with the sound. (spoiler alert, it didn't) the sound was coming from inside of my head. nobody else could hear it. part of me says that its possible that it was mind seizures. another part of me says that there are so many different things that it could've been, and i'll probably never know what it actually was.
LivD_88 lily65668
Posted
Thankyou. I agree, the earplugs didn't do anything for me. haha. i guess it was just a comfort thing for me. it's been like 10 years since i've experienced this, but i'm still very curious about the subject, and it brings me comfort knowing that there's other people with similar things. i've talked to a lot of my friends about it, and they seem a bit mind boggled that i was scared of an object shrinking and growing infinitely. some say its even cool to be able to experience imagining it. i'm sure 7 year old me would’ve been very upset about that, but now i look at it as something i can look back on and feel comfort that i grew out of it at such a young age.
tyler40900 Emzleeds
Posted
hi, im 16 and had something simillar when i was younger, sometimes it would be a door increasing in size or an awkward angle of a cupboard and such but in my experience it was more of me zooming in. These dreams would also give me a lot of stress and anxiety and i grew out of them sometime maybe around the age of 9.?..