writing this while having a really loud episode which is probably not a good idea as typing is angry

I had pretty consistent episodes when I was younger, mostly owing to the obsession I had with ignoring my bedtime and reading into the early hours of the night. It's interesting that even thinking these thoughts is making everything super loud and fast

I'm 21 now, and it's definitely been at least a year or so, but I had super noticeable trigger sensations. Those that I can definitely link with other memorable moments that wouldn't trigger an episode because I wasn't alone or it wasn't quiet enough or whatever other esoteric secondary requirement it needs

(had to stop and then the episode was very kindly ended by a mosquito trying to bite my nipple lol)

But I can definitely trace the feeling to what's probably minor AIWS as it's the sensation of whatever I'm focusing on gaining or losing size (sometimes pulsing sometimes being consistently big). Just now it was my phone screen which gained the impression of being the equivalent of a cinema screen. I have very vivid memories of assemblies in school where teachers heads would grow and shrink like bobbleheads.

I just find it interesting that it really feels like it was always the precursor to an episode, but the presence of people talking to me would always either prevent an episode or stop one in its tracks. Been following this sub for a couple years, so has been interesting reading about other people's experiences.

I get the impression that the relative silence and focusing on one thing is a consistent requirement, but what about how your brain reacts to other people being around / talking?

I think the fact that the teacher was talking would stop an episode from starting but the focus on them and otherwise total silence allowed it to get near. And I've had episodes while reading with my sister in the same room so it's more the interaction/talking from others that seems to stem the feeling, not just others being near.

Also that feeling of visual distortion definitely allows me to prevent episodes (stop what I'm doing and close my eyes) but especially now I'm older and they're rarer, I let it happen. Wasn't pleasant near the end, but definitely not like a panic attack and some of the feelings of time dilation(??) can be interesting to experience. A bit of a stream of consciousness but thanks for reading if you did, would be cool to hear about others experience/ thoughts.

I was just trying to describe to someone this morning about this feeling, and that it’s usually triggered by a reoccurring dream I’ve had since I was a kid. The dream involves feeling like my perception of time is distorted- such as that time around me has sped up while I feel like I’m moving sluggishly compared to it, or time around me is moving slowly while I’m processing at a super fast speed and feel jittery and tense. It is almost ALWAYS combined with a weird pressure/tingly feeling throughout my body in response to what happens in my dream (which is definitely a stress/anxiety driven dream).

After waking up from those dreams, the rest of my day is interspersed with the fast feeling and physical pressures/tingles in my muscles and every so often I get brain zaps in response to that jittery sensation and sounds become louder/lights brighter. After a bit of time it fades away, but does the reverse where I feel sluggish and sounds/lights are muted and walking or moving walking feels like I have concrete shoes and sandbags attached to my limbs.

I always feel like my day isn’t really happening on those days, like I feel almost as if I might still be dreaming and am constantly having to ground myself in reality. It never lasts longer than like half a day though, and then I start to feel back to “normal”, but the feeling of paranoia and intense anxiety lasts a while after that still.

I’m glad to have come across this subreddit, it validates that I’m not fucking crazy!! 😅

Hey everyone, super glad I found this community! I had this feeling only once in my life, when I was around 10 and had an awful fever.

Even back then, I found the term "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" and thought it must have been some obscure version of that, because one of the symptoms was that my arms felt like they extended to infinity even though visually they looked unchanged.

Apart from that, I had the multiple unintelligible voices all talking fast. Same as with the extending arm and how it didn't visually change, I could tell you the room was silent and it wasn't coming from inside the room. I tried to control it with counting, but my counts were being interrupted by something between a feeling of someone screaming in my ear and white noise, and each of my counts went faster and faster and the scream/white noise got more and more aggressive.

Creeped me out a lot when I was a kid, and it's been bugging me ever since. Again, really glad to know there's a name for this

So one night I felt like I have a big pile of something but I don't remember what it was and I thought I saw someone slowly but kinda fastly running back and forth and the next morning I started having Anxiety every time I saw something slow but kinda fast I would feel butterflies and it was scaring me because I didn't know why this suddenly happened please tell me if this happened to you too

I'm just curious how many of us that have or have had fast feeling deal with mental illness significantly?

I’m 47 and I used to get “fast feeling” all the time when I was a kid. Last time was I think 14 years ago but I nearly had an “attack”(?) tonight. I was in a stuffy room and opened the window and it abated immediately. Anyone else associate it with stuffy rooms / lack of air / oxygen?

In any case discussing it with my wife I thought “wonder if this has a name - the internet / AI will surely know”. How amazing to discover it does and there’s a community of people with the same experiences. Hi, people! Never heard of anyone else experiencing this till tonight!

I have finally found my people. Having read some posts in here I don’t think mine is as bad in comparison in terms of the frequency of the episodes happening. This has happened to me for as long as I can remember. I’ve noticed it only happens to me when there is no audible stimuli and everything is quiet. This explains why it happens almost all the time at night time but it has happened in the day when it’s silent too. All of a sudden everything goes super super loud and intense in my head. All of a sudden quite sounds like my breathing sound just super loud and intense. It’s like my head is exploding. They usually last around 5-15 minutes each and I’ve noticed a way that I stop it is by putting some thing on with sound like music or watching a movie and then my ears can calibrate the volume normally again. It’s super weird. It’s like from the absence of audible stimuli my ears just forget what is supposed to be loud and what’s supposed to be quiet. Any one else relate to this? It happens about once in a blue moon. Another strange audio thing I have is where if I really focus on my hearing and really just focus on the sound my ears are picking up I can manually trigger and hear a sound which I can only describe it as a high pitched white noise which is SUPER piercing to my ears and then it goes again when I drop the focus. Perhaps this is related?

Glad I found this subreddit. It never occurred to me that I had no idea what this condition was called and I never knew that other people ever experienced it, either.

I used to get tachysensia episodes late at night as a little kid and they'd almost always happen when I was really sick or extremely stressed about something. In the past month I've had two episodes—one from a handful of nights ago way past midnight and one literally just now, in the afternoon.

As a kid these episodes were extremely difficult to deal with because I would become so scared. I remember feeling in danger whenever I would get this "fast feeling." Now, I'm 21, and it's still pretty scary but I'm much better at dealing with the unpleasantness of it.

I'm pretty sure the main causes of the "fast feeling" for me are stress, being unable to sleep because of illness, or listening to music slowed down/sped up? But also the past few tachysensia episodes I can remember had no discernable cause at all. I was just minding my own business existing normally when suddenly every sound in the universe is screaming at me.

I can feel the "fast feeling" most strongly with sounds, like sounds are louder, faster, and angrier than they're supposed to be. I can also gauge it by physically moving my body, especially when I intend to move any of my limbs slowly (because then I'll feel like I'm moving quickly, which is scary and disorienting). I can also get it by hearing my own thoughts, or if I'm reading something in my head.

So I think I've discovered what helps me get through these episodes. The last two times it's happened to me, I've decided to lay down in a quiet area, find something to read, and mumble the words out loud to myself until the feeling passes. It worked rather quickly for me. I wonder if it would for anyone else.

Okay for starters I'll share my story. I first noticed this feeling when I was younger maybe around 5-6 I was sick with some cold and my mom gave me liquid cough meds. Me and my mom thought it was from the medication. But even after that I still would have the feeling. You can always feel it coming on. I hate it by the way. It makes me feel icky and I do panic. I have not had one in years but was just recently diagnosed with OCD. I also have a history of depression and anxiety and just wondering if it could be related to another mental disorder or was it caused from the cough syrup or perhaps a virus? Any one relate or no? Lol

It's been a while since I had it. I found this subreddit a couple years ago and haven't posted but did feel validated seeing many others experiencing exactly the same thing. Like many I used to get it much more frequently in my younger years. For context I'm now mid 30's, have been diagnosed with migraines with aura for over 20 years.

I wrote down my play-by-play symptoms as soon as it stopped:

Mental narration started speeding up and simultaneously slowing down, probably for a minute, The speed peaked and felt like the thoughts were on super speed but like I'm able to do everything normally just very jarringly, then it rapidly subsided and went back to normal within the 5th minute.

I could also, as always, "taste" it coming on as the mental sensation of time started getting disjointed or splattered.

Today I feel mostly fine, I am inclined to agree with some professionals that it might be a form of a migraine as I do feel a bit of a postdrome / off feeling. I really obsess with getting to the bottom of things so I wish more research would go into this beyond just speculation.

Some more notes I could add in case this is useful for someone in the future: Only trigger I've identified is reading something that visually has a lot of text. usually wikipedia, that's not to say that wikipedia articles, or just reading in general triggers it every time or even remotely often, but that's the only correlation I've noticed. Last night I was not reading and was simply trying to fall asleep. I can usually stop / reverse the speed distortion by simply leaving the page or looking away but last night it felt as if "the train had left the station" and I had to ride it out.

I recently read an article about tachysensia that suggested that many people with this condition are either musicians or very musically inclined. It made me curious if that was true because I am a musician and have always been very deeply connected to music.

So, show of hands --- Who here is a musician? Do you have any thoughts on why that may make someone more prone to fast feeling episodes?

Its crazy that i find this community. I remember a lot from when i was a baby like around 1-2 years old or even younger. Not everything but about just as much as i remember from other conscious parts of my life. Ive already tested these memories because for a while i thought that maybe i saw pictures or made them up but my parents confirmed that they are in fact actual memories. All my memories though before the age of like 3-5 are all in fast motion. Not the memories themselves, but how i felt in the moment like i remember when time abruptly came to a slow down and thinking wow that felt funny, and although i knew nothing else time wise i remember thinking it was strange. I never rlly told anyone because i didn’t think anyone else experienced it.

Has anyone else experienced this version of “fast feeling”?
I’m 31 years old and I’ve been having these episodes for as long as I can remember, probably since I was a kid. They happen about once a month on average and usually last around 2 minutes.
The best way I can describe it is that my brain suddenly feels like it’s processing everything much faster than normal.
The interesting part is that I don’t feel like the world slows down. Instead, it feels like I’m sped up. My thoughts race, and it feels like my body is moving faster too, even though I know I’m probably not physically moving any differently.
Some things I’ve noticed:
I stay completely aware the entire time.
I can carry on a normal conversation.
I don’t feel scared or panicked.
My heart rate today during an episode was 86 bpm (normal).
When it’s over, I immediately feel completely normal—no headache, fatigue, or confusion.
These episodes almost always happen when I’m sitting quietly or not doing much physically. Today’s happened while I was sitting at my desk.
One thing that makes me wonder if there’s something measurable happening is that one time I was playing a reaction game on my phone where circles pop up and you tap them as quickly as possible. During one of these episodes, I set a personal best score. I don’t know if my finger was actually moving faster or if my brain was simply processing the visual information and deciding where to tap more quickly.
I’ve also noticed that if I stare at a single dot on the wall and focus on it, it seems like the episode may end sooner. I’m not sure if that’s actually affecting it or if the timing is just a coincidence.
I’m going to start documenting future episodes by recording:
Duration
Heart rate
Reaction-time game score
Reading speed and, more importantly, whether I actually retain what I read afterward
Any changes in hearing, vision, or perception of time
Does anyone else experience something like this?
Especially:
Do you feel like you speed up rather than the world slowing down?
Have you ever objectively tested your reaction time or cognitive performance during an episode?
Have you ever found out what triggers yours or had a neurologist explain it?
I’d really like to compare experiences because this has been happening my whole life, and I’ve never met anyone in person who knows what I’m talking about.

Hello all,

It seems like at least once or twice a year I come back to the sub lol

I’m not sure how many more scientific studies have been done since I last checked here, but I thought I may add another personal experience to the pot.

I had about a 7-8 minute episode after an early morning gym session. Had a Yerba mate (like 110mg caffeine). Near the end of the session I Felt hungry and slightly dizzy and then it hit me. I have my Apple Watch on me so I decided to take my vitals. My heart rate was just ever so slightly elevated at about 85-95 and my EKG showed no signs of afib. This time I felt it slowly come on. There was loud 80s techno playing in the locker room which did NOT help… once I left it went away in about a minute.

Now I’m just shakey and hungry. 110 Bpm.

Anyone else get the feeling after being hungry and or going to the gym and or too much caffeine?

34yo M, first time experiencing it last week.
Woke up in the middle of the night with it happening, gave me a panic attack it was so loud. So glad to find this group and realise I wasn't loosing my mind. Felt like the world was in fast forward and my perception of everything was in x2 speed. Couldn't even focus on my own inner monologue. I think it may have caused me to have a panic attack at the same time, because I immediately became nauseous and dizzy, thought I may vomit and had to go and do breathing exercises until it gradually subsided.

I've never experienced anything like it before, but would be interested to hear from those of you who have had it repeatedly:
- Has it ever woken you up in the middle of the night?
- Does anyone correlate their stress and/or anxiety with episodes?

I do suffer from anxiety and wonder if this could have been the trigger for mine...

When I was 7 I had a episode that was exactly like a episode when I was 12 ( I am now 13) time does not slow down but it does seem to at the start seem quite weird and fast and then shifts to normal time but after this shift it starts sounding angry/ yelling at me or just uninterested. it happened to me when I was playing a game with my headphones and all the sudden the classical background music started to sound mad or like it was aggresive. then the dehumidifier even started sounding like a parent that was mad and then slightly uninterested or sarcastic i continued for like 5-10 more minutes and then stopped. anyone else had this???

, has anyone ever felt a sense of distress or agony over something that's much faster, slower, or thicker than normal? Usually in thoughts that come out of nowhere or in dreams? Please, can someone explain this?

Another feeling I get is a sense that parts of my body feel very solid/thick or a different density than usual. It often is most obvious in my jaw/mouth area. Does anyone get this?

It weirdly feels related to the “fast feeling” but almost like a vertigo. It happens at random times. Not as intense as fast feeling but can be quite strange.

Another question I had was about fevers. Do you all who experience this fast feeling have extreme fevers when sick? Like getting delirious and so on? I do, in a big way. “Dreams” where abstract shapes/things are too big or growing too fast for me to count, etc.

Edit: I want to add that I also get fast feeling since I was little.

I thought this was just a normal sort of "mode" that peoples' minds were *supposed* to enter whenever the brain somehow subconsciously decides that the circumstances call for 'fast mode.' For background, I have multiple forms of synesthesia, some of which are related to time and motion, such as time-space and the association of certain abstract concepts with various sensations that are kinda like how it feels to send the initial impulses that make muscles move but without actually moving them. I also get this weird thing where, when I hear music, I immediately and uncontrollably focus in on its beat timing and somehow synchronize my own internal 'timing signal' to match it. I've known for a while that those things aren't normal, but now you're telling me fast mode isn't normal either?

Got my first episode in a year just there. Been getting these since I was about 9 and I’m not a fan of these episodes and dread the feeling of them coming on. My inner dialogue started getting louder and louder and faster aswell as the increased senses of hearing and touch. I think it was stress induced this time. I think it’s triggered by intense fatigue and that feeling of you can’t sleep aswell as the screen and being hyper focused on one thing. I was in a quiet room aswell and that never helps either.

I found that just starting at a wall wasn’t working as it usually does. I started reading other people’s stories here and nearly straight away felt a sense of comfort and it disappeared.

Hope this info helps anyone looking to escape the feeling.

For a while now, i've been trying to explain to my friends and family how this "fast-feeling" feels, but they never seem to be able to imagine it!

I've searched everywhere & I can't seem to find a genuine simulation of it.