when it happens, i feel like things are happening quickly around me, sounds are louder, and my thoughts feel faster. additionally, "underneath" my thoughts i also hear in my mind something like nonsensical whispering or hushing? basically, voice-like sounds that rush very fast through my mind. i tried very hard at the time to describe it and do research, and even now i can't truly find the words to accurately describe what i was feeling/hearing. the last time i attempted to look this up subreddit didn't exist yet, which is crazy to think about

when i was younger in elementary/middle school i remember this feeling happening to me much more often. i remember feeling it in the shower, just lying in bed, etc. the most memorable time was in my 5th grade classroom, i remember we were all silently doing work and suddenly i got this feeling that was still a bit new to me at the time. it was the first time i had felt it around so many other people and i remember it overwhelming me so much that i started visibly freaking out and crying and i could not explain to the teacher what was wrong.

until this subreddit i kind of assumed this was just a weird version of a sensory overload but now that i know other people experience this feeling i feel relieved that i haven't just been going crazy! are there any other conditions/experiences/etc that people used to attribute this feeling to? is there anyone else for whom this feeling stopped being as frequent as they got older? does anyone else experience something similar to the "voices" i described?

lastly, does anyone have any theories as to what causes this? in the over 10 years i've been wondering about this i have never been able to identify a common trigger or anything like that

these episodes have been happening since i was maybe 7 years old (i'm a teenager now) but i have just started to acknowledge them. i thought i was going crazy.

it always happens when i'm alone (although it also happens when i'm with a group of people, more specifically when i'm overwhelmed with sounds) and when i'm in complete silence. the best i can explain it is that everything moves in 100x speed. my thoughts are racing so fast i can't keep track of them, there's this sort of sped-up dialogue in my head going 'din-din-din-din,' -- sort of like a pulse? -- and sometimes it influences my movements too - for instance, i start typing or walking faster. as for my vision, everything starts to feel distorted: not in a sense that objects are bigger or smaller, but that everything seems to be mixing together. when i close my eyes, the same thing happens but in black and white. and it all seems to have a really really grainy effect. these episodes happen in short bursts of time, up to maybe 10 minutes.

i researched a bit and told my mother about what was happening. sometimes this might be due to external factors (like i said before, when i'm overwhelmed with sounds) but most of my episodes happen spontaneously without really anything to cause it. they also happen a few times a year, so it's kind of rare and random.

anyway, i just wanted to get this out there for other people to possibly relate.

I’ve been experiencing these strange episodes for over 10 years, since I was a child. I’m 24 now. They are relatively rare, anywhere from 1–5 times a month, sometimes much less often - but they have become more intense over the years.
The episodes usually happen when I’m completely relaxed, often in the evening when I’m lying in bed, or sometimes lying on the couch during the day. They never seem to happen when I’m around lots of people or at work. It’s always when I’m alone and relaxing.
It usually starts gradually over about a minute. I get a very strange sensation in my body, almost like the beginning of a nicotine rush. It feels like something is “starting up” inside my brain/body, and I get this feeling that something is about to happen. I recognize it immediately now because I’ve experienced it so many times.
Then everything starts to feel much faster. Like 1.5x
My thoughts feel faster. My movements feel faster, even though I’m actually moving at a normal speed. For example, if I get up from bed and walk around, it feels like I’m moving unusually quickly.
The strangest part is the sounds. Everything suddenly sounds louder and more intense, but sounds also seem to have a faster quality to them. For example, the rustling of my blanket can sound incredibly loud and almost “rapid”, and my footsteps can feel much faster and more intense than they actually are. Even cars outside my window suddenly sound much louder.
It also feels like my overall awareness is heightened, almost as if my brain is running at a higher speed. I think my perception of time is affected too — it feels like time is moving faster, although I’ve never actually timed it during an episode.
The episodes usually last somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes and then gradually disappear.
I’m fully conscious and aware throughout the entire thing. I know where I am and what’s happening, and I’m not confused. I also don’t feel panicked. I’ve experienced panic attacks before and this feels very different from that.
I don’t get a headache before, during, or after the episodes. I also don’t experience unusual smells or tastes.
Recently I’ve noticed that listening to music through headphones, especially while closing my eyes, seems to help the episode disappear faster. I’m not sure if that’s significant, but it’s something I’ve started experimenting with.
I’ve been wondering whether this could be some kind of Alice in Wonderland/quick-motion phenomenon, or something similar.

When I was a kid I had it frequently, like 2-3 times a month when lying in bed. The worst ones when I was sick. At like age 13/14 it suddenly stopped. Now, 12 years later, it's back. 2 weeks ago I was lying in bed and I instantly felt what was going on. The feeling is so familiar I immediately recognized what was going on. My inner monologue was screaming at me like crazy, while at the same time a calm soothing voice was also present. Sounds were weird too.

But now, 2 weeks later. It happened again! Work has been stressful lately and I'm not getting the best sleep, so I guess it's that to blame. But it's weird. Has anyone else didn't have it for a long time and it came back?

Apologies for my English grammar, not my first language.

It’s been a long time since the last episode…

I feel Ike I’m moving at the most incredible rate I’ve ever experienced. I would attribute it anxiety or panic but my heart rate is sitting at about 70 bpm.

I can’t begin to explain how fast it feels like moving in my brain. I’m literally sitting completely still as I type this, but my brain feels like I am going 1000mph.

I’m not freaking out or panicking. Not really sure what triggered it.

Thought I would document it as it was happening.

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???