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Feeling as if shrinking?

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MizzASG

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I am not sure if this is a hallucination or not, and am NOT looking for a diagnosis or anything but was just wondering if anyone else has ever had the sensation of feeling yourself physically shrink?

Sometimes, usually when I am having sex or masturbating, and before I fall a sleep, and sometimes when I am walking down the street, I get this overwhelming sensation that I am shrinking and that I have become such a tiny person.
At times, I also get the opposite. The only time I feel "larger" then I am is when I am masturbating by myself or am being stimulated by my boyfriend.

I am sorry if this post has offended anyone.

But I was just wondering, if there is a proper term for such feelings? Is it considered a Hallucination?
Should I bring this up with my doctor? I have felt this since I was a little girl... it never has went away.
 
I don't feel as if i'm shrinking, but I do feel as if I am sinking until I am small. Same thing? Probably not, IDK.
 
No its not the same feeling as that (maybe) Jadebear. Like, I LITERALLY feel small! My perception doesn't change but i PHYSICALLY FEEL me shrinking... strange to say the least, and hard to explain.
Maybe I guess it's like I am sinking 'till I feel like a midget (no offense). I dunno how to explain it really. I tried my best.
 
I think I know what you're describing... It's like a camera pulls away for a long shot and I get smaller and smaller. I believe it is a form of derealization.

You say it happens often during sexual arousal. Are you feeling good at those times, or scared, or detached? Understanding what you are feeling may help you know why this happens.
 
Kers thanks for replying.
I guess that is another good way to describe it. Like a camera lense... good one.
Usually when I get this, I am frustrated. Sometimes I have trouble achieving an O, so I am concentrating really hard usually. When I am walking and this happens, I am usually in concentration as well. It kinda scares me but I am still aware of my surroundings and capable of being responsive etc... I just snap outta it within a minute or two after.
I tried looking this up on google and I cannot find much info on it. I don't believe it's Todd's (AIWL) Syndrome, because that is usually accompanied with visual distortion and perception. Or maybe it is? I don't know... I guess I should bring this up to the doc then I suppose.
 
This sounds like what's happened to me when I was a little girl. It's always been in my thumb that I feel it first (I don't know why) and then I don't feel real. I'm like a smaller version of myself, everything is further away and noises get muffled and distorted. It doesn't last more than 10 seconds at the most, but it's a really horrible sensation, but it hasn't happened in a while.
 
This sounds like what I used to experience before I had EMDR. I described it to my T as being like in Alice in Wonderland.I walk along and shrink as the pavement comes up closer to me. I used to experience it regularly and thought it was a normal phenomenon until we discussed it. He said it was a form of dissociation. It seems to have stopped, but now I am more aware of it I look up away from the pavement if I am worried it might happen.

It never used to worry me before, but I like to think it won't happen any more.
 
I feel something similar to all this, but to me it's like my head stays the same and the rest of my body shrinks away. If I'm sitting up it seems like i literally "take a backseat to my life" like as if my conciousness is farther behind me. Or when i'm laying down my body shrinks away from me. Seems to happen when trying to relax or calm myslef. Has only started this past year, but is very frequent and unrelenting.

Lucycat, i was glad to see you mention dissociation. I have looked everywhere online and that is the closest thing i have ever found to what i experience.
 
I don't know how much I can add - my therapist told me I had Alice in Wonderland syndrome (or whatever it is), but the onset can be seemingly random or on days where I'm in situations where there is enough stress and triggers that I get complete distortion - but I'm always aware that it's distorted and will go back to normal later. It's happened since I was a child, then again - so has complete disassociation. I've also had enough concussions that I've lost count (which I always find amusing after the fact, because I can never remember if I've had any previous concussion when they ask me at the ER) but I don't know how related that is, in any case.

Generally my method to dealing with it is to breathe through it until it works its way through and then after I've had some down time - try to see if there's a rhyme or reason for it.

I too, tend to have a place it starts - generally in my hands. I look at them and they just don't seem right - then a box or a rubrics cube follows and I shrink and the box becomes too large for my hands - or at least that's how it always works in my mind, I know there's no box there, but it always seems like the only way to explain it is by that box. My least favourite is when I'm sitting at my computer and having my morning cup of tea and I can see my body and physically everything is where it's supposed to be in proportion to the objects around me, but it isn't right. Sometimes part of my body is too big, like a foot, but the rest is too small.

I'd never told anyway up until a year or two ago because I thought for sure I'd be locked away - but I was assured it wasn't that uncommon and it was just my body's response to stress I've lived through. I did some reading up on when my therapist and I discussed it, but I've never known anyone else to even have symptoms that were similar. It always me to feel less alone when I know someone else can at least somewhat relate.
 
I had always experience this and thought it was normal because no ever brought it up as an issue. I usually get them when I am sleeping in my bed. I would always feel like the room is getting big and I am shrinking and that i feel like i am so small that even an ant is bigger than me. Sometime it would be the opposite where I am so huge that everything that surrounds me was really small. I kinda enjoyed it, like I was playing around with my perception of it and after a while, I was able to switch myself for shrinking to becoming a giant. (Please do not say I am crazy because I am still very alert and conscious when this occur.) Another experience I have now is that when I am sitting down in a room and I am talking to someone, i begin to distance away from the other person or the other person seems to be moving away, like the camera effect. Because it is still new to me that I cannot handle it, i need to move my legs or get up to break that feeling. But lately I have been experience another one where when I am taking a dump, I would feel as if I am not there. I feel like I am sleeping and that I am shitting in my bed and so I would have to slap myself or pinch my thighs to get myself to realize that I was not sleeping or that it is not a dream. I dont know but has anyone ever experience this. I think its great that other people are talking about this because I seriously thought it was normal and that everyone experience this. I can relate it to the AIWL syndrome but if we can get more people to talk about it and make it a bigger issue, then we can get the right treatment for it.
 
Yes what you guys are describing is pretty much dissociation, or one of the other ways to say it. For me, if I look at something for more than a few seconds it starts to slide and melt and change shape in my eyes, but when I look back it's normal, or when I'm talking to people and I think the conversation is going badly, I'll get that tunnel vision and only be able to feel like my eyes, and it's like I'm shrinking into my head, and my body takes more control. I do this to accomplish normal tasks too :P
 
Dissociation is kind of hard to define when lumping everything up into the same catagory. Derealizing and Depersonalizing would be like dissociating on a massive scale if that was the belief. I think they are different animals personally because I have experienced DP/DR, without the trademark 'dissociation' feelings and symptoms.

Yes I also think this is DP/DR and I have felt this shrinking/feeling larger kind of detachment from the objects around me, the sensation is very odd feeling when my eyes are closed and trying to sleep. When others and myself describe feeling like they are sunken back into their heads, floating or not a part of themselves, this is the exact same thing MizzASG is describing, though MizzASG feels larger or smaller than should be. I think there are many ways to describe the very odd sensation but there's no mistake here, I feel I know exactly what you mean. There is probably no one way for all of us to describe it other than to put one word on it.
Also keep in mind that some people DP/DR at the same time, it will feel different to those people and they might describe it as a different feel to it.

Also sometimes when trying to sleep I visualize shapes, but I feel there is something very odd and unusual about the shapes even though they are simple, like a circle or square. I have even woken up suddenly in a panic after falling asleep visualizing these 'odd feeling shapes'. I have strange sleep episodes like this that can result in hypnogogic events. However after therapy and medication all DP/DR and terrifying sleep disturbances have ceased, so long as I make sure my stresses are kept to a minimum.
 
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