Weird feeling of everything moving very fast

Hi,

Not sure what this is. For as long as I can remember I get this strange feeling coming over me every now and again where everything around me and myself is moving extremely fast, a bit like watching a video tape in fast forward, even slight movements seem fast and anything I hear seems fast as well. I don't know if my breathing becomes fast or not but it seems like it to me. I have to sit or lie still without moving and keep my eyes shut and concentrate on my breathing (slowing it down whether it is fast or not) until it passes. It can last for anywhere between 1 to 10 minutes and can happen anytime, anywhere for no apparent reason. I could be in a busy crowded street or lying peacefully in my bed just resting. It used to happen maybe only 2-3 times in a year maximum but it has happened several times in the last few months. There's also another strange feeling that comes along with it which is difficult to describe. It's like distances and objects are warped (nothing to do with my sight as I can see it is normal) but it "feels" like an object or thing can be both up very close to me almost touching and yet miles away from me at the same time and my body can "feel" like it is huge and bloated and also small and paper thin. In a way like one of those optical illusions like the old woman and young woman or the duck and the rabbit where at one point you see the duck and then suddenly with barely a shift you see the rabbit only it's not optical, it's a "feeling". I spoke to my therapist first about it but she told me to speak to my doctor, but then my doctor thinks it's in my mind???? The same doctors that told me my headaches and dizzy spells were in my mind when I actually had high blood pressure causing them!!!! Took them 3 years to figure that one out. Has anyone experienced these same feelings or have any idea what it is?

No I haven't myself . But I would suggest you find a new doctor .
That must be a horrible feeling. Take Care

Toller, have you had your ears checked by an ear, nose and throat specialist?........vertigo and a number of ear problems can cause strain on your eyes which can give you optical problems. Sounds simplistic? Thought so! I have ototoxic bilateral vestibulopathy and I get HORRENDOUS symptoms......the inner ear is one strange bunny.

Are you female? How old are you? Get your hormones/thyroid checked.......sorry for prying babe.......just trying to get a baseline.

Feel free to pm me if you wish.......

Hope you feel better

Michah

Hi Toller....

Sorry to hear about these uncomfortable and strange experiences you are having. It could very well be a medical condition related to an inner ear problem or possibly even a visual thing.

It also sounds like it could fit into Depersonalization/Derealization, which are both dissociative symptoms, and it could be that you are experiencing some form of anxiety attack that causes you to dissociate a bit.

There is a great sticky on the Dissociative Disorders forum that explains a bit about depersonalization and derealization. Stop by and check it out if you want.

I would suggest finding a new doctor and seeing if you can be checked for ear and eye disorders to rule them out. Let him/her know of your experiences, and if they rule out medical issues, then you can see about seeing a therapist to discuss these issues further and help you learn to cope and control them.

Try not to worry though....these experiences do not mean you're crazy or anything. If it is dissociation, it's okay...it's just the way some peoples minds cope with anxieties sometimes.

Take care, and keep us posted if you like.

Sounds like dissociation. What that means is that your mind is trying to "flush out" and filter traumatic memories and feelings that it forgot due to the pain of it being too traumatic when it happened. These are called repressed memories and repressed feelings. The reason why they are happening more often is because you're not allowing your brain to sort these memories and/or feelings. When you do not give your brain the chance to sort through the memories and/or feelings the brain does what it does best, it takes over. Dissociation is what happens when the brain takes over. You feel feelings of hallucionations, feeling of time speeding up or slowing down, and many more is the begining process of dissociation. Your brain is trying to tell you something when this happens. It's saying "WHoa, slow down here. Give me a chance to sort through this ****". The more you try and fight it, the more your brain will fight you back and bring on dissociative symptoms more and more.

When this happens, just allow it to happen and let everything flow through you. It will seem scary at first because you're reliving events, or feelings, or memories that your mind once wanted you to forget because they were too traumatic. This is ok, just let it ride and allow these events, feelings, and/or memories just flow right through you.

Thanks for your replies,

I'm not sure that it is dissocative, I feel it is something phsyical. Maybe the inner ear as suggested. I have had trauma but though I tried to forget about it I can't and those memories are vivid (a bit too much, if anything they process themselves every day, playing over and over) and also I truly know the out of body experience which I would be more prone to have and this is nothing like that. I don't know if my breathing or heart rate goes up during this event, I guess I should try to measure it the next time. It feels like it does. Also I can see fine, my vision doesn't change, I can still look at things and tell how far away they are and they don't get bigger or smaller or waver about. I can easily move about and pick up objects, throw them into a trash can or do other things except that movements seem incredibly fast (never slow) accompanied by the "feeling" of space around me is either enclosed or the exact opposite and sometimes both which is weird. I don't know how but it can be both??? I don't know if anyone watching me would see me moving very slowly as I try to slow all my own movements down and not move at all.

I experienced the same thing last night Toller, I have had this happen to me on and off since i was a child. It hasn't happened in years but did last night. May have been induced by my drug use, but i've experienced this plenty, more so when I was a young child. It is a EXTREMELY bad feeling. It was very hard to shake last night, everything seemed to be going extremely fast, my normal motions did not feel right. And also the very strange feeling of things being very far away, even stuff that is close. My father told me he experiences this occasionally. It has not happened to me in years like I said and was somewhat freaked out last night. Contact me by email if you'd like, wont let me give an email since I am a new poster. did you ever figure something out? i was on google trying to see what would come up and i found your post. email me and let me know if you found anything.

Tooler, I sometimes get that feeling when I am in an episode (I'm bipolar), when I am stressed (depersonalization) and other times when I suspect I am more aware of how hard I have to work to stay up with the world. I say that because, with a sister with ADHD, I suspect I have some of the same problems and when my brain gets tired or stressed, my cognitive processing can't keep up with the information that it gets. The world "speeds up" and I feel like time and life start to speed up and rush by.
Do you have anyone in your family who has trouble with concentration or motivation? You don't have to be hyper to have this happen.
Def. get it checked out, because regardless, it is a horrible feeling and you shouldn't have to live with it. Make sure it's nothing to worry about. HUggssssss!
PS. See another Dr. If you have high blood pressure, it might be linked in the way that migraines can be. make sure you are taken SERIOUSLY, hon. You need to be safe. Let us know.

I have this happen with anxiety and then nothingness

im a couple yrs late on this , but i am so glad i found this page, i thought i was the only one. i had the same thing as well. when i was a child it would happen to me at random times, the feeling of me slowing down, not knowing time, and everything around me going fast, i can remember hearing speech of some sort going fast as well, but couldnt figure out what it was saying.

it didnt really scare me or freak me out , but later on when i was around 19, i did mushrroms and had that feeeling again, then i remembered it, i had forgotten for yrs, but it happened a lot as a child.

oh and , im sorry this is my first time posting in one of these, i hope im not writing too much, but i wanted to add about the feeling of space not being there, it is like you arent in your body, like youre grounded and all, but you are here and all the way over there at the same time, and the couch and the air and everything you see is all one thing.

thanks for listening,

Ok, I know that I'm really late on this post but I always wondered about this same feeling that I would get from time to time. Just like Strings55, I thought that I was the only one who had this feeling. It doesn't happen much but when it does, I find it very amusing and kind of funny (in a weird way)...Just like you said Toller, it just feels like everything is running in an ever-so slight "fast forward" motion. People are talking faster, movements are faster, music that I was listening to seems to be playing at a faster tempo, you get the point. I always theorized it to be some sort of panic attack and believed that my heart rate and respirations would be increased during this time. Like you said Toller, sometimes it would last for a few minutes; sometimes about 10 minutes or so. So the next time it would occur, I would monitor my heart rate and breathing pattern. And I found out that although everything seemed to be moving perceptually fast around me, my heart rate (62 bpm) and respirations (14 per min) was actually normal when it did occur again about a year ago. I made sure that I counted for a full minute with a watch that had a second hand. I cope with stress very well and when it comes to many things in life, I am open-minded but also realistic. No psychological problems run in my family and I consider myself mentally well-rounded and physically healthy (no blood pressure problems at all; BP 120/80); although I have a quirky, dry sense of humor. So if you have any other further insight on this, please let me know. Also, the visual "warped" optical feeling you get sometimes, I also get them too. Just not at the same time with the altered time perception. But I do get them more often than the "time thing" and I just thought that it was eye strain (although my eyes were not in any sort of pain or discomfort). I would describe it to my friends as if my depth perception was extremely altered and it was hard to tell how far an object was even if I know that it was close by. People that were close to me just looked smaller than they are supposed to be. This would be quite annoying especially when I'm playing basketball. It was just so weird because the rim and everything else seemed so small and far away! Imagine trying to shoot when you are "sensing" that. Sometimes I would just close my eyes (but not on the basketball court) and it would eventually go away, although I don't think it mattered because it would go away in time. My friends thought I was weird because their version of eye strain wasn't like that. The only person that I knew who experienced that was my ex-girlfriend. She said her visual depth perception anomaly happened a lot when she was a kid, but just like me she thought that she was the only one who experienced this.
Ok, sorry for posting a really long thing on this but when I found this post, I was really happy to find out that I am not alone on this.

I have the same thing and have had it for a while it seems to happen when I am overwhelmed or exhausted. If u find out what it is let me know.

things happening in fast forward-- things moving too quickly I have had this happen at times--- I do have an issue to pin point what may have been going around- but it is i thought part of racing thoughts- but it is everything--- I have issue with time or slow down as well.. which is the opposite of this, but fast forward happens-- I usually find laying down-- telling myself it is ok--- and just breathing for a bit can help to bring me down-

IDK it is like my brain is on speed when fast forwarding-- idk if this relates to any one- but interesting thread-- i am glad it popped back up

I am a little amazed to find this thread, as I too have thought I may be alone in this. I have been experiencing distortions in my perception of space and time for as long as I can remember. Their occurrence has been far less frequent though in recent years, which is a bit disappointing.

The more recent events are only distortions of space, where it feels like my arms are really long when I reach out in front me to grab or touch something, but really short when I bring them close to my body. My arms transition between Reed Richards and T-rex. The sensation is enhanced when I closed my eyes. This has happened maybe 3-6 times in the past year or two. It's like everything is really far away, but not really.

There was a stretch of time while in college when time would twist on me a lot, and then it just stopped entirely. One night I was drawing for a school project and had an "episode." Interestingly I found that my hand was much more steady and that I could draw with greatly increased precision.
Before that night I was never really sure if everything was moving faster or slower, and maybe it's different depending on the individual episode, but that night, time was definitely moving slower than normal.

My perception of time has been constant since then. I miss it. Usually, I didn't like when these would happen, but I felt like I was beginning to understand how to use them to my advantage. When I remember them, it feels almost like I had/have a poorly honed/controlled super power. I want it back, does anyone know how to make this sort of thing happen? I would like to trigger it.

Hi, i notice this discussion is old, but i have searched and searched for people who experience the same as me but never found it, and felt like i was the only one. I have though it was everything from anxiety, to physical/medical, to my soul leaving my body or whatever(im not a religious believer) because i could never really feel what it could be.

Time passes faster, sounds, speech, sounds increase, and i get a strange sensation in my body! I have talked to my doctor about it and he said it was mentally, and my psychologist said it was medical :/

I just hope that someone out there has managed to find a diagnosis.

I first experienced it at the age of 7, and it is the same to this day. It can be when im relaxing or when im at school or shopping or whatever. Its 1-10 minutes in duration and really uncomfortable mostly because i dont know what it is.

If anyone has gotten a diagnosis i would love to hear about it to get it checked!

I also have experienced these episodes, they began around age 7. Sometimes it would seem as if everything was moving too fast, sometimes too slowly. The episodes diminished in frequency until as an adult it is on rare occasion. Now my 11-year-old son is having this. I never found out what this really is. They have been labeled "anxiety or panic attacks" but that really does not cover it, and the meds that doctors prescribe did not stop them. Perhaps it is in the genre of deja vu, like a brief, abnormal "loop" of electrical brain activity. All I can tell you is that they are disturbing but harmless.

This is crazy I thought I was the only one with this unknown power. I've been having this problem probably after 7 years old. I am a very multifunctional person even when I think about something in my head I tend to think about 100 things at the same time. I noticed that this fastforward thing only happens to me when i am seriously deeply thinking about something or got all my focus on one thing. Like solving a math problem or something. As I got older it happened less, maybe once a year. It just happened to me like 15 minutes ago while i was playing Sudoku for the first time, and I was seriously focusing on this and it just happened and it happened very strong which I haven't had a really strong one in a while. Everything moving very fast, but the strange thing is that I could see everything clearer and slower. Like spider man when he slows things down, but still everything is going very fast at the same time. It's crazy weird!! I see that the first post was in 2009 and no one really answered the questions professionally. Maybe we should do like a group or something and seek professional help, so someone could tell us what this is.

last thing, I know for a fact that this is something in our heads, the mind is crazy and it works in mysterious ways.

I feel this way very often but it isnt a power or advantage. I hate it. Everything is shifting abd moving and going very fast and im trying to keep up. And i'm always confused and behind.

I just had another "episode" today maybe about an hour ago. It was very intense, as it always is for me now when it occurs. It has been happening to me a few times a year for as long as I can remember. I have never looked into it until today and am reassured to find many who experience the same thing. There are a few discussions around the web about this and no one seems to have an answer. Some list things that it may be like, Alice and Wonderland syndrome, Temperal Lobe epilepsy, and vertigo. BUT, I can't seem to agree with these diagnosises. There is no physical sensations that occurs (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy), dizziness and the feeling of motion while still is not part of the sensation (vertigo), Objects do not appear a different size (Alice and Wonderland syndrome). I believe that whatever it is, it's a phenomenon that has yet to be studied; since this phenomenon occurs randomly in us and we are not hooked up to a brainwave analysis machine 24/7. I do not find the "episode" to be scary anymore as I have excepted it and allow it to run its course trying to understand what my body is feeling. After years of self conscience observation when the event occurs I can say that I see everything happening at normal speed, and I hear things at normal speed. I do not feel a physical tingling anymore, as I have now associated that with my fear of the event. Nothing out side of my mind is sped up (my breathing is normal, my heart rate is normal). It is as if my thoughts themselves, or my abuility to absorb and calculate my environment is some how enhanced and sped up. I am consciencely thinking about every move I make and am aware of everything happening around me at the same time which has led me to think this is what causes the "Sped up feeling" or "Fast feeling". I have read others say that it happens when they are intensly focused on something (as it does with me), which gives credence to the theory of it being a hightened awareness event. I understand why others are kind of scared when this happens, because I once was too. But do not think that something is wrong with you. There is no "cure" for it, and I have not read anything about someone being harmed medically by it. Embrace it as I and others have and focus on that feeling when it happens to you, don't be scared of it, because that is the cause of a higher heart rate and rate of breathing not the event it self. Know that it will subside and things will "be back to normal" soon. Best of luck to you all.

This might be it?
http://forums.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=162262

Yeah, It's a known side effect of stimulents (including caffien) and mania.
If it's not that, I got nothing.

This happens to me all the time, I know its a bit late to post this, but this post is for the people who are searching to find if there not alone, and you aren't!
when I get it sometimes loud sound or a constant noise can make it go for longer, I also get this feeling mostly when I am sick, or have a fever... but that could just be me. with the sensation of time distortion I speak faster, in one example my sister asked what was wrong, and I blurted something out and started pacing, I don't know why but I felt like I had to move but still keep my head still.

And I don't know if anyone else gets this but I get headaches frequently, everyday since I was 10 on and of for up to 1 hour, but again this could just be me :/

from what I have read it is most likely its in our heads, like our senses become more reactive and we can think faster, but we are overwhelmed by the sensation and freak out, thats my opinion, i am not a doctor...... an I think its kinda like a super power, even if I do freak out about it and sometimes dislike it, I want to learn to use it.

sorry for the ling comment :P hope you don't feel so lonely anymore.

btw i am going to write a story about this becoming a power, just thought I would tell you. but I will take this seriously coz it is affecting people a lot.

I have exactly the same feeling as described by the 1st person and I am actually having it now. If I put my hand 10 cm away from my eyes it feels as far/close as things 10 m further, time feels fast forwarded and I also feel this paradox between being huge and very tiny.
But nowadays for me they always happen in very clear events: after I play some 10-15 minutes of piano. I used to play it when I was a kid (8-11 years) and since then I just play it veeery seldomly, but everytime I play, at some point this feeling comes and stays for 10 to 30 minutes... It's very annoying since I have to stop playing, as the piano keys look far and close, and if I strugle to keep playing I even feel dizzy...

Shelbeth said something that makes sense for me: "The reason why they are happening more often is because you're not allowing your brain to sort these memories and/or feelings. " So maybe I have this because my brain is recurring to such memories.

I also had this as a kid, maybe randomly, or maybe when I was stressed or anxious.

Did someone found an answer or a proper diagnosis for such thing?

Almost all the experiences here are word-for-word what I have felt since I was a child. I'm now 41 and still feel it at least 3-5 times a year. I used to always get it when I had a fever when I was a child, now it can happen to me at any random moment. I'd like to add that it's not just distance for me - but also texture. Just as you feel things far/near, I also feel things that are extremely rough/extremely smooth, very dull/very shiny. I would be looking at a corner of a room, and all of a sudden I'm zoomed in within millimeters of the wall, and at the same time, I'm hundreds of meters away.

I just found this a few minutes ago, so I decided to look for more people like us (I can't post a link here because I'm only a new member to this forum)
GOOGLE: "Help crush the stigma of Epilepsy" - and read on.

According to her neurologist - it's a form of epilepsy.

I'll be booking a time with a neurologist and contact an epilepsy nurse to discuss this condition.

Thanks for this thread.

Please email/pm me here any time.

I think panic attacks have that kind of feeling. Feels like everything around you and inside of you is flooding your brain at one instantaneous moment and you kind of feel like you have tunnel vision.

What are your thoughts doing when you see things as "moving fast"? Are your thoughts speeding like mad and numerous thoughts coming into your head all at once? Racing thoughts are symptoms of BP.

I used to get that as a child, too a few times a year.