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Weird Psychological Thing Re: Big/Small

A

Anonymous

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Can anyone help?
Me and my band member Steve have the same strange psychological phenomena but haven't met anyone else who has it.

it's a bit like that thing you get when you are tired or poorly where things go far away and big, only this is different.

It's hard to describe, but is basically an unbearable (stomach going) feeling triggered by thinking about (or dreaming of) a contrast between large and small. A prime example is thinking of an enormous block of heavy dense grey clay, suspended from a long hair. aaarrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh!!

Can anyone offer any explanations? Are we mental? Is it like synaesthesia or not??? (see the Man who can Taste Shapes!!!)

Any info much appreciated,

You can mail me on my work address: [email protected]

:)
 
That's interesting - I used to get something like this a lot as a child, as well as the big/small illusion. Still happens when I'm very tired sometimes (and falling asleep)
Whenever I've tried to explain it I've found it nearly impossible.
For me it's more like.... imagine holding a small object between your first finger and thumb and 'rolling' it slightly so you can feel the texture. The weird thing is that this little stone or whatever is simultaneously tiny, huge (planet-sized), light, heavy, sharp and angled, soft and fuzzy. It's almost like been in two places at once and experiencing two different things at the same time somehow.
There's also a kind of 'pins and needles' sensation for some reason.
Anyway, it's a very very wierd feeling and somehow very unsettling. As you say it's the contrast of scale that does it - 'universe in a grain of sand stuff'!
I'm not sure how well I've described this, but I think it's the best I can do.

PS I haven't been smoking Salvia or anything!
 
reply to AndyX

YES!!!! That is it - it's all in the feeling of feeling it in your finger tips!!! yessssss!!!
It's weird. I've had 2 responses though, so i feel much better! Would love to know what goes on in a brain that makes that kind of thing happen.....

Lotsford
 
blimey, I get the very same thing if I cant sleep

Lemme explain, if I cant get to sleep I meditate, whereby I relax, slow my heard down and this phenomena is EXACTLY how Andy described, I can almost achieve an OOBE and feel the texture of far away objects - like andy says, it's a mushy electrical feeling in my finger tips and the object is also tiny as I can visualise it being small but expend myself and feel it massive at the same time.

It's not unpleasant, but it's not ver nice either, the hazey head feeling is exactly (for me) being on a trip, a high but also a feeling that it isn't real but it is.

The feeling is more intense in the part of my body I imagine I'm using (normally my finger tips) but if I concentrate I can feel it in my entire body and is *ahem* somewhat similar to an orgasm :eek:, the feeling usually lasts between 10 and 15 minutes.

Thank god it's not just me :chuffed:
 
Yes me too.
Weird - I had forgotten about this - I haven't thought about it in a long time so it mustn't happen to me much any more ....
 
yesss!

THAT IS IT. I have never done acid, for these reasons! I don't need it!!

Thank god!!!!!!!
 
AndyX said:
For me it's more like.... imagine holding a small object between your first finger and thumb and 'rolling' it slightly so you can feel the texture.
Click to expand...

I've had that too, it really freaked me out - had to wake myself up properly to see that things weren't really that way!

Kitten
 
schnor said:
...a mushy electrical feeling ....I concentrate I can feel it in my entire body and is *ahem* somewhat similar to an orgasm :eek:, the feeling usually lasts between 10 and 15 minutes.
Click to expand...

That's weird, I nearly used the word 'electrical' myself, but I forgot in the process of composing the rest of my reply - if you see what I mean, and yes, there is a whole-body sensation as well (sometimes).
 
Not sure if I´m thinking of the same thing but when I was younger and even now if I try, I always got really strange sensations whenever I looked at aerial photographs where there were no features which gave away the scale.

I would suddenly feel that I was looking at something really up close, even though I knew I was really looking at a photo of a massive river delta or similar.

One particular photo which gave this impression was one of a large lake (Eyre or Victoria) with several islands which gave the startling impression of being a puddle with some clumps of moss sticking out of it.

I always assumed it was because the part of the brain which calculates scale is doing the equivalent of getting dizzy as it loses its usual frames of reference.
 
yesssssssss

For me it's like the feeling of the stomach going thing that you get on a rollercoaster or when you are drunk....
 
Re: what Jobbo said

I reckon that is the same feeling, especially at the point where you realise it's not what you think it is and feel funny, maybe??
 
This is bizzare... I think I vaguely remember that feeling from childhood... had it once in a while... haven't had it in years... but I do think string/large lumps, big/small was part of it... and actually, something about rubbing my thumbs together. I didn't actually rub my thumbs though... wow this is strange. Its really really vague, but I defenitely remember it.

And jobbo- I used to do that too, when I was young. I don't know what I'd do, I'd think about the universe (or something... I think I imagined planets and crap), and I'd get... not an out of body experience, but kind of an out of mind experience... I don't remember what happened, but I'd suddenly return to normal conciousness and have to ground myself in reality by repeating my name and random concrete facts about my life. I'd be disoriented and feel really... apart. Weird as hell and I haven't been able to do it since I was like 10 or something.

Straaaaange.
 
....

I can relate to what Schnor said. Very strange. Not felt it for many years tho'.. Maybe it's related to OOBE's..

Ooh it's nice to relate. I feel better already!
 
My mate suffers for wakeing halucinations sometimes and says he has since childhood... his halucinations are terrifying and are about imposibly huge or large numbers of things ocupying a small or too small space. Two he told me about was a million stacking chairs sitting in the corner or the room and a planet sized ball of wall paper on the landing!.......... He has very mathematicl brain and deals in numbers all the time .. very analytical etc...
 
This reminded me about something I've posted about before here. I'm not sure it's entirely related, but reading this thread really made me think of these weird 'episodes' I used to get as a kid.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I used to have these kind of recurring images or 'scenes' which would replay in my head, seemingly without any effort or will on my part. There are two that I remember -

1. A green fractal-like flat perspective grid field which had a large, slowly moving, bouncing ball which would hit the grid occasionally. The whole thing had an 80s green-screen computer feel to it. I had a feeling of fighting against the movement or direction of the ball.

2. A four-pronged fork that I would fight with myself to stop from bending back upon itself. It was like a battle of wills between two distinct parts of myself. I was fighting against another 'will' which was attempting to bend the prongs of the fork against their natural curve.

In both these cases I had a very horrid feeling of being out of control of my own thoughts which did induce a nauseous 'stomach going' feeling which reading this thread has brought back to me clearly. :cross eye

The green scene usually happened in bed. The fork thing I remember having on the way to school one day, and a few other times. Both occured while I was fully awake, and always would just pop into my head at random and without warning.

The major thing about them both was that I found it enormously difficult to get them out of my mind. It was truly a battle in both cases to stop these scenes from playing in my head, and would take me around ten minutes or more to think about other things.
 
I get these sort of sensations if I'm falling ill.

It scares the bejesus out of me and when I was a child I used to start crying and/ or hyperventelating when it happend.

I last experenced it about 7-8 months ago and as it's happend on and off for years I don't get scared anymore (well not that scared.)


I would describe it as an inability to judge perspective or interprite sensation properly: things in your vision are both hudge and tiny and you can feal (it seems) the texture of your fingureprint.

And no, I'm not having an acid flashbach (incase you where wondering.)
 
Yes, I can relate

Hey! I think I do know what you are talking about. This (or some related type of thing) happens to me sometimes when falling asleep.
It IS very hard to explain. For me I would just see something in my head (building, person, plant, ANYTHING) as really really huge, and then in the next second it would feel as small as it could be. I guess I sort of pictured it in my head but felt the feeling of huge/grand and small/microscopic more than anything. It would give me a bizzare mix of excitement and a nervous/queasy kinda of feeling. WEIRD!
I didn't know anyone else experianced this type of thing. It always seemed to weird to even begin to explain to anyone. Maybe something to do with brain waves relaxing or something? <- (Don't know what I'm talking about)
:D
 
I used to get that as a kid , the feeling of something infinitely small against something infinitetly huge . I only got it when I was delerious with a fever . You need fluids to counterract it .
 
Freaky - same thing here. I had a fever and I remember textures that didn't make sense, and a huge one of those lawn rollers with spikes in, rolling a tiny tiny lawn.
Pins and needles effect, felt like my tongue had turned to playdough. Hallucinations, and feeling really nauseous.

Someone must know what's going on here...so many of us have had this experience?

PS borgqueen - edit your post and take your email address out - you'll get spammed something silly otherwise! There are bots that scan boards for email addresses. I posted mine on here and I get spammed something chronic.
 
Me too. Like sensing two size-scales at once. I remember associating it with elephants, large grey bits of elephants. Haven't had this since I was a fledgeling, but I'm going to try and go "there" tonight if I can.
Mind you, i was on all sorts of (prescribed) drugs then, and I always assumed it was that. Maybe it wasn't after all.
 
me an all,,,this seems to be one of those universal "childhood" experiences, like the flying and naked dreams,,,,,so does the fact that most or all of us experience these things, mean it's a "fortean" phenomina ,the true nature of the universe revealed to us,and that all things are one and scale is a dizzying illusion, or simply a "normal" reaction of a half asleep brain????????
 
I had a sort of similar experience once although not as a child. This was last November on a plane journey over the USA.

It was night, and, looking out of the window, I could see the lights of towns below forming bright patches on the black ground. However, the sense of scale was lost, and I thought at the time how much it looked like some sort of incredibly intricate, miniature circuit board with sections lit up by powerful spotlights.

For some reason, with that thought in my mind, a real buzzing feeling of dread overtook me and I had to look away. Eventually I just pulled down the plastic windowshade. (Perhaps it was tiredness!)

Occasionally I have a somewhat similar feeling looking at stars in the sky, but not as strong.
 
This is amazing! I used to get this when I was very young before falling asleep. Two things used to happen.. one was that my pillow was soft, but it felt like a sharp point wherever I rested my head (I just shivered then.. I'd forgotten about that). The other one involved being in any given surround (my bedroom, the front room etc) and not having a sense of perspective, walls and objects across the room seemed to be pressed right up close to my face.

It's good to know I wasn't mad :)

Maybe it's just the young mind's way of processing unquantifiable stimulii (soft, hard, near, far), and developing your perception of the range of those stimulii between one extreme and the other.:confused:
 
Snowman X said:
Maybe it's just the young mind's way of processing unquantifiable stimulii (soft, hard, near, far), and developing your perception of the range of those stimulii between one extreme and the other.:confused:
Click to expand...


But then I have experenced this meby once a year for most of my life and now I'm 27 I can hardly be described as having a young mind.

It is true that the severity of the visitations have decresed (or perhaps I am just more familure with it now) but it has not stoped as I've grown older.

Just a thought here: some of those posting on this thread have posted elsewhere conserning mental health problems (see, for instance, the 'I was seeing monsters' thread.) Could there be a link?

We realy need someone with a knowlage of neuroscience to post and clear all this up.
 
jamesveldon said:
We realy need someone with a knowlage of neuroscience to post and clear all this up.
Click to expand...
Perhaps there is such a person with a website that people can send questions to. You never know. Expert Googlers (Rynner! You don't have enough to do!) get on to it please.
Also, the mental health link you mention James, could be just that we, as fortean minded individuals, are more open to recognising this sort of experience. I bet if I went to work next week and showed all the "normal" people this thread they would have no idea what we were on about. We are a rather odd group of people, mental health issues being just one aspect of that.
 
beakboo said:
.
Also, the mental health link you mention James, could be just that we, as fortean minded individuals, are more open to recognising this sort of experience. I bet if I went to work next week and showed all the "normal" people this thread they would have no idea what we were on about. We are a rather odd group of people, mental health issues being just one aspect of that.
Click to expand...


Yes I supose we are all a little weird but I like it that way.

And the call goes out to 'expert googlers' everywhere (well on the board anyway.)
Do a Google on that!
 
I think you are all crazy!

No, just joking.

I can't remember anything like this ever happening to me as a child.
I have had a few experiences with illegal substances though and this feeling you describe is all part of the trip.

When borgqueen described the enormous lump of clay held in mid air by a single hair...I did feel instantly ill just by imagining it...kinda like car-sickness.

I am the universe!
Heehee.:heh:

Trippers!
 
Snowman X said:
This is amazing! I used to get this when I was very young before falling asleep. Two things used to happen.. one was that my pillow was soft, but it felt like a sharp point wherever I rested my head (I just shivered then.. I'd forgotten about that). The other one involved being in any given surround (my bedroom, the front room etc) and not having a sense of perspective, walls and objects across the room seemed to be pressed right up close to my face.

It's good to know I wasn't mad :)

Maybe it's just the young mind's way of processing unquantifiable stimulii (soft, hard, near, far), and developing your perception of the range of those stimulii between one extreme and the other.:confused:
Click to expand...

Wow, that's just exactly described the sensation I used to get when hallucinating as a kid, especially once when I had sunstroke. In fact, just reading that brought the sensation back for a few seconds and I could feel the panic rising slightly. That pillow as a point thing - so uncomfortable.

The other thing I got a few times was whilst being comforted by my Mum, was the sensation that everything seemed to keep stopping and starting. My Mum would move a bit and freeze, say something and freeze, move a bit more and freeze. This was only a sensation rather than an actual visual experience but was extremely unpleasant. It only happened in the more serious cases - like time preception as well as scale perception was being messed with.
 
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