The mystery of Alice in Wonderland syndrome
9 comments
·August 5, 2025jameskilton
I dealt with this kind of thing for years growing up, and for the most part grown out of it but it can still strike me out of nowhere.
The feelings of the walls of the room suddenly racing away from you, or the feeling that your hands are suddenly 10x as big and everything you touch is tiny, are terrifying for a growing kid. Heck even talking about it now tingles those fears just a bit, but now I can for the most part logic myself out of it.
I slept with a light on in my room for many years, that was the only thing that helped.
Baeocystin
Interesting. I never knew there was a name for this phenomena. It happened to me every now and then as a kid, too, usually when I was sick and in bed. In my case, it made me feel vertigo, like size scales were shifting around so fast I'd lose my balance and fall over, stuff like that, but I don't remember any particular fear reaction per se, other than feeling kind of gross when it happened. I found that dim light (like a nightlight in a child's bedroom, with long shadows) was the worst trigger, and either bright light or complete darkness helped avoid it.
HelloUsername
(2023)
Perhaps related: Seeing the World (and Writing It) with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342909 09-mar-2019
frotaur
Funny, when I was less than 12 years old, I remember often (usually when sick) seeing people shrink, feel like they appear to be very far away, and feeling like they were slowed down. It hasn't happened since then, I wonder if it's related to this!
gyomu
I think our brains as kids are very different than as adults, and like it’s a fairly unexplored area because studying kids is much, much harder than 20 somethings or older.
I have a number of such weird things, the most dramatic being probably that I remember experiencing vivid synesthesia until age 4/5 or so, which kind of faded away has never happened since.
gehwartzen
I remember having similar experiences as a child. What's strange to think about is; what if we lived in a world where we all had this symptom and just considered it normal? The intersection of "reality" and perception is a fascicnating place
throwaway5NnE
I experienced this as a kid, mostly when sick.
Feels like the cubes part of the "metachaos" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UPUhn9hpTU
more_corn
When I had fevers as a child I would experience my perception of space and my place in it wildly growing and shrinking. For me it was a rapid flip-flop (gargantuan then tiny, repeat) and was nausea inducing (or perhaps it was coincident with sickness induced nausea). My memories of it were while in bed since that’s where I was most of the time when sick. Strangely the bed came with me.
Surprised that the article never mentions psychedelics, because I experience something similar almost every time I am under the influence of one.