Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
What is Alice in Wonderland Syndrome?
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) is a disease that affects the way you perceive the size of things or the feel/look of your body. This condition can also affect your sense of reality.
How Common is AIWS?
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome seems to be pretty rare. Research shows that up to 30% of teens experience any episodes. However this research isn’t extensive enough, mostly because it is rare, easily misdiagnosed, and most people don’t have it for long enough or intense enough to need any medical intervention or attention.
How does Alice in Wonderland Syndrome Affect the Body?
Though the syndrome doesn’t actually affect the body, it can affect how it feels or looks to you.
The three types of symptoms are:
Disturbances in self-perception: this affects how you feel or see either certain parts of the body or the body as a whole.
Disturbances in visual processing: this affects how your brain processes things and objects around you, this is the most common symptom.
Combined symptoms: you experience both visual processing and self-perception disturbances.
Self-Perception Symptoms
You can feel like a body part is unusually big or unusually small. Your body can also feel unusually tall or unusually short.
Dissociation from the world around you, in this case, known as derealization.
Depersonalization, which is when you feel disconnected from your body, thoughts, etc. A lot of people have described it as feeling like you watch your life over your shoulder, or in 3rd person.
Feeling of being split in two. You feel like your left and right side are too completely different things, but you can still feel both.
Disruption in your feeling of the passing of time. Your sense of how time passes is altered, making you feel like time is going incredibly slow or fast, you can also feel like time is standing still, paused, frozen.
Visual Perception Symptoms
Change in size of things. You feel like things are smaller or bigger than they actually are.
Changes in distance. Things may feel closer or farther than they actually are.
Changes in both size and distance. Things may feel like they are smaller and moving farther away.
People appear smaller than they actually are.
Things can feel distorted in shape. Straight lines can look squiggly or wavy, and horizontal or vertical lines that are straight may seem slanted.
What Causes Alice in Wonderland Syndrome?
Migraines
Infections
Seizures
Certain Types of Strokes
Mental health conditions like schizophrenia
Medications
Recreational drugs
Brain tumors
Degenerative brain diseases