AIWS anxiety disorder
Laura In Wonderland
Hello. I have been doing some investigating and have decided
to post here in the hope of receiving help, but also because I desperately want
to help others in my position who think they are alone.
I believe that I do not have this medical condition anymore, but just as well I
still suffer from it. Confused? There's a bit of a story behind this so I shall
delve........
I am an 18 year old female, currently at university and suffer from anxiety and
occasional depression. Recently I had my worst depressive episode so far and
this has led me to investigate my problems and find solutions so that I will be
able to live in peace in the future. I don't consider medication a solution.
As a child I had the same experiences as others here, I would wake up in the
night screaming and terrified with the feeling of things being wrong. It is
sooooooooooooooo hard to describe but I remember what I said about it at
the time, that "the house seems as big as a castle", or everything's
too big or too far away. My goodness I must say I am writing this now and
considering it as a type of exposure practise as it is making me feel most
uncomfortable. Quite why I would feel such intense mental anguish or terror I
will never know and it seems medical professionals won't either. I would soon
get back to sleep after the panic quietened down. In the daytime I don't
believe this ever bothered me at all and I was unfazed by the night attacks.
Once we did go to a doctor, clueless of course! This condition didn't have a
big name in the 90's and we didn't have the internet.
The condition seemed to stop when I was past 7 or 8 perhaps. Unfortunately when
I was 13 I got some vague virus which gave me a permanent temperature and I had
one of these night attacks again. This time I was living in fear for a good
week and didn’t leave the house. Looking back I now know I may not have been
even suffering from the symptoms round the clock but I was terrified of them. I
think I was more suffering from anxiety than any kind of illness at this time.
It was around this time that I developed anxiety and depression. Since this
fall at 13, I have been suffering from these disorders and their severity comes
and goes.
The AIWS does not cause me visual distortions anymore, I think that I have got over it like other children, but it has left me with crippling fear. The sensations, mental images and memories this problem gave me have morphed into what I can only describe as a phobia of AIWS. This is triggered by almost anything that is not quite the right shape or size now. This is extremely hard to describe. I will have to provide some examples if I can bear writing them – I have trouble with writing that is close up or overly large or small including musical notation, things on a large scale like monster trucks or massive trees, tiny things like insects. Also sounds that are very high pitched or very low cause me trouble, thumping bass music in particular gets my hands sweaty. I also experience time-based phobic distortions – sometimes I hear things that sound too slow. I have learnt that it is not the sound of something being too slow, it is my reaction to it that is causing trouble. If it is a person that sounds like they momentarily spoke too slow, I have found out that this is not a perception thing at all…they are indeed saying things a little slower than usual at that moment but my phobic response kicks in and goes “AIWS! AAAAAH”. Interestingly, I can’t remember having time distortions when I was a child, only the strange visual perceptions. The triggers for this ineffable fear and feeling are getting more and more prevalent in my life. Why does this feel so unbearably uncomfortable? It’s like things are big and small at the same time. I only have to think of this feeling to make it happen. Of course, I can’t not think about it. That’s the problem.
So I have no “physical symptoms”, only the problem it has left me, the mental associations of incorrect scale and proportions. How do I get rid of this? I have been using CBT exposure self help to do the best I can. I believe that desensitization must be the key to getting rid of this problem and treating it like any other phobia. I have read other posts on here and have thought that people who are saying they have the condition may only actually have a fear of the condition. Another person on here struck a chord with me when they said that they had a problem with an image of a cartoon man hitting a house with a giant hammer. They said this “triggered the condition”. What if it is just a phobic association? In order to desensitize however, I have an enormous amount of images to get through. Some things I have been exposing myself to are timed and involved images of things zoomed in and close up, high and low sounds and big views like the Grand Canyon. Previous experiments have been unsuccessful as I have so many images to get through, by the time I have reduced my anxiety on one and started on another, I begin to fear the first again. It seems that in order to overcome this problem I will have to organise a massive great long program of desensitization. Then again that is not really getting at the root of the fear; it’s just cutting off all the branches one by one. Is there any other way round this?
I have felt so alone with this problem as nobody else understood the horrific terror of the feeling, more than terror it feels like, some kind of mental pain. I really want to reach out to others who are suffering like I have and give them hope. Medical professionals need to know about this and help people with it, but it’s such a minority thing that they know too little to get started. Just my luck to have a problem that not even 1% of this planet have!
I would be most interested in other’s experience of exposure
or other techniques or who have merely investigated this line of enquiry. Hypnosis maybe? NLP? How do I stop this affecting my life
so severely? Can it go forever so that I never look back on it? That would be
heaven. I would love to try to help others as well. If anyont here suffers from panic or anxiety I suggest you join NoMorePanic.com as it is imensely helpful and you should share your problems. I believe half the battle is won when you realise you are not in danger and you are most certainly not alone.
A big thank you to anyone who has read through this post, this is the first time I have been able to tell the world about this in a place where people understand.
Alison R
Hi Laura,
Laura In Wonderland
Thank you so much for linking me to this. I had no idea about this thread, what a huge source of comfort to me that is, although I'm having to skim over the graphic parts as they make me most panicky :)
So I'm glad I joined this group already! I would love to raise awareness of this fear/phobia/thing and put a simple name to it so that hopefully one day there will be no one left who is alone.
Thanks again,
L.
Peter Jorkowski
Lúthien
I think it's only a natural reaction to feel anxious towards something as strange as what you experience in AIWS. Your most basic notions about the world are turned upside down, after all: what can you trust if things don't have a consistent size or mass, but keep changing all the time? Or even: that you can't seem to settle on what the difference is between far away and up close, large and small, thick and thin, tiny or huge?
It'd be a lot more worrying if you wouldn't feel anxious. It can feel as if you're going cuckoo.
But as you say as well: you can start to overcome it as soon as you find out what it is. And when experience tells you that it always leaves again as it comes.
Maybe it's a good idea to have your suspicion confirmed by a doctor; which would also be wise given your medical history.
Cheers
Lúthien
> Hey, I am struggling with anxiety/depression which is linked to my fear of aiws. anxiety has calmed a lot since finding out this thing has a name and I'm not alone, but I totally get where your coming from. For me it's when objects don't fit because of disproportionate sizes, for example, when I was a kid I imagined firing a huge boulder out of my little toy hand catapult. The fact that it is physically impossible makes me all squirly. Like sometimes I imagine my legs are as thin as strands of hair, and the fact they couldn't physically support my weight.... Yack!
>
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Krystal_sloth
On Monday, June 8, 2015 at 7:39:43 AM UTC+1, Lúthien wrote:
Hi Peter,
I think it's only a natural reaction to feel anxious towards something as strange as what you experience in AIWS. Your most basic notions about the world are turned upside down, after all: what can you trust if things don't have a consistent size or mass, but keep changing all the time? Or even: that you can't seem to settle on what the difference is between far away and up close, large and small, thick and thin, tiny or huge?
It'd be a lot more worrying if you wouldn't feel anxious. It can feel as if you're going cuckoo.
But as you say as well: you can start to overcome it as soon as you find out what it is. And when experience tells you that it always leaves again as it comes.
Maybe it's a good idea to have your suspicion confirmed by a doctor; which would also be wise given your medical history.
Cheers
Lúthien
> Hey, I am struggling with anxiety/depression which is linked to my fear of aiws. anxiety has calmed a lot since finding out this thing has a name and I'm not alone, but I totally get where your coming from. For me it's when objects don't fit because of disproportionate sizes, for example, when I was a kid I imagined firing a huge boulder out of my little toy hand catapult. The fact that it is physically impossible makes me all squirly. Like sometimes I imagine my legs are as thin as strands of hair, and the fact they couldn't physically support my weight.... Yack!
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to alice-in-wonderland-syndrome+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
jjwy...@gmail.com
Then they did an EEG or whatever it is called on my brain along with MRI.
This is when they found out I had right temporal lobe epilepsy.
This combined with migraines for me makes ALice very scary.
It can be so scary that it causes anxiety and also depending if a part of the brain is effected etc.
My advice is to speak with a neurologist.
Knowledge equals power.
Once you get correct knowledge about what is actually happening to you as we are all different it really helps you get your power back.
When I have bad boughts I have medication that's been around for 70 years and is harmless.
It's also helped me with strategies to manage the condition.
Good luck it can be very scary.
Having anxiety about something like this is normal it doesn't mean you have an anxiety disorder it just means you are normal and need more knowledge on your personal condition