What's the explanation for the stretch of personal time?

[Ron_Tomkins]

I wanted to share this weird experience with you cause I'm wondering what exactly triggered.

When I was around 8 years old I used to get these weird episodes a couple times. I would all of a sudden wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like time was happening a little bit faster than normal (On other ocassions it would be the opposite and time would feel a little bit slower than usual). This would freak the hell out of me because it just felt so weird. I would look around myself and freak out at the feeling. It was kind of being drugged (No I hadn't tried drugs nor alcohol until much later in my adolescence). My mother says she thinks it might have been stress. Still, I'm wondering, what exactly triggers this? Is there some sort of personal perception of time that can get distorted when you wake up too fast?

 

[Antranik1]

I would like to know why this happens as well.

Time used to SPEED UP for me often when I was young. It never happened to me at night like you Ron, actually it only happened in the day-time. Basically, for no apparent reason, I would experience that time was going fast. SUPER FAST. I didn't just "think" that time was going fast, I was experiencing it that way. There was nothing changed about the outside-world, but my perception of time would become completely distorted and go to WARP SPEED.

It would effectively freak me out because internally everything was going fast, fast fast! Even my thoughts seemed like they were "on the run." Just non stop perception-shift of time consciously flying by. I remember I would ask my parents why is this happening, and they wouldn't even know what I was talking about.

Every episode would last a good 15-20 minutes. and occurred about twice a year between the ages of 10 until 16. Then they stopped together all together and popped up again when I was 19 or 20. I'm 24 now and since then, it's happened around 5 more times. It was truly like an altered-state of mind.

Anybody know what was happening to us? Back in the day I posted about this on other forums but nobody had a clue.

 

[Antranik1]

Bump?

 

[Phil]

Someone has obviously TiVo-ed you, and is fast forwarding through the slow periods.

 

[MrMonty]

Caffeine?

Maybe a sign of heart problems? I know I felt pretty weird when I had Atrial Fibrillation. My heart starting beating really, really weird. Fast, slow, skipping. Kinda felt like my whole body's timing was off.

Seriously though, I don't indulge in caffeine much. If I decide to have coffee, things really seem to speed up, especially my thoughts.

 

[alfaniner]

Someone once said (paraphrasing -- I don't know if I have enough of the words correct to Google it)

"A few seconds with a finger in a candle flame is too long. A few seconds with a pretty woman is much too short."

 

[bokonon]

Interesting. I've never had this experience myself, so I assume it's something unique about your brain chemistry, but I haven't a clue about what it might be. To be honest, this is the first I've heard of the phenomenon.

From your description, it seems there's nothing extraordinary about the events in your life at that point that might have triggered "quicktime." Is there anything you can recall that the events had in common? Might've been some adrenal gland ejaculating for no reason, but it's more fun to speculate that there are whirlpools of time eddying their way around the universe, and occasionally they swirl past you.

Maybe a micro black hole.

 

[Lanzy]

Time slow during M - F 9 - 6.
time Fast Fri night thru Mon Morning.
Every week!

I suspect it is entirely perception.

 

[bokonon]

I can add that the perception of time accelerates as one gets older. I hope this isn't too much of a derail, but it used to take forever from one birthday to the next, and now they arrive every other day. I think this is partly because each year is incrementally a smaller percentage of one's lifetime, and partly because we remember less and less of what happens day-to-day, so looking back, there is less "event space" in the 48-49 slot than there was in the 8-9 slot.

Still can't help with the OP, but I'd be interested in other accounts of people who have experienced it.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

The perception of "time passing" is limited by how fast our brains "process" from what I've heard. Flys for example percieve it far slower because their simplistic brains do the processing a lot faster (making it fairly easy to evade our swats). Adjusting chemicals in our brains can shift our perception of time.

Sometimes though, even though the world doesn't "seem" faster or slower, I do get a very strong "things are rushing" impression, and had it a few times over my life, so I think I know what you mean. It actually kinda makes me panic when it happens. Not that I panic and it causes that, the causality goes the other way. I think it was a temporary mental glitch is all.

One important thing to note. Einstein's relativity analogy about sitting on a stove vs an amusement park ride to demonstrate time dilation should never be taken literally. The two are actually unrelated.

 

[alfaniner]

Too late to edit my previous post, but I think the quote I referred to earlier was, as noted by Dark Jaguar, by a guy named Einstein. Apparently a figure of some note...

 

[uruk]

I was watching a show on the science channel. The incredible body or extreme body or something to that effect.
They stated that when the mind is under stress or when doing something atheletic. Brain activity can increase. The electrical/chemical signals normaly pulse along at around 30Hz. But when stressed it can get as high as 40Hz. They said that the higher rate of activity can cause you perception of time to slow down. I imagine that if the activity slows down, time can seem to pass faster.

Then there's also how much your attention is being occupied.

 

[malaka]

Someone once said (paraphrasing -- I don't know if I have enough of the words correct to Google it)

"A few seconds with a finger in a candle flame is too long. A few seconds with a pretty woman is much too short."

From mad Magazine (paraphrased):

Time Drags...when you're waiting for the pizza to go from molten lava to just scalding hot.
Time Flies...when you're waiting for the pizza to go from scalding hot to ice cold.

I vote perception.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I was watching a show on the science channel. The incredible body or extreme body or something to that effect.
They stated that when the mind is under stress or when doing something atheletic. Brain activity can increase. The electrical/chemical signals normaly pulse along at around 30Hz. But when stressed it can get as high as 40Hz. They said that the higher rate of activity can cause you perception of time to slow down. I imagine that if the activity slows down, time can seem to pass faster.

Then there's also how much your attention is being occupied.

Yeah, like I said, it probably had something got to do with stress.

But speaking of stress, I want to stress the fact that this wasn't like it seemed like time was going faster. No. It definitively felt like time was going faster (or sometimes slower). Like when under the effect of some kind of drug, where it seems without a doubt that there is something unusual about the normal speed of time.

No, I don't think I was consuming much caffeine around that time.

 

[Antranik1]

I want to stress the fact that this wasn't like it seemed like time was going faster. No. It definitively felt like time was going faster (or sometimes slower). Like when under the effect of some kind of drug, where it seems without a doubt that there is something unusual about the normal speed of time.

That's exactly how it is for me too. It's not just that I *think* time is going faster, it REALLY is felt like I'm all of a sudden in a hyper-speed shift. Ron I haven't had the experience of it going slower than normal though.

In regards to caffeine, eh it seems nothing related. I rarely drink the stuff, but I know the kind of energy it provides, including speedy thoughts, but nothing close to the huge shift in time perception. And the weird thing is, since these episodes last nearly 20 minutes everytime, I have a lot of time to play around with things (like relaxing) to try to make it go away and nothing seems to help except for 15-20 minutes of time to pass.

Weird stuff ey?

 

[JoeEllison]

I remember when I was in ridiculous shape, and I could run for well over an hour every day with no negative effects. There were instances when time would expand or contract, so that a few miles would seem to last for days, or a half-dozen miles would just disappear as though they never happened. It really DOES come down to perception... because I sure as hell knew in every aching muscle that I ran for two hours come the next morning, no matter how short it seemed at the time!

 

[six7s]

Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

 

[quarky]

Ever nod off at work, for five minutes, and have a dream that would take an hour to describe?

 

[Gagglegnash]

Hi

Data loading.

The memory model is this:
(Short Term Memory)---Transfer Channel--->(Long Term Memory)

When you're doing boring, repetitive tasks, short term memory gets all loaded up with, "tighten the bolt, put in bin, get a new piece, tighten the bolt, put in bin, get a new piece."

There's no -- ok, LIMITED -- transfer to long term memory. While you're doing it, it seems longer because you're loading up short term memory and it, "weighs down," your perceptions.

When you're doing fun, exciting work, you transfer much more of your short term memory into long term, so the, "here and now," isn't loading you up and weighing you down.

That's all opinion, though, and I'm a computer programmer, so what do I know about clinical psychology.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Hi

Data loading.

The memory model is this:
(Short Term Memory)---Transfer Channel--->(Long Term Memory)

When you're doing boring, repetitive tasks, short term memory gets all loaded up with, "tighten the bolt, put in bin, get a new piece, tighten the bolt, put in bin, get a new piece."

There's no -- ok, LIMITED -- transfer to long term memory. While you're doing it, it seems longer because you're loading up short term memory and it, "weighs down," your perceptions.

When you're doing fun, exciting work, you transfer much more of your short term memory into long term, so the, "here and now," isn't loading you up and weighing you down.

That's all opinion, though, and I'm a computer programmer, so what do I know about clinical psychology.

Hmmmmmm.

Nominated as the freackiest reply ever.