If there’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older, it’s truly that no two people experience life the same way.

And that’s even when someone doesn’t experience a strange disorder like tachysensia, or “fast feeling.”

The disorder is hard to pin down, even by those who experience it.

“Sounds are much louder and time contracts so everything feels like it is happening faster,” said one person on Reddit.

The community there has grown to over 5,000 people, with many of them relieved to find out they’re not alone.

People with issues like this notoriously have trouble being taken seriously by the medical profession, which can be frustrating and honestly debilitating, if symptoms are bad enough.

Osman Farooq, an associate professor in the University of Buffalo’s Department of Neurology, has been working hard to understand tachysensia, though.

Here’s how he describes the condition, after reviewing numerous personal testimonies.

“Tachysensia is a distortion of time and sound. It is reported to consist of time moving fast or slow, or a combination of both in which a person may feel like they are moving in slow motion but everything around them is in ‘fast forward.’ Sounds can also be altered, where there can be an amplification of sounds, in which everything appears very loud or also muffled, as if ‘hearing underwater.’ These alterations in the sensations of time and sound can be very troubling for the individual experiencing them.”

Though the sample size was small, some patterns definitely emerged.

Most people reported episodes of tachysensia lasting between 5 and 10 minutes, and had between 2 and 12 episodes a year.

Some outliers reported longer or more frequent episodes.

For most, symptoms begin around puberty, and most reported being alarmed by the sudden onset.

Research indicates that for a majority of sufferers, the short-duration episodes are a strange presentation of a migraine.

That said, there is another possibility – Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS).

This is a collection of disorders that cause altered perception, and people with AIWS experience similar feelings to those with tachysensia. Some see things as being bigger or smaller than they are in reality, while others have the sensation extend to parts of their own bodies.

It’s tricky to diagnose and is often a secondary effect of a stroke or even a tumor.

Mario K. Shammas discussed the similarities with tachysensia in a 2020 paper. He says that just because it only affects a few people and doesn’t cause serious consequences, doesn’t mean it should be ignored.

“Such distinctly eccentric phenomena as AIWS, properly studied, offer us the deepest insight into the most fundamental questions of neurology – those that tie back neurology and psychiatry to their original metaphysical roots.”

Some in that Reddit community dispute that there is a link between AIWS and tachysensia, and formal research remains sorely lacking.

“With so many cases of a condition (very likely millions) that we now call tachysensia, it seems astonishing that the medical community continues to be relatively unaware of the syndrome.”

The people who experience it definitely want answers.

So hopefully more research will be launched soon.

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