I have extremely strong and specific reactions to color. I know everyone has emotional reactions to color, but mine are to the point where I get bodily sensations of extreme calm/anger. But it’s not where I see the color in my mind’s eye when I feel the emotion. It’s always a reaction to seeing color.

I have always noticed this, but my husband pointed it out last night when we were watching squid game. There was a hallway that was completely purple - floor, ceiling and walls - and I kept commenting about how happy it made me feel and how I wanted to just melt into it and become one with it. Certain colors feel edible to me, especially pastels. I have always had strong reactions to deep jewel tones. If you’ve ever seen the designs of Verner Panton - maximalism with rich colors. It makes me feel whole, for lack of a better term. Red is mostly upsetting to me, almost to the point where it feels like it’s vibrating. Brown I dislike to the point of feeling like it’s not a color, unless it’s in nature like skin or trees. Very light colors often make me feel repulsed or upset - like a light sage, off white, or a warm light blue.

I do have the type of synesthesia where I experience time as points in space and I also have a lot of sensory issues, especially with sound. Could this just be me being slightly on the spectrum?

Warm colors = yellow, orange, red, gold, brown, beige etc. Cold colors = blue, green, purple, indigo, teal, silver, grey etc.

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I have marked NSFW because I cuss.

I see shaped colors with sounds. It's mostly around the outside edge of my vision, but not always. In fact, there are times that I have to change my entire environment to focus on a task because this noise is blinding me. About 2 weeks ago I was being kept awake by a flashing bright light purple car alarm that I couldn't actually hear unless the window was open. I kid you not I can see the noise before I can actually hear it. Back in September my husband and I were huddled up with the kiddos in the basement because I couldn't show him the way a train engine looks vs a tornado. I almost resorted to drawing him a picture. Sure enough it wasn't a train.

I have always had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (focal), AUDHD, and stroke at 14. The TLE has been caught on EEG and identified when I was young. The CVA happened because of medication in Broca's area and there is now a tonic-clonic maybe once a year or so. We had a lot of trouble inducing one of the big ones. So the way we did it was with a series of purples and whites. The doctor was fascinated when I explained white train tracks or lavender alarms gave me dejavu and made me feel scared and nauseous. I was blown away because I didn't know dejavu was an aura. At that point I had gone years with no warning of when I would have a seizure. (I've have more freedom from seizures since starting meds for AUDHD which makes no sense to any of my doctors). Perhaps I'm just growing out of them. I don't know. It's a happy idiom.

I'm not allowed to have the Skyrim theme song playing and sort a box of Lego at the same time anymore. Nor can I mate socks while listening to Stevie Ray Vaugh. I am a 40yr woman and finally free enough from epilepsy that I have my license. I am LEGALLY allowed to drive for the first time in my life. If I am driving at night I will still only allow songs that I know to be played on the radio and no one is allowed to laugh, squeal, chirp or make any high pitch noise that I cannot prepare for. No my kids can play a new song or ever sing along with on in the car because Mom is too much of a neuro fuck wad to maintain the vehicle. Between all the headlights of vehicles, street lights, seeing all the other engines, brakes, horns, damned turning signal ticks tocks (I know it's blinking I turned it on why make a noise?!?!) driving is terrifying sometimes.

Anyways..... Of all this crap, although I do appreciate the yellow oceans of Sam Cook, I wish I could turn it off sometimes. It's a nightmare trying to run an oak plank along a joiner and be able to see what I'm doing and not be muddled. I grew up being fed seizure meds and benzos. I have never had medications stop this. Noisy situations are utterly overwhelming at times. Not because of Asperger's, but because I cannot see what I am doing and stay focused on it with all this noise. "No I didn't hear you because of the the kids orange/red laughter is splashing all over this form." The only relief I get from this is after a grand-mal seizure, waking up from being unconscious or coming out of surgery. So essentially I guess I need to take brain damage to get freedom from it? Can I just carry around a purse sized ballping hammer to catch a break when I need on?

Are you able to turn it off? Has any medication ever changed what your see or taste? I always thought this was neurological, is there a type that is associating two senses together? Does anyone else find this impossible to cope with at times? Is your getting worse with age or am I just becoming a miserable old lady.

I'm ranting, I see this now. Perhaps, I just need to hear that it's okay to be envious my alarm clock doesn't taste like whip cream.

when I listen a song, I can image a very specific image on specific part, but it doesn't make a sense, such as bridge part gives me a feels like broken glass, I can image something is falling. something like this, and I do write a song as well, then if I mumble a specific melody, sometimes it reminds me very specific image which is nonsense, and it could help with lyrical results. and I assume if I pay attention on this feelings it able to develop. or I can define some title or entire song vibe feels like 'spicy' 'painful' gives ? or ! feeling, but its not logical at all it just very personal 'feels right' on me like put a missing piece of puzzle. is that just BS or true?

I JUST joined this reddit and I literally thought I was the ONLY ONE assigning genders to numbers and letters. I thought I was crazy or something, asking all of my friends if they thought that seven was male but two was female. What a revelation. How did you guys feel when you sort of realized that you weren't the only one?

I didn’t realize I had synesthesia until adulthood—I thought everyone experienced what I do. Certain sounds make me salivate, and if I listen to music I dislike while cooking, the food tastes bad. But sometimes, music inspires flavor sensations I can recreate in dishes that others enjoy. I don’t have a trained ear or play an instrument, but my son is a gifted pianist. I just tap my foot, hear sounds, and taste their flavors. Some sounds, like a basketball buzzer, are unbearable—like someone smearing feces in my nose and mouth. And that makes me quite angry, which you would be if somebody did that to you. My synesthesia is both a gift and a curse. Does anyone else experience, ear, nose, and tongue sensory over lap?

maths is red.

p.e is white.

thats all I can feel now.

every since i was pretty young i've split everything into two sections named "left side" and "right side". but like everything, for example silver is left side and gold is right side. i think most windows are left side and an oven is definitely right side. everything i see goes into one of these immediately. another thing is i do correlate a lot of colours with words, numbers, and letters but i know that is pretty normal and everyone does that. the reason i bring that up is because sometimes the colour of words help me choose which side the object goes in. i've talked to other people about this and they said they don't do that... i thought everyone did that... searched it up for the first time and got synesthesia. lmk what you think.

Just curious as to what are some rare colours you see. For me it's purple. 😊💜 What certain instruments tend to have a certain colour so when I see a different colour in a certain shiny I will be more interested in a song and love it more. Also does seeing a wide range of colours mean your synaesthesia is more developed? I wasn't born with it I don't know how I got mine as I didn't suffer a head injury and I have been struggling to keep it as there are times I don't notice colour – I have to focus sometimes. Other times it's distracting – like I will stop what I'm doing because of what I'm seeing in my mind.

I sense shapes/movements in my mind when I read words. This type of synaesthesia doesn't have much written about it (I can't decide if it's more like lexical-grapheme or lexical-motor).

It's kind of like gestures/motions/squiggles associated with words.

Give me some words and I'll tell you what shape they seem to be!

Hello,

I just recently heard about synesthesia and find myself baffled by these new discoveries. Not only am i surprised to know, that not everybody feels as if colors have numbers - names and people shapes and so and so and so. Yet - there are a few things I've experinced since I was a kid, to which I now wonder wether these are synethesia as well. I've had a feeling that objects had life of their own since as long as I can recall. Still to this day - as a 24F - when I pick up a stone at the beach, I imagine im taking it away from its family, and I kind of squeeze it, cause I imagine that it is cold, or as if i somehow become the stone myself. I have this feeling with words - where certain words or expressions feel like throwing something super hard - and words, are - if im angry - often combined with an imaginary sensation of a super aggressive kick, or the whole house shaking or something along these lines. Is this completely insane, or do any of you get what im talking about?

Hi! I am well aware that I am a synesthete, as I have some very classic forms of synesthesia (my mind assigns color, texture, shape, density, and to some degree characteristic traits to items including letters, numbers, musical notes, and sounds themselves — and I am an associator, experiencing it in my mind’s eye rather than projecting it and physically perceiving it). However, over the past year I’ve become increasingly aware that this is what I believe to be only the tip of the iceberg of my synesthesia, and in reality, synesthesia is potentially so much more than what I had perceived it to be — and maybe even in how the world generally understands synesthesia, at this point?

But as I have not yet seen the specific, possibly-synesthetic experience I’m referring to described anywhere, by anyone else, I want to try and explain it here and see what other synesthetes think. Is it synesthesia, and if so, how would you define it in terms of category?

So, what it is, is basically:

I experience physical space very intensely, in that in any given moment, I can ‘feel’ the space very particularly around me, and it is like I possess a hyperawareness of my environment that others just seem completely blind to. This is very difficult to describe, largely because I’ve never really heard anyone else resonate with this experience. It is like I ‘feel’ spaces around me in terms of dimension (high up, low down, very left, very right, diagonal, stuffy, boomy, flat, sprawling, curving, rising, falling, etcetera), as well as a variety of textures, temperatures, densities, etc (thick, thin, viscous, airy, wet, dry, smooth, glossy, rough, warm, cool, glowy, dull, heavy, light, hard, soft — basically, there’s so much dimension to it — the list of possible spatial ‘feelings’ can just go on, and on, and on).

Then, in terms of how my mind compartmentalizes and recalls space, I’ll see it (and feel it) in my mind’s eye with these varieties of dimensions and textures, but with literal shapes as well: recalling the space of a city may become a variety of endless large, concrete walls in my mind — but here’s the thing: they’re not images of skyscrapers. They are literally these mysterious, hulking concrete slabs, which I sense with a visceral strength — in those slabs I sense the textures, which includes density, warmth, etc. I can feel the walls closing in on me and shifting around. Or maybe I will sense sprawling plains, for the remembrance of a different location that was outdoors and very open. It *isn’t* just a mental image of the place itself, though, because it is like… a new shape has been derived from that space. And these shapes are… something in and of themselves.

These shapes are incredible, because I can feel them so intensely. As I’ve been saying that I ‘feel’ them in textures and warmth, etc, but I associate rather than project, what I mean by this is that I do not *physically* feel temperatures or textures with these shapes, but instead I feel these inner sensations within the “mind’s eye,” only it’s more like it’s within the “mind’s touch,” because it’s about textures. This is super hard to explain because I feel like it’s a sixth sense that you have to experience to understand — it’s like trying to explain a color someone’s never seen! (This is assuming, however, that other people don’t experience this — for all I know, this is a natural human phenomenon that most people possess.) That said: it is like, all within my mind’s eye without any external sensation, I am *feeling* a space’s shape is warm, or that a space’s shape is soft, or that a space’s shape is really really heavy and dense, like a super heavy, compacted metal sphere. It is not simply that I am *thinking* about it being these textures… I am *feeling* it being these textures… but not externally on my skin… internally, in my mind!! (Yes, there’s no good way to explain this, I don’t think…)

So… this process happens with everything. Pretty much everything. I call it ‘spatial orientation.’ Every new spatial environment that I experience will take on new shapes, and i will not just see those shapes in my head but intensely feel them all around me in these textures and temperatures and densities of that sixth sense. In this way, if it is synesthesia, it’s not like it has some ‘set’ trigger, like a calendar or TV show spatially orienting itself in my mind. The trigger is any external object in any external space that I happen to interact with. So: everything. And, unlike spatial sequence synesthesia (from my not-super-knowledgeable understanding of it, at least), it isn’t simply something that I ‘see’ in my mind’s eye — not to sound redundant, but, *I feel it all around me,* and in so many textures.

I’m not trying to make this super long, but it’s just so extensive and so hard to describe. Its shapes correlates with my synesthesia for sounds, which gives me evidence that it is synesthesia. By which I mean, I also sense sounds as being particular shapes with colors and a variety of textures that I can also, just as with space, *feel* in the sixth sense, not just see (although I see it too in my mind’s eye). There is also a predictable system across all these synesthetic forms for how things work: complexity, for example, is portrayed by what I call “gridding,” which is this phenomenon where all the shapes from sounds or space will reduplicate into infinity to create gridded duplicates of the same thing over and over again, all around me, 360°, on a 3D axis, and this signifies in my mind that that something is complex, inspiring, and euphoric. Gridding = high energy. I love grids. I therefor love drinking coffee with ice in it, for example, because ice cubes are like the shape of grids, and when I drink it, my mind spatially orients the coffee in my mind as being a complex grid of reduplicating coffee-ice cubes. I sense wonderful textures in the space around me then, because I sense gridded, three-dimensional coffee all around my surrounding environment on that 360° frame of reference. So spatial orientation applies to… literally everything!! Literally everything that I experience generates these shapes.

Another final example I want to give of this bizarre spatial orientation experience that definitely screams “synesthesia” to me is what I call the Primordial Attic Sense (PAS). At certain times throughout my life, I will suddenly get this really intense spatial orientation that sets in all around me, where I can sense very viscerally that an attic is looming far above my head, and that this attic is primordial — I sense it temporally as occurring at the dawn of time — and it is embedded with staircases, triangles, the color yellow, the number 3, and, to some degree as well, springtime. It is dangerously foreboding and sacredly important at the same time. That is the best way I can describe the PAS. It reoccurs in a variety of contexts and sometimes its occurrence will throw me off, but it is always strongly felt and *very recognizable* amongst all my other spatial orientations, just because of how intense it feels when it chooses to return to me. Some places I’ve felt it include: at the top of staircases in the daytime, on a lawn on a hot summer day, and walking through a field at twilight while listening to a song whose shape is also primordial. I love the PAS when it appears, but as you can see, um… some of these spatial orientations can get very, very complicated.

So… any thoughts? This is seriously just the tip of the iceberg too, which is why I think synesthesia might be really misunderstood or not fully represented for all its depth and complexity right now as the world understands it. Because to me this does not fit well into any categorization or “synesthesia test.” Do you think it’s a form of synesthesia, and if so, do any particular categorizations come to mind? Have you experienced anything like this yourself?

Thanks for reading, I realize it was really long. <3

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When i play drums or guitar different notes I have to hit and different rhythm sections have different personalities with moral qualities and have intrapersonal relationships with other sections and notes and stuff. Also when I do math it's the same thing with different operations and numbers and stuff.

So... basically, I guess you could say that I kind of tried to teach myself grapheme-color synesthesia? Idk. Let me explain: I really find synesthesia cool and amazing, and I have taught myself a lot about it. I know and acknowledge that synesthesia isn't all fun and games... it can get annoying/miserable, but I tend to like to look at it as a gift you all have. Anyways, I kind of taught myself letter-color associations, but for some reason it just came so easy. Like I already just felt like a certain color feels "right" for the letters you know. To me, I BIG TIME felt A is DEFINITELY RED. Some letter-color associations didn't come so easy though. Like maybe N. It might be yellow or orange... maybe it's light purple? I determined I will go with orange though. Also for most of the letters I chose oranges or yellows... interestingly.
Let me list my letter-color associations: A - red, B - blue, C - yellow, D - bright, fire-like orange, E - green, F - red, G - green, H - orange, I - yellow, J - green, K - brownish, bronze-like orange, L - yellow, M - dark blue, N - orange, O - orange, P - red, Q - orange, R - red, S - orange, T - yellow, U - light purple, V - light purple, W - light blue, X - bright, fire-like orange, Y - yellow, Z - dark purple

So yeah. Say what you gotta say ig. :)

I just noticed this month that based on how messed up my synesthesia are in my PMSs more or less inteste will be my flow TwT

In resume

If my synesthesia is normal but intense I will have a more intense flow (For exemple a 95% smell song in my PMS will be a 200% smell or 195% smell song)

and If my synesthesia is mixed/changed I will have a normal flow (and an pink song is now yellow for exemple)

Just during the PMS and the Period,when them're gone so is the effect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Is this normal too Synesthetes with periods? TwT

Participate in a unique study on pain-colour associations!

Ethics Code: 7878-9610

Hi everyone!

Researchers at the University of Bath are conducting a study to explore how people with and without synaesthesia associate colours with different types of pain, and we’d love your input! 

What does it involve: Taking part will involve choosing the colours that you associate with everyday painful experiences (e.g. headache, stubbed toe). There will also be some questions about yourself, such as your age, gender, country of origin. If you indicate that you have synaesthesia, there would also be some additional questions about this. 

To take part you should:

• Be aged 16 years or older

• Consider yourself to have a good understanding of written English.

• Have normal colour vision.

Duration: The experiment should take around 30 minutes to complete.

Reward: You will have the opportunity to be entered in a chance to win one of two £50 Amazon vouchers.

Study Link: Click here to access more information about the study and take part. 

https://uniofbath.questionpro.eu/t/AB3uzAhZB3v4UQ

Please don’t hesitate to contact either Lem Leach (ll2284@bath.ac.uk) or Dr Janet Bultitude(jb2314@bath.ac.uk) with any queries relating to the project.

(Mods: If this post isn’t appropriate here, please let me know or feel free to remove it. Thanks!)

As long as I can remember I’ve been reading words alphabetically and I’m not sure why. It happens with literally everything. Usually it’s just a word at a time but other times it’ll be short phrases with all of the letters from all of the words alphabetical. When it comes to numbers or combinations of letters and number it’s the same. If I drive past Exit 283 I’ll read it just like that but my mind will say 23E8itx. Worse is I like the amount of characters to remain even so in that example I would count the E twice since it’s an uppercase letter in order to have 8 characters. It goes deeper and gets more complicated but that’s the gist and it’s been a really confusing yet cool thing I’ve never been able to explain.

Is this synesthesia?

This image is a static representation of the first 14 seconds of Piano Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 6: 3. by Alexander Scriabin, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy, as seen in my mind’s eye.

The separate pieces in this drawing are not separate while it's occurring, it's all one structure, with these pieces intertwining in and out of one another.

Anything blue in the image represents movement. I don't see colors with music, it's more like different diffusions of light along with different textures, patterns, and shapes depending on the musical input. These structures are multi-dimensional and dynamic, building and coming together as the music progresses, within an n-dimensional space.

I created the image in procreate while listening to the sonata.

Link to sonata:::

https://youtu.be/fKFwTwmcqD4?si=ui4IYz90QlbW4aU8

Hey ! I have grapheme to color synesthesia and also sequence stuff (I forgot the name sorry but like I see the months, days, years and all in a circle around me)

My question is, is it possible to develop another form of synesthesia later in life ? I read A mango shaped space and the girl is very sleepy and listens to music while taking a hot bath and suddenly she can see the music but she couldn't before. Is it possible ?

I've always felt it when I was ripping off paper or when someone else was, like a tingle or a tickle in the tounge that makes me wanna scratch it. I've just opened a letter a few minutes ago and thought that I would ask if any other redditers had the same experience!

Sorry for any mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker.

music has always been an extremely emotional experience for me that i’ve never really been able to describe to anyone. i can “see” the song moving in my head - up, down, one side to another, expanding, shrinking, all kinds of stuff based on what the somg sounds like. one thing that is also prominent when my eyes are closed is that i can see shapes cross through my head or pop up to certain sounds and stuff like that. it’s not very consistent in terms of what i see in the sense that certain notes aren’t associated with certain shapes or colors which is why i’ve always been skeptical of calling it synesthesia but it can be a very visual experience listening to music. maybe someone knows better than myself what this might be, synesthesia or not, and if so what kind!

It's actually the best fucking feeling to experience, like Holy shit my entire body just freezes and I feel like I'm fully conscious when I listen to music with a LOT of instruments playing. It's more prevalent when I listen to metal (metallica, system of a down, Static X), or Kikuo (I actually feel like I'm in a spa and someone is spraying particles onto the like some asmr). I have the type of synthesis where I see colors when listening to music but I mostly see patterns and textures lmao.

I've always been able to hear touch, but only under specific conditions: Only on my upper arms (elbow to shoulder, but there's a small region on the right side of the back of my neck too), only when my arms in certain positions and only when the touch is stroking (prodding/poking doesn't yield the same result).

I hear a hissing noise, and it's very different to just the sound of the contact on my skin – the noise feels like it is coming from 'inside' my head, and I hear it completely unchanged even with noise cancelling earphones or industrial-strength earplugs in! Apparent volume is also proportional to pressure applied (stronger touch = 'louder' subjective noise and vice versa). Whether it's louder in the bicep area vs tricep area also depends on position.

Wondering whether this is some type of synesthesia or whether the positional specificity means there's some other kind of nerve/signalling fuckery going on. Thanks!