r/Synesthesia

This post is out of genuine curiosity if anyone else gets spontaneous imaginary scents when they see specific images? I’m not putting images below do to copyright reasons, but I often get random fantom smells when I see images that are often associated with nostalgia.

Such as an image of a bag of childhood crayons, an image of mug with coffee stained in it, a middle school gym or gym closet with basket balls and jumping ropes, a sidewalk on a crisp fall evening, or the smell of chlorine when you see an image of a bright blue swimming pool.

I’m sure there must be some sort of psychological process that explains this, but when I say I can smell it, I mean I can vividly smell the image as if it’s right in front of me irl. This might be a neurodivergent or synesthesia thing. Can anyone relate to this?

I’m not really sure I would say I have synesthesia as I only really seem to be affected sexually. But different acts produce different colours/patterns, even down to different sexual positions and it’s the same colours/patterns every time. For example, one particular position it’s blue flower meadow effect that transforms almost into a blue and white fine china pattern of those flower meadows the closer I get. Receiving oral sex is always black with gold geometric patterns almost Arabic in nature. More “steps” or “blocks” appear the closer I get. Another is a very busy green pattern that just makes me think of “country cottage” but I can’t ever remember the specific pattern. I just know it’s how I feel at the time. I’m not sure if this is synesthesia because it only ever happens sexually and I haven’t noticed any other patterns outside of sex but then again I haven’t really looked for them! Just wondering if anyone else experiences anything similar!

just a random thought i'll delete if too low-effort

So, certain people in my family don't believe I have synesthesia because I figured it out after reading "A Mango Shaped Space" and they know this. Also, "none of them have synesthesia" which is blatantly wrong for reasons shown below. A few times a year something like this will happen.

Family member: you don't have synesthesia, you just read that book and thought it sounded cool, stop making stuff up.

Same family member: argues with me for 15 minutes on whether O is yellow-orange or dark twilight blue.

Reactions when confronted was, "Oh that's just associations, everyone has that, it's not synesthesia".

Anybody else know someone like this?

I haven’t been formally diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure I have it. My general practitioner did mention it when I told him about the seeing and hearing flavors, and seeing sounds, but it’s not.. official-official. I know everybody’s experience is different, but I don’t know if what’s going on with me is actually synesthesia or if I’m just crazy. I have this sort of imposter syndrome, it sounds ridiculous, I know. I guess I just want to know if I actually fit here.

It’s hard to explain honestly. I mean, how do I explain something only I can hear and see anyways? But, to the best of my ability, I’m going for it. I think what I have is auditory-visual, and sometimes auditory-tactile. But there’s also maybe Taste-visual/tactile/auditory. The best way I can describe my experience when I taste things is like.. Remy from Ratatouille. Like when he takes a bite out of that cheese and theres these bursts colors and sounds. Long-aged cheeses taste sorta sharp to me. Things like peaches and strawberries and blueberries taste smooth and sometimes a little tingly. (I checked, I’m not allergic.) It’s not just on my tongue or the places the food touched, it’s like my whole face and my throat, sometimes my whole body. Water tastes… I don’t know how to describe it, but just gentle. Ice water makes me feel floaty, hot tea makes me feel heavy. Herbal flavors feel warm in my whole body, sorta comforting. Sugar feels.. fast, tingly sometimes. Tart things like lemons also taste sharp, but tingly and maybe.. bumpy? A lot of the time, flavors sort of play in chords. I can’t really identify notes just by hearing them, but I can’t identify a flavor or color or physical feeling I associate with the sound. Sometimes the colors I see don’t even feel like colors, like I can’t name them or pick them from a color pallet. But there are ones that consistently bring out a specific color. Salt, any kind of salt, tastes pink. Light pink, like baby pink. Carrots taste bright green, sweet potatoes taste coppery-yellow. Blueberries taste violet. Chicken tastes orange. Some tastes only give me tactile feelings, some only give me audio, some only give me colors, some give a mix of two, and some give me all three.

For sound it’s a little bit more complicated.. hearing sound doesn’t usually trigger taste, at least from what I can tell. It’s only the other way around. Sound only produces a tactile feeling for specific noises. Any sudden loud sound is a slap in the face and a flash-bang. Sometimes specific instruments trigger specific tactile feelings. Woodwinds feel like someone is blowing on neck, percussion feels like various taps or pushes. Voices are weirdly specific, some people’s voices only give me a tactile feeling, some voices only give me visual feedback, some do both, and very few do neither. Sometimes names have colors too, when I hear a name, I see a color.

It’s not triggered by everything, but the things that it does trigger, are consistent. Is this synesthesia, is this something else? Something worrying? If it is synesthesia, what kind is it?

EDIT: Guys can y’all please not be assholes to each other in the comments, unless you literally study it please don’t… do what you’re doing 😭

Hits so different when you actually understand on your own, viscerally, what's being brillantly depicted

Post-update: almost forgot to add proper context 🤣 because the posted video doesn't contain any other than a link to the authors (still up) website, so here's official descriptions from Google and the authors themselves:

"Synesthesia is a surreal 2009 short film by directing duo Terri Timely (Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey).

It depicts a regular family experiencing a scrambled reality

where senses cross over, featuring fruit that makes music,

books consumed as food, and cats flying out of speakers."

because as Terri Timely said in their original Vimeo's description <syn·es·the·sia syn·aes·the·sia (sĭn'ĭs-thē'zhə)

n.

A condition in which one type of stimulation

evokes the sensation of another,

as when the hearing of a sound

produces the visualization of a color.

A sensation felt in one part of the body

as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.

The description of one kind of sense impression

by using words that normally describe another.>

Now here's my impression about Google's first description:

it's typical disconnected AI content, no human to date appear to have comprehensively supervised it, because 1) it isn't a regular family, but one literally affected by the not so known phenomenon of synesthesia, from whom we can sense an authoritary and even sadly, a dangerously alienating lonely presence (despite the allure of a present family, they're clearly oddly detached from each others, there's an obscure emotional void between them, one of the main observers depicts an elite military who had an exceptionally bright career),

and 2) its a culturally distinct family we can tell by their Asian origin off which we'd distinguish the main character speaking Mandarin Chinese, meanwhile the missing language aspects off the "food for thought" are in English,

not in Hieroglyphs [...]

Sooo yeah words have colours but also I can’t see them if that makes sense?? Like I know for a fact that Fridays are red, but I don’t see it. It’s more like something someone told me rather than what I see.
Anyone else have this? 😅

I believe I have associative musical sound-color synesthesia. To me, musical pieces have an associated color palette, I've heard others see swirls of color. What about y'all?

Hi everyone, I have synesthesia but wanted to share that I experienced it in the dream I had last night and it wasn't anything like how I experience it in real life. I was at a smaller concert and the song "No Sleep Tonight" by The Faders was playing. That song is in the opening scene from She's the Man. There was this major drum solo (which doesn't really exist in the song, pretty sure the song was a mash up of a few songs) and the drum hits were blue and red in my head. I remember my whole vision and head being blue, and then red, almost as if I was looking at a sheet and that is the only thing I could see.

It was really interesting as I don't really remember my dreams. I want to remember them and be able to control them, but I can't seem to figure out how to lucid dream quite yet. I only remember a few one off dreams and a reoccuring one from when I was a kid. I couldn't really tell you what went on during the rest of the dream. But I know I will never forget that dream moment and seeing the colors and experiencing synesthesia like that.

But I can tell you that I have never experienced synesthesia in that way. I do see colors when I listen to music (much clearer with just instrumental as lyrics change everything entirely), but they are whimsical lines and shapes and patterns swirling about in my head and always against a black blackground. Then most of those lines morph into hyperphantasia with images, sounds, feeling and a whole world. My brain is definitely all sorts of cross wired lol

I am wondering if your synesthesia has ever shown up in a dream? Has it been the same as how you experience it in real life or different? So interested to know your thoughts! Thanks for reading and sharing :) - have a lovely day

I just found a really good way to encrypt my passwords. I have a password that’s a string of numbers, and I write it on a notepad on my PC. However, I also write 4 other strings of numbers.

The clue being, whichever is the *coldest*, is it.

Nobody but me knows which is the coldest, because it’s my specific synesthesia (thermal). Nobody else knows which is the correct one.

Obviously they could just try each one, but I like to feel smart with this >:]

I feel like I’m on to something. Special encryption method for synesthetes coming soon?

I have grapheme-color/grapheme-image synesthesia. I noticed that unless I focus on a specific grapheme, I don't actually notice its color. I could be reading a book and I won't be noticing colors, but as soon as I think about my synesthesia, focus on a specific letter, or do something else that reminds me of it - BAM suddenly graphemes have colors again. For a while this made me think my synesthesia was associative, but I'm pretty sure it's actually projective. I think my brain just pushes it to the back of my mind so I can actually focus on whatever I'm reading/doing. Does this happen to any other synesthetes or is it just me?

Edit: I just did some research and it turns out I have associative grapheme-color, not projective, but my mind's eye makes me see the colors as "under" the letter (sort of) and I can switch that off

Hey y’all!

I don’t have synesthesia, but questions about it come to mind fairly often; the most recent one kind of intersects with people who may live near data centers, and if they experience the infrasound that for most people goes “unnoticed” (well not unnoticed given increased rates of fear, anxiety, nausea, etc but otherwise not directly perceived)

Not nearly as learned on synesthesia as I’d like to be but it would be cool to determine the overlap between what’s essentially not perceivable by most people, and what is by folks with synesthesia, when said imperceptible thing overlaps with their specific profile

Also intensely sorry if I’m using the wrong verbiage here- promise i am not trying to be rude or obtuse

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My teacher once told our class to sort the alphabets however they want. I think she was expecting us to sort it in vowels and constenant but I did it in colors. So the teacher looked at me real weird when she saw mine but I didnt think much about it. Few years later I read a book about a character who has synesthesia and that's when I realized not everyone sees colors.