r/Synesthesia

So all of us have spent lifelong even us ourselves undermining the value of this cross-sensory as background noise until we make it the subject matter and then it feels incredible to bond with all of you.

But the rest of the psychology community and research community and our own families unfamiliar with this probably have a tendency to deflate our excitement with these well intended kinds of comments:

1. That sounds like a cool ability you have but don’t let it take over your life, stay focused stop wasting time on this it’s not going anywhere
2. That’s great you have these maps (color) whatever else your synesthesia but what has it done to help you in your studies and career, why aren’t you getting ahead at work? I don’t see how this is beneficial it’s a sad gift it takes over you and doesn’t add much value there’s limited social benefit.

Ok so the reason I’m making this is I only agree with part of the first 1, like everything else in life balance priorities give everything time and place. But 2) I think is what we need to prove wrong and fight hard!

What can my synethesia do for others ? Firstly, it manifests as my longterm memory which helps people remember forgotten moments, forgotten events, forgotten ordering of events, revive those who are aging and facing dementia, remember the kind actions of others .

What can our synesthesia do socio-economically ? I’ll give one example. My months of year and days of week are closed loops, a lot of us have that but why …. It has to do with “early childhood education how we learned seasons and the repetition of the calendar early on”
We have a successful children’s programming , parent teaching tools, community tools that teach months as a cyclical structure so the fact we imprint this loopwise statistically speaks to how this was learned at an early age. We can pattern audit the structures of all our Synethesia’s and ultimately get microcosms of anything from how information used to be taught, how it’s taught today, what correlations tie to these imprints, and if they are more telling than we even realize, even tested with actions in education curricula changes and the way we learn and teach.

Moreover what else synesthesia can entertain is more people may have a form of it that don’t entertain the fact that they do and by capturing these we may have more resources to provide improved therapeutic methods for many persons in say the autism spectrum community for one.

My points is we have to connect what these things can reveal and connect those dots because we have something extremely special being ignored.

And we only have so much time we live once we are given this gift. And we can put it to waste or we can witness something that researchers may not be zooming in on nearly enough.

If that isn’t enough, the subject of imprints is a “data” galore input and Data is the building block of pattern recognition tools, artificial intelligence AI especially, we have something analyzable, auditable, and revealing, and accredited by test ability by the genuine test that it’s Real.

I would love all your feedbacks on this.

Just wanted to know if anyone has experienced anything similar. I also used to hallucinate during sex. I’d hallucinate being in China or an empty neon lit bar

For example, when you see a letter or number, does the color:

• Fill the letter itself?
• Float on top of the letter like a transparent overlay?
• Appear behind the letter?
• Surround it like an aura or glow?
• Exist separately in space beside the letter?
• Stay fixed in your mind's eye rather than on the actual text?
• Something completely different?

I'd love to know how it looks from your perspective.

If possible, could you also mention:

• Whether this is for letters, numbers, or both.
• Whether the appearance changes depending on the font, size, or where the text is (paper, screen, imagination, etc.).
• If you could design an editor to recreate your experience, what controls would you want?

Thank you—I really appreciate any descriptions!

So I already think that I'm a synesthete, but I don't know if this is synesthesia, something else, or nothing at all. Basically, whenever I am doing something (not sure exactly what causes it, but it normally happens when reading or listening to music. Probably other things too though, and I just don't notice) I see like images that sometimes move in my head. And it is not just thinking about what the describe, I think it just happens. Like for the song Stupid Song by Olivia Rodrigo, every time she sings the chorus certain images come to mind. It does match kind of what the lyrics are, but not totally. And it happens every time. Same images too. Also when I read a book, I will like imagine what the house looks like because yeah. Then I can still bring up the picture of the house, years after reading the book. And when I re-read a book, the images are the same. (one reason why I don't like when they make shows of the books I like is because the scenes are different than I imagine it) I feel like I am not doing a great job describing this, but I mostly want to if this is something special, or if everyone does this. I can describe more if needed too.

Hi, i have been seeing colors surrounding people since 7th grade (but it happens very rarely, on its own).

I think the colors and their intensity change according to that emotion and the intensity of the emotion of that person i observe. For example;

Once, there was my literature teacher and he was SO ANGRY to our class because of their speech performances, i saw a really intense, clearly observable and large translucent mist that surrounds him. It moves with him, stays with him. A couple minutes later my friend Burcu went up the do her speech CALMLY and i saw a mid sized, mid intense green translucent mist surrounding him. Compared to my literature teacher, she didn't feel that calmness emotion as much as my teacher felt angry, so the mist was not that intense compared to the teacher. I saw the yellow on 4-5 persons, everytime the intensity was different. All of them was angry. And for the green i saw it more than yellow, like i guess 7-8 person and it also had different intensitys everytime. All of them were calm. There was this one time:

My biology teacher was angry but he is pretty cold blooded so i could tell he was trying to cover his anger, and i kept seeing yellow color surrounding him too but the difference was there was a little, thin red color in the deeps of the yellow, close to his body. Barely visible.

So, i think:

Yellow for anger.

Green for calmness.

Red for something they hide, like anger.

While i was researching, closest synesthesia to what i experience i found looks like "Perceived Emotion-To-Color", is that true?

Also, why can't i do it by wanting it, it happens randomly (i dont even know if its randomly i just guess) and it is pretty rare but it got more common these times.

Is there a way to make it more common?

I am compiling a list of coping skills for individuals I work with in the mental health field. I would like to use synesthesia to assist in coping through difficult feelings/emotions. Any ideas on leaning into the synesthesia to handle intense thoughts and feelings? Any weird, out of the box, unconventional input is welcomed!!

No use of these techniques will be done without the proper research.

last year i (M21) got diagnosed with autism, and the more i research and dig into it, the more i find out how many things have crossover with autism, synesthesia being one of them. i never in a million years had ever considered it, but now im curious about if what i experience could be it, something completely different, or just a regular human experience lol.

i came across a reel of an autistic creator explaining how they struggle to differentiate what emotions they’re feeling, and gave some examples. she said “how are you supposed to tell the difference between sadness and agony, despair and sorrow etc…) and i said to myself ”well i just look at what the word looks like. when i look at the word sorrow i clearly see (in my minds eye) an oil paint texture blue with a wispy white in the middle. agony is very streaky red when i look at it”.

im not sure if i do this with every single word, but i have extremely frequently though my whole life attributed many words to colours and “scenes” in a sense, sorta just saying that’s the vibe of it and never looking into it any deeper. now that im questioning it, im realizing more and more how my inner world is so connected by words that attribute to images/colours/scenes that invoke some sense of emotion or feeling, or “vibe“ as i’ve always thought of it.

i’m really not sure if this sounds like some mild form of it, or something similar. or if i’m just explaining the thinking process of people lmao. any input would be awesome

So I have 2 types of synesthesia that are connected to each other…When I meet a person I immediately see a colour around them and it’s based on who they are as a person not their mood. The colour doesn’t change for that person unless their personality has a drastic shift. So that’s the first one, but then when I think of that person, I always see that colour in the background of that person in my mind. I know it’s 2 types cuz one’s projective and one’s associative but they are intertwined because the colour I see in my head as the background is always the colour I see around the person. Anybody else have multiple that work together? or even just multiple?

Ok so be warned this may not make much sense and you have to like know what I'm referencing to understand it.

Ok so my brain reads everything in captions Including people talking, Literally like captions on a TV screen that is my eyes. Except I can't like see the captions in front of the person but like I can see the inner eye seeing the captions. Does that make any sense? Another thing I can also "do" ig if that's the right term is when I'm remembering things, they draw themselves in like the first spinjitsu master story with the mountains (except it's not the mountains obviously it's the memory) so say for example I'm remembering my elementary school, the front main area draws itself in, colors itself in a way(?) and then becomes a 3d model in my head, I can then like move around in the memory like I'm on Google Earth while it also being like VR (?) idk if this affects it but I most likely have autism/ADHD/both I'm undiagnosed and don't wanna say I have it for sure but I'm working on getting the diagnosis. But ya, my friends have no idea what I'm on. This may also be a synesthesia thing or just a book reader thing, but when I'm reading a book I can see the characters doing the actions and like as I countinue reading the description (so like in the titans curse when they're fighting the giant) I can see grover under the rocks, the giant rusty statue fighting them the positions Thalia, Percy, and Zoe are in, I can imagine Bianca climbing up the leg, the grin on her face while she makes the giant punch itself, the controls in the head, etc (sorry I forgot the name and am past that now) just a random side tangent I'm posting about before I get back to the book :3

I’ve done music my entire life (choir, voice lessons, performing arts high school, piano, etc) and from a very young age I’ve gotten this extremely intense pressure in my upper chest when I hear rich sounds like choirs and orchestras. I get goosebumps very easily from music and it’s actually embarrassing because they’re extremely visible and I hate that people can visually see how sounds are affecting me. Additionally, when I watch a singer perform and can tell they’re straining, I feel the strain in my throat and it’s physically painful and very intense. Are these symptoms synesthesia?

whenever I see or hear something that’s ai generated I get a burnt smell in my nose and a mix of rubber and something burnt. could this be synesthesia?

The context: I am autistic (ND have synesthesia more often as I know). I know that every letter and number has its own colour. With no based on experience associations. Like, I like 49 number, it is deep purple and beautiful. Then the 9 feels and looks like a sand, so I don’t like it, unless more bright numbers are there. May I say I have synesthesia?

My minds eye is a pure black void but I can use like highly pressurized wind pushing in different directions which can make my physical body feel that pressure that I created in my minds eye. If I push down in my mind I feel a heavy pushing down feeling in my chest. If I push up I instantly feel light headed and it also feels like a massive wind gust is going through my head in a very negative way.

It can also help me solidify memories, and help me navigate thoughts by what directional pressure I am using mixed with my chaotic physical sensations across my whole body they work in unison along with my own logical thoughts.

Am I alone in this?

For context I have three types of synesthesia with sound as a concurrent as well as olp and calender syn, all associative save for an occasional projective episode. I’ve had little one shot experiences before, but just yesterday I think I experienced chromesthesia.

I was playing guitar in a dark room and I started playing more slowly to come up with a riff, and then when the notes started clicking to place I saw little flashes of color in my mind. I remember Gs were dark green and D sharps were purple.

I waited a couple minutes and then played a random note on my guitar without looking at the fretboard, and it was purple. I usually have good pitch because of my other synesthesias, but here I concluded it was a d sharp because it was purple. I was correct.

how does this happen? has it happened to anyone here? and will it come back? it was fucking cool.