#synaesthesia

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

When you point out how neurodiversity affects whole areas of the brain, not just what we see as the presentation symptoms, it seems so obvious. I've known that many neurodivergent conditions have high rate of co-morbidities, but haven't thought about what that would mean. I really liked your explanation of what else dyslexia affects, it made me recategorise some of my sister's mom behaviours. I see time blindness, some executive dysfunction, organisation difficulties and go, yup, I've got that too, it's normal, and forget that most people don't struggle with that (I've suspected I have undiagnosed ADHD for years, but never got checked for it, since I suggested it my dad freaked out, insisting there was nothing wrong with me. I really should though)

May I ask how your synaesthesia manifests for you? I'm always curious about how neurodiversity manifests in people and how it affects them, because there are so many minor and major things not talked about. I apologise if that question makes you uncomfortable, you don't have yo answer it.

Anyway, thank you for your explanation! It made a lot of things click all at once for me.

If you want lots of examples of how my synaesthesia works, I have a tag you could trawl here. But, I have a few different types; the common numbers-have-colours one, but I also get textures and sensations and feelings, and about... literally everything. Numbers, words, people's voices, names, personalities, the plots of media, images, everything.

Soooo, yeah. Sensory overload is the big impact; trial and error over the years has shown me it's primarily auditory, so if I can wear earplugs I can cope for longer in 'busy' environments. The other thing is that it really does a number on my mathematical ability, though, because, I shit you not, the colours get in the way. When I was a small child I was shown that 3 + 5 = 8, and my brain went "Yes, orange + pink = brown, got it" and ever since then if I see a 3 and a 5 together in a sum it DOES NOT MATTER what the operator is, I immediately assume the answer is 8. 3 plus 5? 8. 3 minus 5? Also 8. 3 times 5? Buddy you'll never guess. But it's 8.

It takes conscious effort not to do this T_T

The other thing is that I really, REALLY suffer from this thing where someone goes "Hey, we should watch Program X" but the problem is, you see, the problem is, I cannot stand the sensation I get from the name Program X, and therefore I will not watch it out of disgust that is totally unrelated to the actual show. This applies to all media, places, human beings, etc. (It is obviously a thing I have to be careful of when it's human beings.)

I think everything else I have is ADHD-related though, so that's probably everything I can put down to the synaesthesia.

[fairyhaos]

the colour of beomgyu, my synaesthesia is telling me, is a delicate, dark periwinkle.

he's soft and pale and fragile, like the quivering colours of a fairy's wings, warm against the shimmering blue of a river. like the velvet colours of tiny flowers in a green field.

like a shimmering unicorn horn, cruelly harvested from the animal for its magic healing properties, regarded as so revered and so precious that it's kept locked away in the dark for centuries to come.

(until a righteous warlock comes along, protesting the cruelty against unicorns and stops the extermination of their kind for good. the unicorns with their shining periwinkle horns are forces of unbelievable power, and should not have their magic snuffed out for the petty greed of mankind.)

beomgyu is unreal, mythical, a translucent purple-blue that is only heard of and never truly seen.

but he's also the grittily real colour of three day-old bruises, of veins visible through the thin skin of the wrists, of faded blue ballpoint on palms because your friends doodled on your hands that morning and the ink has yet to be fully rubbed away. he's the colour of life, of being lived-in, of proof that you're alive and have done things and you exist, you exist, you exist.

beomgyu is translucent purple-blue, grounded in reality not quite, the edges fizzling into something softer, more whimsical, like an impossibly thin silk cloth that drapes perfectly over your skin.

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[v0rtex-sys]

so erm i have mild synaesthesia and the voice actors in wtnv all have VERY strong colours so take cecil, carlos, and kevin’s voices!!

CECIL:

the first is his voice like,,, normally, his voice is a very VERY nice colour and i like it.

the second is when he’s happier, especially when he’s talking about carlos. it gets brighter and lighter, plus sort of pink. it’s very mmmmm

the thrid is specifically when he’s like “STEVES CARLSBURGG >:(“ or otherwise angry :}

CARLOS:

the first one is pre-throat spiders :} it’s a a lot,,, dustier?? i have zero clue how to describe it. still very nice:D

the second is post-throat spiders. it went from green to like blue and purple. its very pretty. seems edible:}

third is when he’s talking about stuff he’s passionate about/dorking out. it doesnt to nearly as noticeably lighter, like cecil’s does, but it does go purple-er

KEVIN:

since kevin’s voice stays like,,, mostly one tone, i used his pre, during, and very post strex voices from episode 73 triptych (which destroyed me)

pre — his voice is almost sand coloured, it’s much warmer :D

during — it’s gold, but artificially so—like plastic gold. it’d definitely also have that texture too, like a cheap plastic coin. it’s still nice to listen to, but the colour isnt as nice. the actual colour i managed to get doesnt show it nearly as well

post — his voice is like drained of colour and has the texture of drywall or a popcorn ceiling. it also has some blue mixed it, but it’s not super noticeable. (ough my baby</3)

(obligatory @mjshortformcjesus tag)

[draconym]

It’s not quite what you’re talking about, but the way mints “smell” changed for me when they became a migraine trigger. They used to mostly smell cold, even in tea, but now all of them smell like pain for lack of a better term. But not that I am in pain, just that they and a few other scents now have an additional scent note to them that smells like the way pain feels, even when they haven’t actually triggered a migraine

I wonder if this is your brain trying to warn you of danger? Or even maybe some kind of classical conditioning happening? Some people feel intense anxiety before having a seizure. I've also read that people who have received a blood transfusion of the wrong blood type feel a sense of impending doom. Love that the brain is often an absolute black box mystery even to the person operating it.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I can't remember the dream but it was brown and it happened last night. It wasn't themed brown (I don't think) but every time I try to remember it I can only think of brown. This gave me a crisis that made me research synaesthesia.

[weirdlookindog]

[justaboymadeofhoneyandglass]

important!

what colour is a triangle

AHhH

the shape is red or yellow idk why it changes

the word and this is where it gets funny, in English it's yellow and in german it's more red

fucking weird but its like that with a lot of things

[limoncats]

what if the reason that colours are considered "warm" and "cold" is because some random guy with synaesthesia was just like "yeah these colours feel warm and these colours feel cold"

[yourdailyqueer]

Daniel Tammet

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 31 January 1979

Ethnicity: White - English

Occupation: Writer, poet, entrepreneur, songwriter

Note 1: Is autistic, has synaesthesia, and he is one of fewer than a hundred "prodigious savants" according to Darold Treffert, the world's leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome.

Note 2: Set the European record for reciting pi from memory on 14 March 2004 – recounting to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

hope you don't mind me asking, and if you do please disregard - I've just read some of your synesthesia posts, and the ones about numbers and how they interact is super interesting. do punctuation marks or symbols have colours? is it different if they're part of text, or if they're part of an equation?

They do have colours! Or at least, colour brackets.

So, a question mark by itself is blue. An exclamation mark by itself is, somehow, both red and yellow at the same time, but not orange. Mostly yellow. When put with words, they become cool and warm respectively instead.

Although with that said, a question mark can be kind of green, but I can't think of a purple example. Hmm. Also, I've just spotted that both a question mark and the number 2 is blue, and they're similar shapes. 2 is a much stronger shade though. More saturated. Oh, and 1 is yellow, so again, a link with an exclamation mark. Interesting!

Equations as a whole have a clinical, lab-like feel and wash to them generally, very blue white and chrome. Something cold and distant. Except when I make simultaneous equations for my husband to solve, because he likes maths. Then they're red and green and like a pile of Christmas presents. I think it's actually because I'm 'on the inside' then, as it were - I understand them because I wrote them, so there's no mystery, just fun puzzles.

But, if I zero in on the components of an equation then yes, I can see the individual colours and textures. It's the same as how a word will have a colour/texture, but the letters within will have something a bit different. Like with equations, the whole word usually mostly differs in texture rather than colour - colour is influenced by the letter colours.

I hope any of that made sense

[fairyhaos]

according to my synaesthesia, soobin is a deep red-pink-orange colour.

like the colour of sharp, sweet and sticky nectarines, like vibrant maple leaves, like the film filters that make autumn forests look bright and sharp and delicious enough to eat.

it's a refreshing, bright, deep colour, with all the happiness of summer and all the feelings and implications of a heavy autumn underneath. it's certainly not an empty, hollow thing. there's a weight there, an understanding, a sense of knowledge of the universe hidden behind bright yellows and sweet pinks.

soobin's a streaky, multi-faceted, natural kind of colour. like the outside of an red apple— the normal kind, that hasn't been altered and changed to be wholly, totally, only dark red. the kind with streaks of red, orange, yellow and green running down its skin. real.

a colour that you can hold in your hands, and it too will reach with its own to hold yours, ripe-scented and soft-skinned like the last apricot plucked from a tree in early september just before their season ends.

he smells and tastes like red fruit, soobin does. like apricots, peaches, apples. and love.

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[sounds-to-touch]

Sometimes I don't think about my audio tactile synaesthesia at all, for huge swathes of time.

But then I think about why it's so easy for me to identify specific voices in songs i like, and the closest word that comes to mind is texture.

I really do sort vocal sounds primarily by tactile means. When I'm certain I've identified a specific voice artist I'm thinking not about how it sounds, but about how that sound feels, physically, in my body.

[corgicrafter]

I've always been told I had a vivid imagination and it was pointed out to me I probably have synaesthesia so I thought It would be fun to draw what playing music feels like to me. I haven't drawn anything in a hot minute so this was very fun. Enjoy my rendition of the color of bassoon solos :]

[a-teardrop-of-the-sun]

whatever synesthesia or ideasthesia brain situation i have going on is occasionally so funny bc i'll see shit like brennan lee mulligan in a game changer sketch referring to an anthropomorphic number four as "he" and i'm immediately internally going "4 does NOT use he/him, you absolute BUFFOON, 4 is she/her. also 5 is nonbinary. c'mon dude get it right." or like that one book about synesthesia called wednesday is indigo blue has me mentally frothing at the mouth upset because like NO it is NOT, wednesday is a fucking yellowy-orange colour like a traffic light because it's a W-word, you absolute dipshit morons. how DARE your brains' sensory and associative pathways not be tangled up in the exact same specific manner as mine, you're getting it WRONG

[susansontag]

I was thinking about synesthesia again recently after watching the colors within, and about how I don’t think ordinal linguistic personification (sequence personality synesthesia) goes far enough in describing my experiences, because even though it’s true that numbers, letters, days of the week, months etc have involuntary, immediate, and stable personalities for me, it’s also true that most objects with a stable shape (so, everything aside from clothing typically, bc that assumes different shapes at different times), eg pots, cups, cupboards, rakes, whatever, also have involuntary, immediate, and stable personalities/character traits for me. when I realised this yesterday it was like being hit by a truck, how did I forget that everything around me has traits? I guess you forget this stuff because you don’t realise as you grow up that you’re seeing something others aren’t.

you could show me a set of five objects now and have me write down their traits, and then show them to me again in ten years and I’d say really similar things, without any need to consciously assign or memorise anything. all objects have highly detailed, complex personified traits for me on a perceptual level; I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. I thought surely some psychologist must be on this, I can’t be the only one! and here’s what I found:

there needs to be more research on this! to me it’s exactly the same as my sequence associations (I also very likely have grapheme-colour synesthesia bc some numbers and letters have unchanging colours), in that these traits are ‘readable’ from the shapes of the objects. I might email the researchers.