I know Reddit can not diagnose me. I am not asking for a diagnosis. I am wondering if this experience sounds to you like it describes synesthesia, or if it sounds more like hallucinations.

Background context: I am diagnosed AuDHD if that's of any relevance. I was diagnosed ADHD in early childhood. I have hyperlexia and dyscalculia. I also have DID/CPTSD but not sure if that would be of any relevance in this case.

I have tried explaining my experiences to people before, who have suggested I'm hallucinating or "just crazy", and I often struggle with articulating myself properly unless I try very hard.

I have experienced and survived in the past, medical malpractice and abuse, I had a lot of childhood trauma from multiple sources. i was told by the doctors who abused me that i was just crazy, that i was psychotic, and no one would believe me, i feel like i was gaslit into thinking that i'm crazy because of my experiences with abuse, which is why I'm reluctant to ever discuss my experiences. KEEP IN MIND I have seen other doctors since then, including psychiatrists/psychologists, who did not think I was psychotic, although I never told them about my experiences with "visions". I currently have no doctor due to a lack of health insurance.

But None of my "visions" or experiences have ever caused me any harm or distress, which is why I think it might not be hallucinations. Some of them I find very visually beautiful and geometrically complex. They are always logically consistent. They are not emotional, scary, or frightening, but we can experience consistent certian sensory experiences with certian emotions as a trigger.

They do not impact my life functioning, They do not cause me to be a "danger" to self or others and they never have. In fact, I enjoy them! Sometimes I attribute personal spiritual signifigance to them, although I recognize that this is subjective.

After researching it, I also think many other things I always thought were normal may be synesthesia. I have the tickertape synesthesia for sure. I can't "hear" unless I can read the subtitiles in my mind. I am hyperlexic and I think this ties into that. Sometimes I can see sounds and hear colors. I have strong, consistent associations for concepts, numbers, objects, spatial orientation....

But I don't think I really have grapheme-color. That's the form of synesthesia that they always talk about. I think I may have multiple kinds of synesthesia including some kind of complex kinesthetic type, both projective and associative, but I don't associate all letters and numbers with colors. Only some letters and only some numbers have colors. For example, 3 is green. But for grapheme-color, if we have it, we do not visually see them in a projective way, only on the inside as a mental association.

the latest link I could find is 4 years old

Yet another visualization, My Mirror Touch Synesthesia basically works like rubber hand illusion on steroids thats working 24/7. So I dont feel the pain on my own body, but through Hornet's body.

The sensation or shape of pain is exactly how I draw it, So its not to an extent that its a 1:1 extremely accurate pain which tells me that its what Hornet would actually feel.. Its usually mild that I can tank it and can sometimes become an annoyance. But the needle stab is definitely the most noticeable one for me...

my days of the week shows two example perspectives. I move around the week rather than it moving around me, so the povs show where i’m at on that day of the week and which direction i’m facing/viewing the map. I also do this with numbers, the alphabet, years (not my life timeline like the one shown, but all years that have existed) and months of the year. I don’t do this for singular months on their own (like a 31 day visual) or time (by the hour) so for that reason I am very time blind in that sense. of course I have adhd so these visuals are my only anchor to time lol so when I don’t have a visual, I’m lost. enjoy :)

This definitely isnt the standard type where I see colors or feel textures but its almost uncanny in how it feels in my head. If im listening to a instrumental track with guitar,drums, and bass, during a guitar verse for example each note seems to have the same emotional weight in my brain as if a word was being spoken to me by a person. its almost like personification of all of the notes? and on the drums, each cymbal has its own "weight" and language to me. A crash may make me feel like nodding my head in approval of what it had to say to me, but another crash may make me react as if "it" had something surprising to say. It feels like my brain has a midi plugin installed that converts music to literal language and people. I can also get super realisitic visuals in my brain of the "people" and "scenes" in the song. Each verse may be in a different setting and a character will be ... doing something idk...

i have some type but idk the name, could someone identify it for me?

I veiw numbers and months/dates in a 3d modle, but the weird thing is that the number layout is different for numbers, ages, school years, money, and other things. i also can easily asign genders to numbers/letters but nothing else. i veiw personalities as colors, and the more i know about a person the more prisise this color becomes. idk what this is and if it is even synesthesia, what are your thoughts.

(english text after texte français) visual physical sensation / visuel de sensation physique

[FR] résumé

Le résumé est que chaque sensation physique se traduit par un visuel de formes colorés qui sont en mouvement. Simultanément à ma vision de mon environnement. Constamment, qui s'intensifie ou change selon les situations, qui s'adapte et retranscrit l'intensité et les changements des détails de ceux ci. (La musique par contre ne me concerne pas comme beaucoup le sont en synesthésie). (je donne plus de détails plus bas)

[EN] summary

To recap this post and my situation : Every physical sensation is transformed / translated into a visual of moving colored shapes. Simultaneously with my global environment vision. Constantly. These colored shapes in movement visuals can be intensified or changed depending on the situation, adapting them to what I exactly experience at that moment with all the details. (Music is not part of it for me, unlike what many people describe in synesthesia). (I give more details bellow)

[FR] détails

Comme je l'ai dit chaque sensation physique (majoritairement toucher, douleur, plaisir qui sont des stimulants directs mais il y a aussi comment l'environnement impacte mon corps etc.) est transformé et transposé en formes colorés en mouvements.

Ce n'est pas comme si ça prenait toute ma vision et mon attention pour un moment, ni une vision à 50% d'opacité par dessus une autre comme le serait une image dans un calque photoshop. C'est plutôt des couches (les couches n'ayant pas un aspect transparent qu'il y a dans les calques)

les miens sont :

• une couche perception visuelle de l'environnement
• une couche perception sensorielle avec les visuels de traduction des sensations
• une couche pensées
• une couche dialogue / action avec le lien extérieur
• une couche d'imagination de visuel plus détaillé soit d'un livre ou d'une conversation où l'on m'explique un événement ou bien mes souvenirs propres (au contraire des formes habituelles qui elles sont plus abstraites)

c'est comme si c'était des couches du cerveau ? je peux voir et avoir toutes ces couches là au même moment sans qu'ils se superposent visuellement. Ça ne peut pas être lié aux yeux, peut-être seulement dans les moments extrêmes (douleur intense et "détresse") que les couches fusionnent et cela paraît comme des hallucinations (les formes sont dans l'environnement extérieur) sinon tout coexiste simultanément mais pas sur le même visuel.

et ça peut être aussi le contraire, un environnement visuel par des couleur, forme, mouvement, peut me faire ressentir des sensations physiques.

je me demandais donc si la façon dont je vois la vie c'est de la synesthésie ou autre chose qui le rendrait moins "commun" ? ou c'est commun ?

donc voila ma question : est ce que vous avez cette même expérience ?

J'ai oublié de préciser mais ce qui me fait vraiment ne pas savoir où me placer c'est que les mouvements par sensation sont toujours similaires il y a beaucoup de variable fixe mais en fonction de l'intensité ou de la perception qui est pas la même -> differente nuance de perception donc adaptation de certaines choses

[EN] details

As I said my physical sensation (mainly touch, pain, pleasure which are direct but also how the environment impacts my body) are transformed into colored moving shapes.

It's not like it takes all my vision and attention for a moment or have a 50% visual opacity like in a photoshop image layer.

It can be described as layers yes but not like photoshop ones. mines are : - layer of visual perception of the environment - layer of retranscription of my physical feelings as visuals of colored moving shapes - my thoughts - any interaction with the environment world (like conversation or action ...) - and a part of visualisation with a more detailed environment imagination (so less abstract than my usual shapes visual are) when reading or someone is talking about an event or also my memories.

it feels like a brain layering ? i can see and have all those things at the same exact time but without overlap. it can't be an eyes related layering, well only maybe in the case of extreme moments (intense pain or distress) that the layers are combined and overlapped, which then feels close to hallucinations (the shapes are in my environment). Otherwise all the layers coexist simultaneously without beeing in the same visual.

And it can also be the other way. A color, shape and movement in my environment can give me strong physical feelings.

I’m wondering if the way I perceive life is synesthesia or anything else that makes it "less common" or is it common ?

So here’s my question: do you experience things like I do?

I forgot to mention but there's lot of things that doesn't change -> a sensation has always the same shape and movement, the things that are adapted is that i feel things in tiny details of difference between a sensation which is never always the exact same each time, so there's variation based on that. so I'm quite lost with all that

thank you for reading this post, i will really appreciate your answers

merci d'avoir lu ce post, j'apprécierais beaucoup vos réponses

So I came back to binaural beats recently and i had an experience that i knoa from earlier times (10 years ago)

I lay in the bed and I see those white or black color. Those color is moving all the time. It forms somewhat of a circle, that slowly shrinks towards me. Like I absorb some energy? I start feeling tickling around the middle point between my eyebrows. Tickling is air-like and it kinda feels like this air sucks into my head through some kind of third eye? It is a positive thing and feels like some deep relaxation but I don't know what actually happens.

Can someone explain this to me?

I have heard of synesthesia being where you interpret certain letters/numbers as colours, and I don't get that, but I do get very specific images/feelings in my mind with certain words, names and objects. for example, The name Lilly with 2 Ls always makes me think of a dog's tongue, and there is one hat in a game I play that feels like damp wool like the inside of a raincoat, and I can't wear it now because it feels damp and horrible. if it helps, I have autism, so it may be that instead?

I only really noticed that it isn't a thing that usually happens to people when I mentioned that there was a smell that I thought was just the song I was listening to (a lot of songs have a kind of vanilla-y smell) but then it turned out to be an actual smell. the person I mentioned it to was quite confused and had no idea what I was talking about.

hi, i just realized this is probably not a thing most people experience haha

so for as long as i could remember, most things seem to evoke dryness or wetness (for lack of better words)

like, 3 is a wet number, 4 is a dry number, gamecube is a wet console, ps2 is a dry console

sunday - wet
monday - half & half
tuesday - dry
wednesday - wet
thursday - wetish...?
friday - dryish...?
saturday - dry

you get the idea

i feel like this is prolly synesthesia but idk for sure, and i cant find info about this exact experience. does anyone have any useful info? thanks!

In high school, I had to choose a language to study.

I couldn't pick Spanish. I just couldn't. Because the color of Spanish was weird or offputting to me. Deep burnt ochre orange. I just couldn't do it.

I picked French, instead, because the blue color of "French" was more appealing.

Every letter, thought, word, emotion and memory has a color. Usually the emotion colors (pink and warm yellow are both happy just different kinda of happy, teal is calm, blue-grey is sad, neon green-yellow is angry, neon purple is resentful or jealous, etc.) are linked to the memories too.

For example: A fork scratching on a plate is bright neon yellow, the letter a is red, the letter z is dark purple-blue, the word “word” is brown, cars honking is red, even names have colors. Drella is pinkish, Nev is muted orange and dark maroon, Aya is red, Chasen is green, Zoee is purple-blue, nearly the same color as the letter Z. Memories I have are strange too, like thinking back on meeting someone I don’t like is usually the same green-yellow as the color angry.

Is this synesthesia, or am I just crazy? Idk people think I’m weird for it and I’m pretty insecure about it.

Hello to any who read this, I’m very new to this phenomenon, and I don’t fully understand it. I come with questions and curiosity in regard to a conversation a close friend and I had this weekend and in discovering this community I am hopeful someone can help me better understand this.

My friend and I were discussing human nature, good and bad. Gut feelings and intuition, how well people can conceal their true identities, etc. as well as religion and our thoughts on the spiritual realms.

He then told me about a time where he (in his mid-late 20s) asked his younger sibling (6-9yrs I’m not entirely sure but a young child nonetheless) if he had ever looked at him, his father, or his mother and saw them as a color or maybe if they had a colored aura to them- or a similarly worded question asking the same thing essentially.

The child’s response: he became excited and warm at the question “yea! I am white, Mommy is brown, dad is black, and You’re blue!” Now I didn’t press my friend for much more information on how that conversation continued simply because we spent the next while dissecting what his young brother had told him.

Here is the part that lives in my mind. The Father from what my friend told me at first seemed to be a decent guy when he came into his family. as time went on he became less and less of a decent guy and my friend actually discovered that before his mother met the man, the man had a criminal record. On his record were more than one case of pedo. and other charges.

The mother was from what I gather a decent mother, but had her own problems, not mother of the year but did her duties…

My friend is a very good man, honorable and magnetic to those he meets.

So the child seeing the father as black. Imagine that, you look at someone and you see black. He obviously doesn’t know his father’s past, he is just a child and yet, there is some reason he identifies him as the color black.

I’m not sure if this is even relevant to this group but if anyone here has any helpful input I would love to hear it. Thank you.

Edit: if anyone here has a group this post would be more relevant to I would appreciate the suggestion.

Does anyone else here feel like the symbols that are on the numbers at the top of the keyboard, don't match? I'm referring to a computer keyboard, for anyone that may be using a mobile device.

Some of those symbols just don't feel right! 3 should be either the ampersat or dollar sign. And eight should be the ampersand. One is the only one that feels right.

I only discovered what synesthesia is this year. I mentioned to someone that I visualize a calendar, and they were shocked that I see it at all, let alone in the counterclockwise way I do. I also visualize the alphabet and number sequences.

I’m a project manager with Spatial Sequence Synesthesia (SSS) and time-space synesthesia, which I believe contributes to my effectiveness in my role.

I’m curious to know what others with this type of synesthesia do for a living and whether you also consider it your superpower!

Recently I realised that an experience of mine might not be something everyone has. I asked a few people irl, and they didn’t really understand what I meant. Basically, when I think of a word or concept, it comes with a “vibe”. It’s really difficult to explain, but I’ll try my best. The vibe is a feeling, but it’s not emotional/physical or linked to any memories. It’s not a positive or negative association either. It’s very abstract— an idea or atmosphere to the concept.

At first I thought it was maybe an unconscious thought, like how you don’t really think to move your arm, you just do it. But I don’t think it’s the same? This is an actual feeling, not a lack of it.

It also comes linked with a feeling in space and usually a colour too, but I’m aware that’s probably synesthesia, though I’m not sure what the type is called.

If anyone knows what I’m talking about, please let me know. It’s so difficult to describe, so if you have a better way to word it, go ahead. I’m unsure if this is just something everyone experiences or if it’s just a me thing

Hello! I was explaining something I experience to my therapist today and her best guess was synesthesia. She sent me some research to read about it, but I haven't seen anyone talk about the kind I would have.

What happens is if I hear or read any story about something violent happening to someone, I am overcome with visions of it happening to me. It's very distressing so I would like to know if its associated with anything. I have an image from a book I read 7 years ago that I still see as though its happening to me if I'm ever reminded of it.

Does this sound like a form of synesthesia to anyone else?

So, I'm wondering about something that I thought everyone experienced. If I see someone get injured, I'll feel pain in whatever area of their body they're affected in. It's not always as strong as I would expect the person having the injury experiences, but it can be pretty uncomfortable if I see someone hit in the genitals or breaking a bone. I also tend to feel people's basal emotions, for instance, if someone is irritated or frustrated, it will rub off on me. I'm not neurotypical, so I often I don't understand the nuance of what they're feeling or recognize it in myself, but as I've become more skilled at naming, understanding, and processing emotions / affect in myself, I've noticed it more and more.

Apparently not all people experience this!?

I'm unsure if this counts, but whenever I spell out a word I always feel myself typing it on a keyboard or writing it. It's odd though because whenever I try to recognize the visual of the keyboard I can't imagine it in my mind, only the feeling of where the keys are relative to my hands. It helps alot with my spelling because I can barely imagine words at all, so being able to connect them to physical movement is really helpful. If it's not synesthesia, I'd like to know if anyone has an idea as to what exactly this is, because apparently that's not really normal. My other theory is it's a way of coping with my maybe aphantasia because I cannot for the life of me inagine what a word looks like and that makes spelling really hard when I try to rely on how it sounds, as I often use homophones when I try to spell by sounding the words out.

Hey everyone!

I’m new here and wanted to know if anyone else related to this.

I see a lot about people experiencing colours with numbers or significant events or even emotions as colours- but I’d love to know if anyone experiences what I do which I’ll explain below:)

So, mine is emotion based and through my own emotions, but sometimes others too (only when I’ve experienced the emotion too though). There isn’t the typical happy (for example) as one emotion, there’s multiple variations of it each with a different experience for every traditional “emotion” which I’ll explain below. I don’t just get visuals, but I get tactile, auditory and visuals. A full body experience. I have no idea where I sit, as I have a history of trauma and I’m neurodivergent, but I’ll explain below one of the many things I experience.

I’ve got a diagnosis of EUPD, and the most prevalent one I experience is prompted by a feeling of disconnect, sadness, loneliness associated with my depressive episodes. It’s super confusing but me labelling those words “disconnect, sadness, loneliness” is not the first thing that comes to me, and it actually feels super unnatural and incredibly restrictive to use singular words or even words themselves, as the image associated with this feeling is so vivid, complex and layered. I’d love to be gifted at visual drawing and art so I could put it onto paper really.

Immediately, it’s coldness. Physical coldness travelling throughout the body in an apparition (not sure how else to describe it) that is black. It flows through my body and looks like a black scribble bubble sorta similar to what you’d see in a lot of artwork depicting mental health (however it’s different to this, and this is the closest comparison I can find to communicate the feeling). Not only that, it overlays with my “reality” first person visual experience. So what I’m saying, there’s what’s real, and an exact replica of reality I snap in and out of that’s almost like a ever so slightly translucent overlay that toggles on and off depending on the emotional intensity. Often times I get stuck in it, and feel so alone that I know nobody around me sees this and understands just how draining every day can be because of this. The coldness is the equivalent of sitting in a warm bath where someone pulled the plug and all your muscles are confined to the cold tub unable to move and escape the coldness, where you start to shiver and it feels real yet not (I perceive all of this in my mind, sometimes physically feel it but I think that’s my brain convincing me it’s reality as it’s that vivid for me, even if I’m in a warm room). Movements can feel delayed too depending on how stuck I am in the image. And these also are images I’ve had before (I experience flashbacks to trauma) but they’re consistent no matter the situation if the emotion is super strong and embodies whatever variation of the emotion I’m feeling at that time. So it’s way easier for me to describe it when I’m in the feeling, but I can do so when not too just at a slightly lesser depth- agh! it’s so complicated!!!

I know this could be a blend of dissociation too, but there’s no mistake that I have always been a visual person driven by emotions. I struggle in my everyday life to understand verbal instructions due to my dyspraxia (neurodivergence) and fully understand how them once shown to me.

I often felt paralysed and was always an anxious and depressed child as nobody knew just how vivid I saw the world and to the gravity I saw it and felt it embodied in my mind. I write a lot and write music because it’s the only way I can get it all out into the world and not into my brain, but it feels so heavily restricted and I fear I’d be misunderstood if I didn’t communicate in ways people who don’t experience can understand.

I experience full body and mind images of emotions. Not just colours, or numbers but full visual scenery that plays out like a scene in a movie.

**TW (nothing too graphic, but the content may be heavier here in terms of description- sensory overwhelm and trapped in a glass box image)

Another one is sensory overwhelm. Sounds often overlap for me, and the way I visualise it is being in a glass chamber that is extremely tight spaced and therefore claustrophobic. The sounds overlap and I see them like how you’d see in an editing software or with photoshop with the multiple layers of editing. I not only hear them all, I hear them individually, and see them as such in a visual way as well as the reality of hearing the sounds if I happen to be overwhelmed in an environment that has loud sound, but I get this trapped in a glass box image whenever overwhelmed and it leaves me feeling vulnerable which is a whole other ballpark to describe. So with all that, being in the box, seeing and hearing all that, you’re physically hyperventilating, unable to move your arms to cover your ears or face, unable to escape this clear box. And everyone can see you, all of them instead of doing their daily tasks they’re directed onto you. With that one I sometimes feel a different variation with the same box, but instead with rising sea water. And when the water rises to my face, that’s when I breakdown.

I hope this isn’t too much to read, but I hope someone either relates or knows something about this as I’m really new to the topic and recently discovered this could be a real thing and I’m not the only one in this world that experiences this. Apologies if this isn’t the right forum, but I thought I’d give it a shot to see who relates.

Thanks for reading if you got this far :)

*edit for typo

The general consensus is that you can't, but the more I learn about synesthesia, the stronger different associations become (Monday and Michael being red, Tuesday being green, ect). When I was younger, I had color associations for different words and have since had interest in cultivating them intentionally. I also have perfect pitch and have trying to cultivate chromesthesia (the music note A being red, B being silver, ect) and have had much progress in projecting the colors in my mind everytime I hear them in music. So I wonder what harvesting many forms of it can say about your brain and how it differs from others.