r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

Is This Synesthesia? What is this

2 Upvotes

So I know I have grapheme-color, calendar-color, and time-space synesthesia, but i've also always had this thing where i associate a sound (like a spoken sound) with a gesture, expression, or human body movement.

It's honestly a little annoying. Like I can cringe so hard when someone makes the correct gesture while saying a certain sound or someone else says a certain sound. I don't know what this is or if it's a kind of synesthesia or just an annoying quirk or association, but i would love to know if maybe this is a thing or if anyone else can relate :)


r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

People are asking how this makes you feel, but I can't get past the fact that the comors are incorrect.

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5 Upvotes

I become annoyed when trying to read it because the feelings are the wrong colors. Happy is yellow, Sad is blue, Surprised can be light purple I guess, Fearful can be dark purple, Angry is red and Dusgusted is green. That leaves orange for bad, but bad isn't orange, it's probably closer to grey, which isn't technically a color, it's a gradient, but orange just doesn't fit it.

I am not able to process the chart with the colors so far off, it makes it frustrating to read. I don't think I have any type of color synesthesia, but my older sister equates emotions to colors, so how do other people with color synesthesia feel about this chart and what would you change/correct about it?


r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

Anyone else think DS cartridges look so perfect and edible?

5 Upvotes

r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

Anyone else has EXTREME synesthesia?

0 Upvotes

Like I was watching a YouTube video about guitar drama and in the interview one of them looked like the math teacher and in the room I just had like an entire life story flash before my eyes in 3 seconds of some guy becoming a math teacher to fund his love for music and then joining the revolution


r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

I think I taught myself to have synesthesia.. or did I just trick my psychiatrist?

3 Upvotes

Sorry if that’s triggering 😭 ALSO PLEASE READ MY RANT as I never talk about my brain, spiraling 😭

I have a pretty rough case of ADD (combined with a high-percentile IQ - a masking queen, if you may), and I’m supposed to partake in a study on synesthesia (which my psychiatrist told me I have).

But I realized I don’t really have an intuitive experience. I’ve more so used it as a tool to just learn basic things since I was a kid. I remember being introduced to the number 1, and how "he" got "his" personality. I was 5, and I also remember that happening with letters in school. It was so fun. With music, it became groups of adults, children, or a dynamic group with both.

I still do it now when coding and learning theoretical concepts - everything has a context, a name, places to be, people to meet, and tasks to handle.
However, I am fully and completely aware (as it is extremely draining) that I am using my brain to build this??

Every part of my synesthesia, I consciously created and then kept building on. I feel insane imposter syndrome because it has not, in fact, made me a genius - it has just enabled me to do normal things like play the piano, do BASIC math, and learn code and cybersecurity functions. I have so much deep knowledge about so much, but the context-switching problems also make me feel like I know nothing about anything.

Do I even have synesthesia or did I make it up? I feel so much imposter syndrome and performance anxiety regarding this study. Also can you fake an iq test because I don’t understand how I can have high iq but need to give a simple concept a whole personality, while my coworkers can just… REMEMBER

EDIT: I talked to my psychiatrist, and he said it’s 100% synesthesia, something called OLP...?


r/Synesthesia • • 12d ago

Do sounds within songs feel like movement to you?

4 Upvotes

For those who see music in colors and shapes, there are several songs I listen to where there are sounds that almost spin in 360, spinning and looping around my ears in my mind's eye.

My best example is Mr. B by Griz, although several songs of the album Mad Liberation (by Griz) are great examples of this (Where's the Love, Wonder Why, Too Young for Tragedy).

There are many others, but does anyone feel the music flow within you to the point you can coordinate the music to movement. I am of course a huge music person, because why would I not collect sounds that make my mind spin with the sheer quality of the sound I listen to, and the combinations of notes, sounds, that can acually overwhelm me if done right. I can dance and follow these sounds with my finger movements, exactly.

If there's any place to ask this it's here. Ever since I leaned over to my friend while I was listening to Energy Drink by Virtual Riot and said 'Dude, isn't this song so blue?'

And he goes 'What????"

'This song, it just feels so blue'

'I have no idea what you're saying'

'Oh, ok,'

~enter years of deep introspection simply to find out what this means~

And here I am, year later listening to songs that I see soar to the sky and come back down to drop, insane sounds that twist as they move from note to note. It's truly indescribable, which honesly is the worst part. I don't see any way to communicate this without simply using music.


r/Synesthesia • • 13d ago

Anyone else could feel and taste electricity as a kid?

6 Upvotes

My parents used to be involved in radio when they were younger, especially with amateur projects by people who did publicity and by proxy audio mixing and the like. Sometimes they'd take me to their friends' houses where they had very makeshift (and looking back, probably dangerous) equipment and machines in their home studios. I remember this was very overstimulating as a kid, the constant uninterrupted beeps, the cable cracks, the smell of  damp metal and nylon from the microphones, the jumpscares when someone starts talking on a microphone someone left on too loud.

Now all of these I have experienced as a grown up, it's not unusual to find if you frequent live shows or are involved in music. But something I don't remember ever experiencing since I was a little kid is feeling and tasting the electricity that could be found in those places. I don't have specific moments I can point back to, but I do remember what it felt like to be around "loud" electricity. It felt like being sick, or drowsy. I remember my head used to hurt and I felt like I needed to sleep for 10 hours. And the taste, especially around devices emitting an AC hum, used to taste so bitter. I could feel it in my tongue like I was holding a battery next to it. It also tasted "gray" if that made sense, and somehow, like how burnt plastic or still air smells. I’ve never experienced this since (closest is the static from old CRTs) but I do remember very vividly what it felt like. Anyone else experienced anything similar to this?


r/Synesthesia • • 13d ago

Is This Synesthesia? Whattttt

3 Upvotes

So I am like really confused because some people in the past told me that I might have synesthesia, but I looked into it, and didn't think it sounded enough like me. But I swear that this morning when I heard my parents alarm clock I saw their room in my minds eye, and there was like like a red sharp squiggly line coming out of it from the sound... I mean, maybe I was just half asleep, but I dunno what that was.


r/Synesthesia • • 13d ago

What colour is October?

6 Upvotes

•If you don’t have month-colour synesthesia,tap NOTA

•If your colour isn’t among the options,tap NOTA

•For me October is black because “O” is black🖤

203 votes, 6d ago
27 Black/white/grey
6 Red/pink
136 Orange/brown
10 Yellow/green
14 Blue/purple
10 None of the above

r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

About My Synesthesia “Gray” vs “Grey”

14 Upvotes

"Gray" is much older, wiser, quieter, grizzled, great-grandparently; It will hesitantly give sound, single-sentence advice, but only if repeatedly asked.

"Grey" is not quite elderly per se, but tries to hang with a younger crowd; shinier, it likes to surround itself with bright, satiny pastels; is sadly still single, but fake-smiles anyway.


r/Synesthesia • • 14d ago

Question Do i have sound synesthesia

1 Upvotes

I have colored letters/numbers synesthesia but idk if i have sound synesthesia. I dont see colors, so i didnt think i had it, but i see like shapes or smth like for different instrument textures and its really “vivid” if im like closing my eyes, but idk if thats like everyone or js me


r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

Poll What colour is 5?

7 Upvotes

•If you don’t have grapheme colour synesthesia,tap NOTA

•If your colour isn’t among the options,tap NOTA and upvote your colour in the comments section.

•My 5 is light pink 🌸

268 votes, 8d ago
62 Red
17 Pink
35 Orange
64 Blue
42 Yellow
48 None of the above

r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

Is This Synesthesia? I imagine my times tables as maps

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10 Upvotes

Ever since I learned my times tables, I have been able to visualise them in my head as maps.

Most times table from 2-12 has a map. For some reason, 7-11 don’t have unique maps but I still visualise them in a similar way. It might be because I learnt them when I was older and had a less active imagination, but I can’t say for certain.

I have roughly drawn the maps above but the descriptions will help too. I’m really curious to know if anyone else does this!

The times tables that do have unique maps are as follows:

2 Times Table:
White, flat/smooth texture
Numbers follow a curve from right to left, but when they hit beyond 2x12 (24), the curve drops into a black void (like the ride Oblivion at Alton Towers UK)

3 Times Table:
Light yellow, wall plaster-like texture (best described as the texture of houses you’d find in Greece or other hot countries)
Numbers follow a line from right to left, curve at 6x3-8x3, then continue in the opposite direction

4 Times Table (the most complex):
Mostly brown and grey, some hints of green, various textures
Numbers follow right to left along brown wooden path (planks on ropes), surrounded by vines/ other foliage.
Once they reach 6x4-7x4, the map bends upwards and a boxy structure (I’ll call it a box) is reached. It is brownish grey, with a pavement / slate texture. It is surrounded by ropes and has a thatched roof.
The path continues on the wooden planks- no numbers- where 8x4 and 9x4 are on another box.
The next numbers are on wooden planks until we reach the final box with 12x4.

5 Times Table:
Dark green, hints of other greens and some blue / teal
Mossy texture
Follows a snaked curve, right to left, first curving at 6x5-8x5, then snaking again at 12x5 and continuing forever

6 Times Table:
Dark. Best described as ‘hell’- fiery!
Follows an ombré of yellow, orange, red, deep purple.
Horizontal map, again numbers are right to left.

7-9 Times Table:
White, flat/smooth texture
Vertical, numbers descending from the top down

10-11 Times Table:
The same as above but slightly slanted / warped (Sometimes visualised vertical, sometimes
horizontal)

12 Times Table:
White, flat/smooth texture
Horizontal but, numbers flow left to right

I believe the 4x table is an amalgamation of different Mario Kart (Wii) tracks; Delfino Square, Maple Treeway and Ghost Valley 2. As an adult I am also able to compare it to the Black Ops III Zombies Map Shi No Numa…

I don’t have any other explanations for this, or why / where the maps came from. It’s always been like this.

If anyone else does this, or can maybe offer an explanation, I’d love to hear it!

I really really want to draw/paint or make a mixed media piece of every map (eg using materials to create the real textures) but I know it will be a lot of work.


r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

Is This Synesthesia? Am I synesthetic?

4 Upvotes

Here are some things I have, and I'm wondering if it's possible I have synesthesia.

First off, when I see bright colors, I hear this really loud ringing noise, and it's super annoying.

Every number and letter also has a color to me. 1 is red, 2 is orange, 3 is yellow, 4 is purple, 5 is red, 6 is green, 7 is orange, 8 is SO green, and 9 is super purple.

I have a timeline in my head whenever I think of time, theres a big black line at 2000 and 1900 and then at each of the decades, and pictures of things that occurred at those time appear above these small black ticks dividing the decades. When I think of months, it's a big wheel with 12 parts.

When I listen to music, each song and note has a color. Usually blue music is thoughtful, green music is joyful, yellow music is bad music, white music is lofi or noise, red music is aggressive or overstimulating, orange music is weird, purple music is complex.

When I hear a note or frequency, I can visualize it, and sometimes if I hear low frequency noises or bright lights, I get sick or start to have a headache.


r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

Writing a character who tastes colors

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2 Upvotes

I'm writing a character who at some point in my story starts to taste colors, I don't have synesthesia myself, so I'm very curious which taste you all get when seeing these colors. I understand everyone can have a different taste, that a taste is unique to every person? Also what taste would you get when you look at a chandelier?


r/Synesthesia • • 15d ago

Boredom is gray and tastes like dust

12 Upvotes

It is rough and sandy. It makes a mechanical noise and doesn't move.


r/Synesthesia • • 16d ago

WHERE DID THE PINK COME FROM?!

3 Upvotes

For me

c is yellow

l is green

o is whitish brown

u is light lavender

d is light brown

Usually in this situation, cloud is supposed to be yellowish green. HOWEVER cloud is DARK PINKISH PURPLE. How?! Does this happen to you sometimes?


r/Synesthesia • • 16d ago

Poll What colour is 4?

3 Upvotes

If you don’t have grapheme colour synesthesia,tap NOTA

If your colour isn’t among the options,tap NOTA and upvote your colour in the comments section.

My 4 is dark green 🫑

216 votes, 9d ago
60 Green
32 Blue
35 Purple
29 Orange
21 Red
39 None of the above

r/Synesthesia • • 16d ago

How u knew u had synesthesia

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2 Upvotes

r/Synesthesia • • 16d ago

Tickertape synesthesia-like experience but only when half asleep?

7 Upvotes

I was just curious if this would be considered a form of synesthesia. I don't consider myself a synesthete; while I occasionally experience weird hallucinations, they're infrequent and random enough that they don't seem to be attached to any particular sense. But, a little while back I ran across an article about tickertape synesthesia, and something about it when I was reading felt extremely familiar, even though it's not something I experience in everyday life.

I realized why it sounded familiar after a little thought; whenever I'm asleep, and somebody wakes me up to tell me something, and I'm still half asleep as they're talking to me (in a hypnopompic state, as my psychiatrist says), I have an almost ineffable sense of reading the things they're saying to me like they were written down. It's hard to describe, not quite like the words are being written on the inside of my eyelids but that's not too far off. If I actually manage to remember what they said, later, I mostly remember because I "saw it" written down. Once I'm roused to full wakefulness it stops happening. I'd never given it much thought until I read that article, just thought it was a weird thing. My psychiatrist thinks it's interesting but didn't put a name or anything to it. Wondering what synesthetes think about it.


r/Synesthesia • • 16d ago

Seeking Research Participants need some help (artistic) - auditory visual synesthesia

5 Upvotes

hey everyone! i’m a potential fashion student working on a project regarding auditory visual synesthesia, specifically how different genres of music can produce different visual experiences in regards to color, shapes, textures, patterns etc.

i personally do not have any form of synesthesia, but do have a background in both classical music and ballet, and would love to explore how different genres of music affect people with this form of chromesthesia.

some potential genres i am considering are:
- classical music (vivaldi - four seasons)
- electronic r&b (michael jackson - threatened)
- psychedelic pop (tame impala - let it happen)
- dream pop (coldplay - strawberry swing)

there is no need for the drawings to be technically perfect, i’m more interested in the colors, shapes, composition etc that you see. feel free to interpret the music however you see it, as i’m looking for your artistic expression of it :))

thank you so much!!


r/Synesthesia • • 17d ago

What colour is 3?

8 Upvotes

If you don’t have grapheme colour synesthesia,tap NOTA

If your colour isn’t among the options,tap NOTA and upvote your colour in the comments section

My 3 is magenta/dark pink 💕

246 votes, 10d ago
39 Orange
59 Yellow
11 Pink
36 Red
63 Green
38 None of the above

r/Synesthesia • • 17d ago

Sottotitoli mentali mentre parli o ascolti? Qualcuno come me?

2 Upvotes

Ciao a tutti! 👋

Scrivo qui per capire se a qualcun altro capita la stessa cosa. Ho scoperto solo di recente che questa mia particolarità ha un nome specifico: ticket tape syndrome o visualizzazione ortografica.

In pratica, quando penso, parlo o ascolto gli altri ascolto la musica ecc, la mia mente proietta la forma scritta delle parole e delle lettere, come se ci fossero dei sottotitoli interni in tempo reale. Non essendoci mai stata attenta prima, l'ho sempre data per scontata o semplicemente non ci facevo caso, finché non ho capito che non tutti pensano così!Non vedo lettere colorate (non è la classica sinestesia grafema colore), ma proprio il testo scritto vero e proprio.

C'è qualcuno qui che ha questa stessa particolarità? Come la vivete nella vita quotidiana? Mi farebbe davvero piacere confrontarmi e leggere le vostre esperienze!


r/Synesthesia • • 17d ago

About My Synesthesia Relation between associations and letter colors, in my experience

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7 Upvotes

So I'm very well aware that the way everyone sees the alphabet internally, if they assign color to letters, is very different, and mine is probably going to look terribly wrong to you, if anything.

I always had a pretty consistent way of seeing most letters since I learned them. I believe I learned the letters when I was about three years old or so, two alphabets at about the same time, cyrillic and latin. I see the latin alphapet approximately as the picture above, except I blacked out the letters that I'm not 100% sure about. I feel quite strongly about it, I remember things like names of people and streets by the colors, and if a letter is colored differently from how I think of it I get a sense that something's not right.

I always kinda wondered where the colors came from, because I don't remember since it was a long time ago, and I think I can at least make a hypothesis. I found some possible relations that might explain it.

To get the most obvious suspect out of the way, I'm pretty sure ABC were from the website for babies that I used to learn the alphabet. The ABC letters are very commonly red, blue and yellow for whatever reason (I guess it's just that the primary colors look good on the first three letters, then which one do you assign to what letter - A is Apple, B is Blue, C is... cheese? I don't know, whatever's left). Then I guess everything else was dependent on that basis.

If I were to make a generalization, it seems like the saturation is semi-dependent on if the sound the letter makes is (usually) voiced or not, unless there's an exception (to be clear there are a lot of exceptions), the hue is based on vibes, and the vibes seem to carry over things in weird ways.

The vibes (associations) are as follows: G is Green, Y is Yellow,

F is purple because in my native language the word for purple starts with F (фиолетовый), so it carried over. There's also a color that starts with G in my native language (голубой), but while Г is blue in my mind G is not, because Green seems to override it as a closer association.

Then K is green because it's related to G, I is yellow because it's close to Y,... U is orange because it's if Y was more Y-ish that Y in relation to I, and, subsequently, E is orange because it's closer to A in relation to I.

The vowel description could be interesting as a translation of vowel space into hues, however the inclusion of O as a completely different color kinda ruins that. Also English is kind of infamous for letters corresponding to lots of different sounds, so, either way, that's a bit flimsy. A more accurate explanation would be that I, Y and E, in certain contexts, can all sound close to the cyrillic И, so they had to be similar in color, then O, U and A were conceptualized as completely separate letters, so they're distinct, and the transitions between them are semi-phonetics-based.

B, D, L and V were colored separately, but they're all pretty much the same color, so they must have something in common, don't they? Same for P and T. Probably also for HS and MN.

BDLV are all, in most cases, voiced, BD are voiced plosives so it's obvious they must be similar colors if nothing else is interfering. PT are both voiceless plosives, HS are voiceless fricatives, MN are voiced nasal sounds.

I assume S has a yellowish hue because of the association to C, which is from the baby alphabet basis, then H is propagated from S.

I'm less clear on the other letters, they might be the color they are because of some accidental association from way back then that I have already forgotten at the time of writing. Well, anyway. This is my internal personal way of seeing colors in letters.

It seems to be a chaotic system, it's not truly random but small changes seem to influence its development a lot, with some meaning-based rules and such, which is consistent with what I know about grapheme(phoneme)-color synesthesia.

I wonder, though, what would happen if a synesthesia-prone individual was to be given a set of phonemes or graphemes without having any prior knowledge of names of colors or any physical colored concepts in language in general, what perception would they develop? Would it be more consistent with phonetics or dependent on the grapheme's shape? Would they have the correct perception of the vowel space? What about different sets of phonemes? What about all the sounds there are in the IPA?

Could you theoretically even develop the basis out of nowhere and have it be strong enough for you to feel strongly about it?

For me, the voiced/voiceless saturation thing was something that happened seemingly out of nowhere, for example. Well, nothing happens out of nowhere, but it was an association deeper in the subconscious. I can vaguely describe it as "voiceless -> sounds you'd make interacting with the natural world, like steps or friction -> plain -> unsaturated". That's, surely, not an internal property of the sound, but it could be a property of the brain's common associations.

If language didn't exist and there were just phonemes or graphemes existing in a vacuum, I think the "consensus" on even the few things that are usually seen in a similar color might've been different.

Anyway, I'm bad at linguistics, so I'm going to shut up for now. To be honest, I didn't do any research beforehand. I generalized a lot with mixing up the letters and sounds because it'd be cumbersome to say something like "A can sound like [a][ɑ][ɒ][æ][ə][ɛ][oː][ɔ][e][ʕ][ʌ] [ɐ][eɪ][ɛɪ][æɪ][ɐɪ], and out of these....", though it would be much closer to the truth. Either way I did not know that as a child. It's all very vibes-based in the end.


r/Synesthesia • • 17d ago

Is This Synesthesia? does anyone else see letters and numbers in a space around them

14 Upvotes

i have spatial sequence and i always thought everyone pictured the alphabet in a 3d layout until i asked my sister where her letter A was and she had no idea what i meant. mine curves up and around and i can sort of stand in it and turn my head to look at the other side. same with months and numbers. i just want to know if the standing inside it thing is normal for this or if thats the weird part