Physical Empathy

Oh Yh I remember the whole fail trend back when I was a teenager too. I think what you said is the reason I only really tended to play video games like Pokemon and Mario even as a young adult because it was only cartoon violence. In my recent years I’ve kind of been able to embrace this synesthesia as almost a form of virtual reality though. Like it can give me an insane adrenaline rush and make me feel so alive. I can kind of do a similar thing with sensory overloads in general. Like going into an arcade feels insane for me because of all the lights, colours and sounds but if I kind of embrace the madness It kind of feels amazing. Of course I can’t think and I can only take so much but at least it has some positives to it. It would be the same if I went to a concert or night club.

I kind of had to explore this stuff out of a matter of life and death. I have ocd and it became so bad that I tried to overdose on tablets back in 2014. Then I had an epiphany the following summer where I realised I don’t actually have to do anything but this ran wild and ended up with me developing bipolar. 

I am not saying I have a button like that, only that theoretically I could, If I learnt basics first and built upon it

I have a button like that though about car's supension, building and welding it from smallest parts up

Everyone is a bit scared to push their senses and explore, I started that journey some 8 years ago with memory boosting modifications, my ex hated it, even when I mentioned, but she left me anyway, and Iam free to continue now.

I was me before and I'm me now, I was diagnosed only last year, but it only validated everything while it is still the same everything

So I haven't found many that would admit to have improved spatial perception

while there are references in literature and movies that sound to me like that exactly, under various names like Mind Vault, Mind Attic, Appledome, and many more

btwif you manage to build button like that don't press it in public, it's difficult to stop unless it run through

Thanks for this article, I didn't know this phenomenon had a name.

When I see someone hurt I feel the same pain. For this reason I have never understood fighting sports like boxing or MMA, which for me are very unpleasant to watch and I avoid them.

I also never understood why people enjoy these "fail" videos where someone hurts themselves. They were very popular when I was a teenager. People seemed to find them funny, but I experience the physical pain of the person in the video, so it's unpleasant for me.

I would say mine makes it easy to remember names, funnily enough. I’m quite good at remembering numbers and dates, I have a good long term memory because of the way my brain catalogues information and links things together. The last thing you said just went way over my head though lol.

Kind of like tools at your disposal. Some things I experience voluntarily but others I can kind of use like mental tools too. I kind of see them as passive and active. Like when I listen to music It won’t be long before I see the sounds and this movement in my minds eye but then I also have some flexibility to add my own it’s really weird lol.

they are ready to be used

they can be anything

anything = conceptualisation

from something as small as decription of a word to a definition of an engine designing processes

I think all of my senses are incorporated into my synesthesia. What do you mean by button-like conceptualisations? That sounds intriguing.

I refer to them button-like conceptualisations. It feels like they do not exist until I click/use/need them. No words are necessary.

It works backwards too. You learn a process, and apropriate words to describe it, than you forget words if unused for to long, but you remember the process details.

I say polish is not my first language to everyone enquiring about, in fact I have never learnt to think in polish about anything abstract. As far as I remember it, I was doing it only during adolescence, and we all know what boys think at that period of their lives LOL Before that, I was only begining to comunicate using full sentences, after that I was practising speaking english for english classes. There were other languages soon after that too, but I'm stuck with thinking in english because it is most commonly used, and manuals tend to be in english, so it is convenient to continue to practice it.

For me synesthetic effects overlap more into touch and smell, than sight and hearing or taste

I jokingly say to my sister that English isn’t my 1st language it’s this “mental texture” that I convert into English. Like words have different textures and properties that I can almost feel in my minds eye. Sometimes I can confuse words if they have similar properties even if it might seem non-sensical to someone else. I call it their anatomic structure lol I have all these wacky expressions. Metaphors and wordplay are 2nd nature to me because of the way I think. I wouldn’t swap this for the world, it’s one of the things that keeps me going, I wish I could telepathically show it to others because it’s extremely hard to describe. Playing Pokémon when you can almost taste the texture of all the stats and graphics is just something else :)

Funnily enough I watched a video about synesthesia yesterday and I’m sure the guy said he was from Sussex Uni so it was probably him. I’m extremely sensitive to movement (sometimes it feels like my mind creates the movement I see) I also think I might have some kind of visual-auditory overlap because I don’t understand how you can listen to music lol like I kind of see waves in my minds eye and I can kind of play along in my minds eye like a rhythm game similar to guitar hero. I think colours also play a part because Iast night I felt very anxious but was able to reduce it somewhat by transferring it to the intense red on a music video. I think the mirror thing does have a hierarchy. Obviously me being punched would be at the top, then someone else, then someone in a realistic film, then a more realistic game down to a more cartoony one and then at the bottom probably just imagining or talking about it although it’s not that “clear cut” exactly.

Dawn said:

spatial perception

that's me, it makes it supper easy to forget unused words, extremely difficult to remember names, but the other side of the medal is, writing triggers visual images in my head, be that plain text, math, or music equations, so things like superimposition of two mathematical functions, e.g. 2 planes is clear without making its 2D representation to figure out crossing point/lines,

Investigate mirror syneasthsia; the research of Jamie Ward rom the University of Sussex gives a lot on this. Try his book: the Frog who croaked  blue or his TED talk on you tube.

Syneasthsia can be independent of autism, but is often co-occuring.  It is a bonus or condition; however you want to look at it, which cross wires the senses. Some, like me get words and phonemes triggering colour perception, or spatial perception (I get that too), or like you the touch or ailment of another to themselves makes YOU feel it, although you are only seeing not touching it.

You are a syneaestete, sweetie. It's mostly a pleasurable thing, but can greater pre-dispose us to anxiety. And this, for you, looks to be hard wringing into your empathy. You might be interested in signing up to the University of Sussex research project. They send me online quizzes and stuff now and again to help their research. 

Certainly, their FAQ pages might be helpful.

Mirror neurons maybe?

There are many different types of synesthesia. You say about textures in your head this could be synesthesia as it is defined as a neurological difference where sensory experiences merge. It might be difficult to distinguish whether what your feelings is an autistic sensory experience or whether it is due to another form of neurodivergence, there is a lot of overlap.

Are the sensations of pain more intense when someone you love or close to is hurt? Or is it random?

Hi there, yeah I’ve heard of synesthesia :) I didn’t realise this was a type of it however. I’ve more heard of what your talking about with words having colours, etc. I’ve been debating whether I have this type for a while now. I feel like everything kind of has a texture in my head if that makes sense lol (it’s really hard to explain) Like when I work stuff out or make a decision I feel all this weird stuff in my head and then I come to a conclusion.

Hello, I don’t experience this but I think it is called mirror touch synesthesia. This article may be useful:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/13a3affc-839d-4743-a5aa-738f9c8a6615

A lot of neurodivergent people experience a type of synesthesia, for example when I hear words or days of the week they have different colours and shapes.