Does anyone else have Synaesthesia

Just curious to know as I have Synaesthesia but I'm the only person in the family with it and I don't know anyone else with it. It's a strange thing and it can be annoying like when watching stuff because different things block the screen. It's like for me days have feelings, Tuesdays are cool and dull but yesterday was warm and brightly coloured which is nice but causes sensory overload.

Be interesting to see who else has this.

Parents
  • I dont believe I have synaesthesia as such (I dont hear coulours or taste shapes or smell equations or whatever) but that days of the week thing strikes a chord. For sone reason each has always had a colour ‘aura’ associated with it in my head only - not perceived as a filter over my eyes or anything. Mondays are black, Tuesdays are a translucent white, Wednesdays sort of reddish (maybe burgundy?), Thursday a dark warm green, and Friday a light orange. Saturday is sort of clear, and Sunday is a weak yellow. 

    One thing i have that’s maybe adjacent is that certain sights can me very unpleasantly. For instance, while real life rainbows are beautiful and subtly shaded, any manmade attempt to replicate them always looks horrific- the worst variant being childrens’ felt top drawings - those tightly packed bars of clashing (rather than subtly gradating) colours are nauseating to me. And there was one in every window during lockdown! All in a good cause (as it id with LGBT symbolism too) but I find the feignbows themselves kind of grotesque. 

    another one: actual nature this time. Daffodils make me feel a bit sick. Something about them being the shock troops of Spring trying to get started ‘prematurely’. That horrible clash of dark green stem and sickly yellow head, extruded vulgarly out into a some sort of physically embodied scream - the birth pains of the season as  frozen disquieting avatars of the unrelenting insistence of more new things. Inevitable, and by late spring, easier to look at. But those first garish infiltrators… shudder. 

    apart from that, I just have the fairly standard autistic thing of finding  many tastes and smells and noises overpowering at a lower threshold than most. 

  • So interesting to hear your colours of the week. I think it's lucky you don't taste, hear, feel and smell those things it can be unpleasant lol.

    Oh also with finding things overpowering have you noticed it's worse when you're anxious? I have. It's doubly horrible when I feel anxiety kicking in. 

    The feeling sick with the flowers I sort of get that but more with animals when they are first born and usually look all saggy and furless lol really makes me heave.

    Laughing

  • Yes, definitely to the heightened anxiety waking it worse. Or rather, the more distressed I am, the lower the dial goes on tolerance for any sensory stimuli. Ive at least three times in the last five years gone through a period of weeks where - overwhelmed by events or a dark epiphany- I needed the quietest of softly lit rooms to sit and ruminate for hours every day - just endlessly trying to solve the unsolvable and with anxiety and despair raging at all times. Food was especially overwhelming - amything (while i was like that) more strongly flavoured than a rich tea biscuit or plain  cracker or lightly buttered toast would be to much to bear. Wish i could lose weight that easily now! Though I certainly don’t  want to revisit the sort of total mental and emotional crash that brings that about. Not that I have much of a choice when I do. 

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  • Yes, definitely to the heightened anxiety waking it worse. Or rather, the more distressed I am, the lower the dial goes on tolerance for any sensory stimuli. Ive at least three times in the last five years gone through a period of weeks where - overwhelmed by events or a dark epiphany- I needed the quietest of softly lit rooms to sit and ruminate for hours every day - just endlessly trying to solve the unsolvable and with anxiety and despair raging at all times. Food was especially overwhelming - amything (while i was like that) more strongly flavoured than a rich tea biscuit or plain  cracker or lightly buttered toast would be to much to bear. Wish i could lose weight that easily now! Though I certainly don’t  want to revisit the sort of total mental and emotional crash that brings that about. Not that I have much of a choice when I do. 

Children
  • I find the same as you the more anxious I am the less I'm able to tolerate around me whether it's colours sounds or people. Anxiety is more debilitating than a lot of people think. It sounds as if you get anxiety bad at times. I've only had it bad where it caused me like that once that I can think of. Mostly it just causes upset and distress. Hopefully you can continue and not end up in that dark place again.