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Synesthesia. I can see music. It’s fun.
Also, being resistant to pain killers. Not so fun (takes ages to get drunk, and I woke up 3 times during a surgery)
Oh I got that to a lesser degree. At night, I interpret sudden bangs (door slamming) as flashes of intense white light.
I realised that the lights were not real (phantom lightning, or bright outdoor lighrs winking on and off) once I started sleeping with a blindfold
I don’t think so – the noises I hear are real, they’re just accompanied by flashes of light if my brain can’t place the source of the sound in realtime
I can’t really speak for you of course, but I can add that I thought it was the same for me. Until it turned out I was the only one who was hearing these noises.
Hah! Oh jesus, this will be a fun rabbithole for me to think about over the next few years.
Appreciate the warning, strangerHere’s a redditor that describes it quite well:
Me. I have this. Happens several times a night. Sounds like a door slamming or a gunshot. The weirdest part is you also get the feeling that there was an impact, like that feeling when someone stomps near you. So it’s not just auditory it’s almost physical. It’s a very strange thing and hard to describe because you’re always 3/4 of the way asleep when it happens. I’ve had it my whole life and always found it curious but have never questioned it out loud. I thought everyone had this until I saw “exploding head syndrome” on the internet. Asked my parents and siblings, no, none of them have this and what the fuck am I talking about? I’m in my goddamned 40s and thought this was normal.
Goddamit I said stop, I’ve already got a ton of other neuroses to worry about!
In a room full of power supplies i was the only one able to find which one was still powering something, because apparently out of the ~20 people that tried before me, i was the only one that could hear the transformer whine.
Also a general annoyance since i need to charge my phone in another room if i want to sleep without simulating tinnitus.
(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ Depression ♥
I believe I once killed a fly with my mind. I had just read an article about a Japanese kid who could supposedly project images onto camera film mentally. The way he described it was building up a storm of energy in his mind and sort of throwing it at the camera. So I noticed a fly on my window right then. I did the same mental exercise, picturing a cyclone of energy whirring through my brain, building up more and more power, and I visualized unleashing it suddenly in a burst at the fly. Pow! The fly instantly fell off the glass and was dead on the windowsill. Either I killed it or it was ONE HELL of a coincidence.
I can hear CRT screens. They emit a high pitch noise that nobody else in my family can hear, I assume most people actually can hear it but never noticed it. My family used to think I was crazy or had tinnitus (jury’s still out on both) until they tested me by making me close my eyes and tell them if the TV was on while turning it off and on at random, with sound off. It was a weird test from my perspective, since I could hear it fine anyway. So far I haven’t noticed a decay due to age, but if it had little use when CRTs were widespread, it’s now completely useless.
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You probably should get yourself checked for Autism Spectrum Disorder and so does anyone else who experiences anything similar
Some people with ASD have a sensitivity to things neurotypical people don’t notice
Autism is a Spectrum Disorder so not all autistic people have the same symptoms and you can’t self diagnose yourself, you need to see someone specialised for that
Try that with cheap mobile phone charges. They have an annoying coil whine.
I too have significantly more sensitive hearing than seemingly just most people, and can hear and often get annoyed by high pitched but low decibel sounds, very often caused by electronics, off balance high speed fans, etc.
Got gaslit about it by my family as well.
You may wanna look into an autism diagnosis, autists often have this kind of thing going on.
You’d think it would be called super hearing, but instead its often everyone without heigtened senses calling you delusional.
Same thing happened to me when I described seeing the entoptic blue field phenomenon to my family, but not knowing the fancy name for it because I was 11. Family got very concerned I was hallucinating, the reality is I am just more attentive to reality than they are.
My brother and I always enjoyed going out to the woods together when we were young because you couldn’t hear everything humming out there. I still enjoy it for the same reason.
My hearing isn’t even that great because I’ve spent years around loud noises (industrial and concerts) without hearing protection. But I can still “feel” cheap chargers, bad screens, and florescent lights.
A whole lot of poorly configured or cheaply made electroninc appliances or chargers … yeah I can often literally hear when you’ve plugged something in wrong, it makes a high pitched whine, because it is overamping.
Also, if you’re near high tension power lines?
You have to be pretty darn close to be in danger from actual electromagnetic effects.
But… that hum? The buzz?
Turns out that that is actually what causes a lot of long term health problems in people sensitive to it.
Literally the sound, not the EM field, makes you agitated, stressed, on edge, and if that is just your baseline for 20 years, that constant stress accumulates and basically ages you faster, and can cause mental health problems.
I used to be able to tell what refresh rate they were set to because everything below a certain point flickered. I’d ask people why their screens were flickering and they couldn’t see it.
You might want to get yourself checked for Autistic Spectrum Disorder because I notice CFL tube (fluorescent tube light) flicker if I pay attention to them when no one else does
Some people with ASD are more sensitive to things other people don’t notice
Mate, there are so many things that suggest I am on the spectrum now that I have given up keeping track of them all. I’m not sure that at my time of life there’s anything that can be done for me even if I did get a diagnosis.
When I lived in Canada for a year and then moved back to Europe I saw CRT TVs flicker for the first week I was back home. Even on so called 100Hz CRT TVs I saw flickering. Got used to 60Hz CRT screens so 50Hz CRTs were very noticeably
Yeah, if my memory is correct the flickers stopped completely for me at around 80hz. I’m talking about monitors here rather than TVs.
Now that is a superpower. I’ve always thought the ability to see fast was such an interesting skill.
Think about it: you could go to the Olympics in a skillful sport like fencing or boxing, and defeat every opponent without much formal training simply because you can see them telegraph their moves. No anticipation or planning required, you just watch them come to you.
Do you do any competitive sport?
I used to be able to do this as well until I got into my 30s and my vision naturally degraded.
Was quite good at FPS games, paintballing… the first time I went to a rifle range for an introductory shooting class, the instructor suggested i look into a shooting scholarship due to my exceptional fine motor control and visual acuity… I had very fast reaction times in martial arts (Karate), but being naturally timid and having a skinny twink build kind of cancelled that out.
The reality is most people think you are delusional, and if your family/friends are authoritarian, they’ll try to get you mentally evaluated as seeing hallucinations.
Its less Superman and more Xmen being persecuted for being different.
Though just because you can see such fine movements doesn’t mean you can react fast enough to stop it. You’d just see your loss coming from a mile away.
True, but with some training you’d learn to anticipate as well. Pairing that with your Uchiha eyes, and you’d be unstoppable
“awww shiiiiitttt I’m about to be punched in the face”
…
…
…
“Ouch!”
I can ‘flex’ my Eustachian tubes and ‘open them’ at will, e.g. equalising pressure when ears need ‘popping’ on planes. I’m sure it isn’t that uncommon but no one ever knows what I mean when I say it.
Like when you do the yawning-part for your ears without actually yawning?
I can do that too!
People dont get what you mean with “popping your ears”? How can an adult never experience that?
Most people do it by swallowing? So I guess they shrug it off that I do it slightly differently.
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Hyper-compartmentalization. Everything can be falling apart around me, high stakes, emergency, danger, but I just proceed calmly and steadily toward the goal. I am a rat in a maze, and each decision is just an ab node in a tree. I make best guesses and don’t shoulda woulda. If I can’t make it and everything is horrible, that was the outcome, I did the best I could with the knowledge/data given, or I put in what I felt was right, and if I’m wrong, oh well.
I can fall asleep, near instantly, at will.
I call it my time machine function.
I envy you so much. Yours is an actual superpower. My ability is the opposite, I can wake up from an alarm no matter the circumstance, slept only 3 hours while completely drunk? Still wake up instantly and start doing things, I’ve never missed an alarm in my life.
You an I… We are either going to form an unstoppable super team or… You ate going to end up as my nemesis.
I have special ability to fall asleep quick if deciding to take a nap during office hours.
Unfortunately, it’s not effective going to sleep in the evening
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I have a few different versions of synesthesia.
The most prominent one is that is see words and letters in color. If you tell me your name I can more or less paint your name like a weird color code. Whenever it is brought up it’s almost like a fun little party trick where people ask me what color their names are and I tell them.
Spoiler alert, though: if your name has A or S in it, it will most likely have red in the mix. M and N are differnet variations of green. Some letters are dominant and others are submissive so depending on the word they either pain other letters a specific color or take color from dominant letters. E is a submissive letter. Tends to be a pale yellow, but will change color depending on the letters it is put together with. D is a weird dominant letter that changes color all the time. Either black or a deep purple. Completely depends on the word.
Numbers have colors too.
0 - white
1 - black
2 - pale yellow
3 - sky blue
4 - red
5 - dark brown
6 - black
7 - yellow
8 - dark purple
9 - orange
Random names and their colors:
Jack = black and red, white and black again.
Stephanie = red, yellow, green and yellowish white
Peter = gold and black
Mary = forest green, red, black and orangy yellow
Robert = black, white black
Lily = white, silver, yellow like sunshine
William = black, white, red, forest green
Karen = black, red, black, a sprinkle of yellow and spring green.
Russell = black, golden yellow, red, yellow
Evelyn = sunshine yellow, white and spring green.
Etc etc
To me, pretty names are not just pretty if they sound good, they also have to have beautiful and unique color combinations. Most names tend to have red and green color combos for me so whenever yellow, blue, purple or pink appear in a name I really like it. In my country there’s a man’s name Åge which isn’t the prettiest sounding name, but to me it is so friggin beautiful because it’s one of the rarest color combinations I have in my head: dusty blue, morning pink, white, misty overlay and a bit of golden brown. The letter Å is the prettiest letter to me as it is this rare double color of blue and pink and it is a dominant letter so whenever it appears in a name or a word, it is like a breath of fresh air among all the greens and blacks and reds.
What about in different languages? Is it the same?
Also, what about different alphabets? Is it a thing where all characters (letters, numbers) have color? Or is it like, idk, the mental processing of “this character means the letter C. The letter C, brain tells me, I recognize as part of language. Language begets words, which begets colors”?
This is super fascinating to me. Like, if you knew the phonetic sound a Japanese hiragana character makes, would you start to see that character in the colors that correspond with roman spelling?
Like の is prounced and spelled in the Roman alphabet as “no”.
Does の now have the same colors as “no”?
That is actually a very interesting question and I think it entirely depends on what senses triggers the synesthesia. For me, it is the look of the letters that determines what color they get. I still have to know what sound they make and understand what they mean and such before the colors start to come. Otherwise it is just a nonsensical pattern and my mind ignores it.
If I learned Japanese, I’m sure their writing system would have different colors to me. I can answer you on the の because it is one of the only Japanese characters I understand and know and to me it is yellow, almost a light ochre with a bit of white in it while “no” is green and white.
It would be differnet for someone who sees words in colors if their synesthesia is based on sound. To them, maybe the の would have the same color as the “no” or maybe it would be different because the English “no” is pronounced differently than the Japanese “no”. But I can’t give a definitive answer on that one.
!!! Interesting. So, I guess, it’s the visual processing of characters into language?
Does の have the same(-ish) color as any other letters or numbers for you?
Sorry for the continuing questions. I don’t have synesthesia, but I find it incredibly fascinating, just due to how different parts of the brain are activated when interpreting sensory input.
Correct! But that is just how it is to me. Other synesthetes may process letters differently because they use sound or smell or texture or taste etc. It’s a very individual thing.
I think that the ochre/yellowish color appears to me when I look at の because it reminds me of E or rather “e” and to me E/e is a pale yellow. I’m definitely informed by my established understanding of letters in the Roman alphabet, but the color isn’t a one to one copy paste because の and e are still different enough that the colors will be different too.
I started teaching myself the Cyrillic alphabet a few years ago, but got busy with life so I have since forgotten most of it again, but I do remember some of the letters taking on interesting colors for me. Most of the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet LOOK like Roman letters even if they have completely different sounds so many of them just get the color from the Roman alphabet, but some of them are just different enough that the color is unique to them. Correct! But that is just how it is to me. Other synesthetes may process letters differently because they use sound or smell or texture or taste etc. It’s a very individual thing.
I think that the ochre/yellowish color appears to me when I look at の because it reminds me of E or rather “e” and to me E/e is a pale yellow. I’m definitely informed by my established understanding of letters in the Roman alphabet, but the color isn’t a one to one copy paste because の and e are still different enough that the colors will be different too.
I started teaching myself the Cyrillic alphabet a few years ago, but got busy with life so I have since forgotten most of it again, but I do remember some of the letters taking on interesting colors for me. Most of the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet LOOK like Roman letters even if they have completely different sounds so many of them just get the color from the Roman alphabet, but some of them don’t really look like Roman letters and while I was learning, they started to take on their own unique color. Since I still don’t have a solid grasp on the Cyrillic alphabet, the colors are also very flimsy and hard to pin down. In the same way that it is hard for me currently to remember what sound goes with what letter.
But л which has the L sound, generally tends to flicker yellow and reddish pink to me atm. Maybe if I got really good at Cyrillic, it would become more yellow or more reddish pink or maybe, as my understanding of the letters grow, it will take a completely different color? I don’t know. I haven’t learned a - to me - foreign alphabet with language well enough to be able to tell you what happens there. I also don’t remember how colors of the Roman letters were formed for me because when I learned to read and write I was a kid and I didn’t know that how my brain works was a bit different in some areas so I guess the colors just came gradually and naturally and I didn’t think about it until probably my early 20s when I had a history teacher who randomly brought the topic up in class and asked us if we saw colors when we look at letters and words. Me: oh yeah, but don’t everybody?
Also, don’t apologize for asking questions :D
… That’s. So. COOL! AHH- :D
so, if you were to start learning a new alphabet and accompanying language, those letters might begin to take on colors of their own, like with Cyrillic and Russian. Ahhh- that’s so strange and awesome! Er, well, to someone who doesn’t have synesthesia (me).
Thanks for answering my questions and being so detailed in your responses! Last question - does punctuation have any effect on the colors you see? I imagine punctuation symbols don’t do anything on their own, since they’d be just that - symbols. But if they’re used in the context of language/communication, are they affected by your synesthesia as well?
Yeah! That I very possible! Again, I can only guess and refer to tendencies I have noticed in myself when practicing Cyrillic, but since I haven’t seriously committed to learning Russian or any other language with non-roman letters, I can only guess what it would be like. I only started practicing it because I was developing fictitious languages at the time and wanted to broaden my horizon. Only reason I stopped was because life got hectic af and I haven’t had the time and energy for a year and a half to have hobbies or interests or really anything other than working. I’m slowly moving into hobby and interest territory again now that life is a tiny bit less insane, so maybe I will pick Cyrillic back up. I remember taking a sneak peak on Mongolian script as well and that shit looks like vertical elvish, wtf. So pretty.
Hmm… that’s actually a good question! I have never thought about punctuation but come to think of it I do see some of them in color too. I just tend to ignore them since they are just punctuation. For example ? is white and black while " is brown. It isn’t all symbols that have colors, though. # doesn’t have a color. Periods are black and dashes are creamy yellow. I don’t know if they make a difference when it comes to how I perceive color in a sentence. I thin question mark is the only one I have really noticed because the white is dominant. With the others I just haven’t thought about whether or not they affect my perceptions. I think they do. Kinda like how you know what Mickey mouse looks like but if you were to draw him from memory you would be a but like “uuuuuh…” because you haven’t ever really studied his design, you just recognize it and know it’s him when you see him.
That’s kinda how synesthesia is for me too. I know that B is blue and dashes are creamy yellow etc, but I don’t think about how it looks in sentences until I have to actually study it.
I did try to test it last night with a short sentence and how different types of punctuation affected it. I learned that commas and periods and so on don’t really make a difference while questionmark and three periods does have an effect on the color I see.
As for the rest I can’t say how or if they affect it. The color stuff is very intuitive and organic and I try to stick to the ones I’m certain of while the unclear ones just get labeled as colorless. Even if I see a color with the colorless ones, it’s too unstable for me to be certain with some. For example, the letter F is super tricky. It has like three different colors and kinda flickers for me. Depending on the words F appears in, it will take one of the three colors, but by itself it flickers black, dusty blue and a beige brown. J also flickers between black and blue. So those two letters are colorless to me, even though they technically aren’t.
Sorry if it got a bit weird and random in the end. I’m a bit tired and my thoughts are all over the place haha.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, friend!
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I have hyperthymia. It’s a constant state of mild mania and when I get flare ups of it it’s like I’m on speed
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Excellent colour vision, forget what it’s called but I have being a girl to thank for this one!
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I have hyperphantasia too, and didn’t realize this until someone posted a diagram on here. When I imagine an apple in my head, it looks the same as me seeing it in real life. I never knew this wasn’t normal until pretty recently!
Diagram on that last one? the apple not appearing like it does in real life sounds weird to me.
Anything less than a 1 makes me raise eyebrows, but the fact some people see just an outline or even nothing still blows my mind
I can see all of them up to 5, which looks blank to me.
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I used to be able to tell if a TV was on or not. I can’t really explain it, but it was like I could vaguely hear/feel it? I don’t know, I was a kid. My grandma would play her games without sound sometimes so she wouldn’t wake people up (and probably to play without a kid hanging off of her), but I evolved to counter it. 😂
CRT TV’s emit a high frequency noise while in operation. Apparently there must be a significant number of people who can’t hear frequencies that high. My wife can’t hear it and had no idea those TV’s made any noise at all.
i can make some weird sounds that sounds like suffering by closing my nose and then try to “breath out the closed nose and then opening something at the throat”
Dont use it often because it actually hurts, even more without training.
But i never met someone who can do it tooI’m curious. We may need a demonstration.
i made a video now if you are interested. Its a bit longer than just the sound because i try to explain it and did not cut my awkward thinking out. You can skip a bit through it if you simply want to hear it like to 5 second before ending the video there is an easy to find one
https://clip.place/w/j4BBF9oFc2a3j7z1FryCUh (german peertube instance)
