Synesthesia is when two senses combine with each other and form relationships. For example, I have the most common kind: grapheme-color synesthesia. Mine looks like this. The only one that’s supposed to be black is “1”. Otherwise, the ones in black have no color associated with them.
Me too! Haha your color palette is so grating because the colors are all wrong to me 😅 Interesting that some of them don’t have a color, is it really nothing at all or just not as strong of a connection?
Lol! They don’t really bring up an association for me. Letters like W, J, and L eventually did, but they’re still pretty dim compared to the others.
My wife does. Hers is super useful. She sees time/the calendar as kind of an oval floating in front of her vision. Makes it easy for her to keep track of sh*t all year long.
Also she can draw a word in the air and it glows if its spelled wrong. She won a lot of spelling bees in her youth, lol.
I have a similar thing for checking spelling! Don’t write it in the air, but if I need to figure out the spelling of something, I just write it down and see if the colors are right. Works better in my native language than in English, especially because for some words the colors are “right” for American spelling, and for others it’s the British…
Yeah, mine helps me, too! I use colored markers on the back of my cards when I need to remember the pin numbers. Since I have a horrible memory due to ADHD, depression, and anxiety, this is pretty much a life saver. Especially since my numbers all have unique colors. I’ve contemplated making my own font where each letter is just a square that’s colored, but letters like M, D, and B might get mixed up. I’d have to almost “refine” their colors if I want to be able to tell them apart. I was also pretty good at spelling. :) Maybe this thing is a mini superpower. lol
the first one is like what i have. spatial sequence synesthesia. it also manifests most strongly when imagining months of the year, but instead of an oval mine is kind of an arc that starts on the left and ends on the right, with a weird emphasis/broadness on april (my birth month)
I don’t know enough about this, but maybe? Ever since I could remember, days of the week each had a different color.
Monday - Pastel Blue
Tuesday - Pea green
Wednesday - Yellow
Thursday - Dark Green
Friday - Orange
Saturday - Green again but more washed out
Sunday - Red
Ah, yep! Forgot to mention those. Months, as well for me.
Monday is blue like the letter M and is feminine, and motherly. Tuesday is bright yellow, masculine, and kind of young. Wednesday is dark green and is a tomboy, no idea about age. Thursday is yellow-orange, masculine, and fatherly. Friday is bright orange, masculine, and young. Saturday, dark purple and an old grandma. Sunday is baby pink, gender neutral and 20ish years old.
January is a blueish purple, cold (obviously), is feminine, and tastes like grape. February is an orangeish pink, feminine again, and tastes like citrus. March is blue and masculine, and smells like leaves. April is red and yellow, feminine and has a flowery scent. May is blue and feminine, kind of shy. June is dark purple and orange, feminine, and quite lively. July is dark purple and pink and is like the twin to June, but toned down a bit. August is rust colored, masculine, old, and a bit mean. September is magenta, masculine, young, and rebellious. October is vivid orange (didn’t see that coming, did ya? lol), gender neutral, and fun-loving. November is the color of a schoolbus, and is masculine. It’s basically Thursday, but in month form. December is light pale blue, cold, masculine, and has a gentle authoritative air about him.
There’s an experiment you can give yourself at home to get a sense of what’s a normal association for sounds and shapes. For example, you have an oval and an 8 pointed star shape. One is named Kiki and the other Bob. Which is which?
It’s definitely Bob the oval and Kiki the star shape
Numbers and vowels have colors for me. 1 white-ish, 2 red, 3 yellow, 4 green, 5 brown, 6 dark red, 7 blue, 8 gold-white, 9 dark green, 0 black, A green, E orange, I white, O black, U brown, Y turquoise. Some consonants “feel” like they have color, but far less pronounced.
Also sounds have colors and shapes but that may just be association.
Edit: does synesthesia qualify as neurodivergence? Am I neurodivergent? What does this mean??
Oh I don’t know whether it counts as neurodivergent in the commonly understood way, but I wasn’t sure where else to post it. I’m new, so I don’t know all the communities on here yet.
I find it interesting how only vowels and numbers stick out to you! I hadn’t heard of that before.
I used to. I can’t remember the colours these days but as a kid they were really strong. Then over time it just faded.
The colours weren’t just associated with individual digits, weirdly. So 1 and 2 may have certain colours, yet 12 might be a completely different colour to either digit. I don’t remember words working this way though.
Yeah, some words and numbers do that to me, too, but I just ignore those. They don’t seem as special since there are only ten single digit numbers (including zero at least) and every other number combo is just 1/90 (or whatever the correct math is lol).
But the word “ice” for example, is why I colored the “i” in the picture cyan. But a standalone “I” as in “I went shopping” is yellow, like “c” or “p”. I have a bit of preference and have been trying to make my mind see every “i” as cyan because no other letter, number, day, or month is colored cyan. It would make that letter special. :) Also, in words like “picture” the “i” basically loses its color because “p” outshines it.
Huh, yeah I have that. Never really thought about it, though, since everyone around me has it too.
Days of the week:
- Monday - Red
- Tuesday - Orange
- Wednesday - Green
- Thursday - Blue
- Friday - Golden
- Saturday - Purple
- Sunday - Pastel Yellow
Numbers are in colour order from 1 to 4. 5 is pink. 7 is dark green, 8 is light green, 9 is indigo, and 0 is black.
Yeah I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal until late high school, when I asked my best friend what her color associations were, and she just didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
I don’t know to this day if I have Synesthesia, but some day as a small child I came to the conclusion that the numbers from 1 to 9 have “fitting” colours to them. It was somewhat based on the theory that the numbers that add to 10 have kind of “matching” colour combinations, but I can’t really remember any reasoning behind it.
- 1: Yellow
- 2: Pink
- 3: Orange
- 4: Blue
- 5: Black
- 6: Red
- 7: Dark green
- 8: Brown
- 9: Purple
These associations have stuck to me to this day, though.
Apparently for synesthetes, a few letters will likely have the same color association between people. I like the matching colors. :) So does zero not have a color for you?
I do! I’m honestly looking for a synesthesia community on here!
I do! I physically feel music. It’s like this tingly, pressure. Each song is different.
For me, absolutely everything has a color. Numbers, letters, sounds, days of the week, months… All of it. I didn’t know this wasn’t normal until I was well into my teens.