Synesthesia as something negative?

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For me I assign gender and personalities to numbers. For example 1,3,5,6,9 are all male. 2,4,7,8 are female. 1 is the son of 2 and 3-who are married to each other. 5 is middle aged and single. 6 is in his mid 20's. 7 is in her 40's and 8 is in her 50's they are friends. 9 is 8's son or that's the type of relationship they have with each other.

I've thought this way since I was very young, like 8 or so.

btw I'm NT

I'm curious about something. Do you 'visualize' numbers as a particular gender and personality? or is it strictly an assignment or association of certain numbers to a particular gender or personality ?

I'm not surprized Both Autistics and Non-Autistics can have synesthesia.

Number>Gender Synesthesia
Number>Personality Synesthesia
or Number>Gender/Personality Synesthesia


TheSunAlsoRises

That isnt synthesisia. Nor is really what Daniel tammett describes. Which is association. Many languages have the concept of gender, so this third piece of information is quite common. I think Daniel tammett is unusual is he can store quite a few different associations simultaneously with excellent recall.

I've only experienced it once, confusing cold for wet. Maybe sometimes light and heat. It's pretty dull and confusing really, particularly if you think you've wet yourself in public.

Jason.

The sounds and sensations from writing with a pencil feels like having rough metal scraped across my bare skeleton.

The same with opening freezer drawers.

Unwanted human voices can sometimes feel like being raped, with their vocal chords vibrating through my guts and slithering around in there. It makes me want to disembowel myself just to get the feeling out. Can't have something in your insides if you have no insides, right?

Feeling sounds is almost never pleasant, with the exception of some kinds of music at the right time, but I'd hardly call it fair compensation.

If I hear one more ad on here.

It's called Ordinal-linguistic personification and yes it is a form of synesthesia. Maybe it isn't the kind everyone was thinking of, but it is a form of it.

I think I probably have it, the type where some letters and numbers have colors. I think of it as neutral, it doesn't cause too much of a distraction, but it doesn't really help remembering stuff or anything else people have said.

TheSunAlsoRises-

They have gender assignment as well as personalities. So:

Number>Gender/Personality Synesthesia

It's always been both. Never thought of separating the two!

Mine is always pleasant and positive, seeing colors and shapes when listening to music. It's almost like having a built-in visualizer!

That's synaesthesia. It seems numbers have personalities to you.

As for bad synaesthesia experiences, I have many.

My heightened hypersensitivity to begin with ever since I developed seizures my synaesthesia has become stronger.
I have a scent memory synaesthesia which can make me smell things like cigarettes or diesel fuel.
But then if I think 'bananas, strawberries or pumpkin' I can smell something like that, or a combination of those things.
Lately after I cleaned up a whole lot of dog pee in the kitchen every time I see a stack of messy dishes I smell the dog pee.
Worse is when I get changed in the bathroom I can smell sweaty jeans even after I put on a clean pair fresh from the clothes line. And thinking I can smell my BO but when I smell closer - I can smell nothing!
People think I'm being ridiculous when I say I can smell memories.

When words trigger smells it can be very unpleasant but I think the worse part is their link with seizures. I have temporal lobe epilepsy and see/hear all sort of crazy stuff but I still have the usual colour grapheme and scent memory type. And the days/weeks/months having a location in time thing.

Certain songs make me smell smoke machines. Actually just mentioning smoke machines makes me smell smoke machines.

Depends what the music is for me to see shapes and colours. If I hear a song that I've watched live I'm brought right back there, very vividly.
Psychedelic music gives me vertigo. Not sure if it's related to synaesthesia or more my hypersensitivity to sound. Or the TLE.

Actually the last concert I went to Rocky Erickson played and he was dubbed 'the godfather of psychedelic rock.' I thought my heart was going to explode.

Fascinating.


TheSunAlsoRises

I believe you. When you're talking about cross activation of different brain regions, the multitude of ways in which synesthesia can expresses itself are vast.

TheSunAlsoRises

I generally associate odd numbers, minor notes, warm colors, and an alkaline, or acid flavor. I don't usually actually physically experience the sensations though. If I really get into some music, if I close my eyes and focus, I am sometimes able to get visuals. Generally, the better my brain is working, such as when I am not depressed, the stronger the concepts of the sensations become, at which point they are able to verge on synethesia.

I'm a bit curious about something in regards to your post.

Would you say, your synesthesia is completely involuntary and automatic OR do you have some control, over It ?

TheSunAlsoRises

I have some control. It's subtle, but I am able to cultivate it over time. If I don't have an associated sense in one area, I ask myself, IF this number or sound or whatever had a color or texture, or whatever, what would it be? Then I focus on the sensation rather than the overall meaning. It starts out as a vague association. The line where it becomes an actual definable sensation is blurry, but it's rare that I've had it cross over completely into an actual sensation.

I think the ability to control and cultivate(as you described above) synesthesia may be more common than currently believed. Also, there are other key points and additional criteria that would be interesting to look in to.


*Referenced Wikipedia

*However, despite the differences between individuals, there are a few common elements that define a true synesthetic experience.

Neurologist Richard Cytowic identifies the following diagnostic criteria of synesthesia:

1. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.
2. Synesthetic perceptions are spatially extended, meaning they often have a sense of "location." For example, synesthetes speak of "looking at" or "going to" a particular place to attend to the experience.
3. Synesthetic percepts are consistent and generic (i.e., simple rather than pictorial).
4. Synesthesia is highly memorable.
5. Synesthesia is laden with affect.

TheSunAlsoRises