Synesthesia, does it look like this?

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I relate to this image.

In my mind's eye, there is something akin to a flyspeck, on a window. There is dust and smudges on a pair of work goggles.

And, it is up to me, whether I focus on this, or look around.

As this is somewhat along the lines of hypnopompic/hypnagogic imagery, I am perhaps engaging in a form of voluntary biofeedback.

For me, it might just be an odd, mental habit, and not a pathology.

Like the use of a house or a place as a mnemonic device.

imho, it is an order, not a disorder. It is association, not dissociation. Because, you can be oriented, functional, and retrieve useful information.

Baron-Cohen S, Johnson D, Asher J, Wheelwright S, Fisher SE, Gregerson PK, Allison C, collaborated on the article "Is synaesthesia more common in autism?", in the journal Molecular Autism, 20 November 2013- and concluded that it was indeed more common in those on the spectrum.

I still have never met anybody else who had my kind of clock/face synesthesia or whatever it is.

Not always. It doesn't have only advantages. For me personally, synesthesia also means more sensory overload, attention deficit, specific learning difficulties, and is a symptom of a disorder. I'm on disability and I don't know if I'll ever manage to get a job, I also can't be fully autonomous without specific help. The synesthetic perceptions and help for memory are fantastic, but globally, it's much more of a curse to me, not a gift. I guess that moderate synesthesia is a gift, but trust me, no one wants to get the extreme version of it. I'd happily give up on anything including synesthesia in order to be NT if it were possible.

I think an extreme version of synesthesia would seem like schizophrenia.

But, I don't have perceptions like that, unless I am fixating on them.

For that matter, NT people might call it a sort of meditative state.

Yup, I didn't realise it was a thing until I read more about this over the past few days, but I have this: I see months in a coloured ring and years in a kind of a tie-bow shaped envelope. The week in an arrangement of blocks like a chocolate bar, with different squares, and black box around the weekend. But for time like hours/minutes, I've got nothing at all, I can imagine how people can represent them, but for me I just draw a total blank.


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Unreleated question: I seem to have vision-sound as one of my crossovers -- I've been through papers and books on synesthesia over the past few days but still haven't seen anything like this:

Does anyone else hear a change in tone when they focus their attention on something?

My vision causes certain whines and sounds. One of which seems to happen when I'm focused on the specific thing that I want to look at - like I'm hearing a feedback signal saying my eyes are locked on. Like when I saccade while reading I've always heard a eep *...* eep *...* eep, the tone comes as I land on a word, it goes silent during the saccade movement.

when I look at a word I hear it pronounced in a neutral accent.

Since about age 16 or 17 years, my characteristics which are related to synesthesia have occasionally included the perception of seeing and hearing the word “blue” when writing or reading the number “2,” the lower-case letters “b” and “d,” and the upper-case letter “L.” The trigger number and letters remain the color as I have written or read them, but they initiate a perceived animated visual sequence involving peripersonal space, color, sound, motion and emotion qualia.

When I write or, less frequently, read the trigger number and letters sometimes, I perceive reading the word “BLUE” portrayed as 12-inch tall, bright-blue neon, upper-case letters surmounting a black background. The word moves toward me from a distance of about 10 feet from me and, when it moves to a distance of about two feet from me, it dissipates quickly into a mist which passes around and beyond me. As the word image moves toward me, I perceive the word “blue” spoken in a man’s voice (probably my own voice), and the experience concludes with a slight tingling sensation which is enjoyable and humorous to me every time. The experience is about three seconds in duration.

So, the synesthetic qualia appear to involve variations of sequence-space synesthesia, grapheme-color synesthesia, chromesthesia and, possibly, ordinal-linguistic personification and auditory-tactile synesthesia.

This experience is usually triggered when I write by hand. As is the case with synesthesia, I have, with very little success, tried to induce them by intentionally writing or reading the trigger number and letters. Attempts to induce the experience result in a chill or shiver. Also, the experience has faded somewhat in recent years (possibly as a result of my reduced handwriting and increased keyboarding).

Would that be a Swiss accent, or a DMZ Korean accent?

like the phone directory assistance accent.

Cool! You have your own Siri in your mind!

only mine is nicer actually it is a mixture of feminine and masculine/old and young voices.

I notice that in language, there's a tendency to use words from one sense to describe a different sense. Like "tone color", "a bitter remark", "sweet and kind", "loud colors". Could this be the result of synesthesia?

it could just be, that it is not a matter of yes/no in terms of having synesthesia or not, but of %. IOW we all have it but most of us have only a small mostly inconspicuous % of it, enough to be able to grok the concepts of synesthesia, only a few lucky gifted ones actually have major crosstalk between the senses that lets them experience the quasi-acid trip senses.

I have a problem, with calling it a disturbance or extra sensory perception, if the same impressions are recognizable to different people. It's part of a logical, consistent process.