"Feeling" different colors of tiles?

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I don't really know how to explain this but I'll try.

Since I was a kid I've had issues with stepping on floor tiles of differet colors. Some grocery stores, hospitals, offices, schools, and other places that use tile like to use a variety of colors to create patterns on the floor. My problem is that I can "feel" it when I step on the "wrong" color tile. So if the main flooring is white and there's gray accent tiles, for example, I get a weird, almost painful heaviness in the foot that touches the gray flooring. I'm not sure how else to explain it. I guess it's a bit like stamping one foot on the ground and not the other. The foot you stamped doesn't feel the same as the foot that wasn't. (I am so bad at explaining things holy gosh)

This also happens with cracks in sidewalks, lines painted in parking lots, and the darned tactile paving at crosswalks. But all of those are actual physical differences, whereas the tiles are literally identical apart from their colors. I shouldn't "feel" a difference, but I do.

I was just wondering if anyone experienced anything remotely similar to this or if I'm just (dare I say it?) weird.

It sounds like you may have synesthesia. It's a unique neurological condition that can make you hear colors, taste sounds, feel colors, etc. Basically, it causes you to sense certain things very differently. This condition can occur in some individuals on the autism spectrum.

I don't have this feeling anymore, but I count the number of tiles on the floor and steps on a stairwell and step on only the even numbered ones.

Does the "stepping on only an even number of tiles" ritual interfere with your life? Is it triggered by anxiety? Is it an obsessive thought that won't go away until you step on even numbered tiles?

According to statistics, it occurs in about 4% of the human population.

I'm only just learning about synesthesia, and it's amazing to me because for years I couldn't understand what was going on with my niece.

She is my sister's eldest daughter. I don't know if she can still do this now because we are estranged many years now. But when my niece was a child, she could feel colors with her fingers!

I swear on all that's dear to me. I don't know how we stumbled across this, but it turned into quite the party trick. We could hold her eyes so she definitely couldn't couldn't see anything, someone placed a colorful magazine in front of her, and guided her fingertips across different areas of a photograph in the magazine. She would announce without hesitation "Red" on a red dress, "Blue" on an area of blue sky, etc. There was no way she could see with her eyes, we made sure.

I could never understand what on earth was going on there until I learned about the phenomenon of synesthesia. It's intriguing. Her physical fingertips could "see" or feel the colors.

For what it's worth -- which I realize is basically zero -- in my opinion I've also wondered if my niece is on the spectrum, for other reasons. She displayed what only now I know to be spectrum behavior all her life that I knew her.

I know that I have ordinal linguistic personification synesthesia. That's the boring one that no one ever talks about. I associate numbers, letters, months, days of the week, school subjects, etc. with personalities and colors.

Is it synesthesia if I'm not actually feeling the colors themselves? Because my issue is just with the less-dominate color of tiles in a space, regardless of what the color actually is. I get the same feeling when stepping on a blue tile in a predominantly red tiled area as I would stepping on a red tile in a predominantly blue tiled area. There's not a unique feeling that each color gives.

@PastIsPrologue
So you have ASSOCIATIONS of terms or words/letters with colors and personalities, but you don't have any unique sensory responses to them? Then that's most likely not synesthesia. But it's not JUST about feeling. It of course CAN be but if you could smell, taste, or hear the terms or words/letters whenever you SEE them then that probably ALSO indicates synesthesia.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying that your issue is with less-dominate colored tiles in a space. Could you explain what that issue specifically is? Do you get anxiety when seeing less-dominate colored tiles?

Ordinal linguistic personification is listed as a type of synesthesia, though? Everything I've read on the subject says there's projecting and associative types of synesthesia. That's not really the point to this thread, though.

I don't think my tile issue is synesthesia because, as I said before, I don't get specific feelings from specific colors. It'd be synesthesia if I tasted metal when I touched red or heard trumpets when I touched blue or felt happy when I touched yellow, or whatever. I don't have specific sensory responses to each color I step on.

As I said before, I just feel a sort of heaviness in the foot that touches the least occurring color tile in a space.

So if I'm walking down a hallway that is uniform in color, I'm fine. My kitchen, for example, uses the same color linoleum throughout. I don't feel any differences no matter where i step.

At school, however, there is one hallway that is predominantly black tile, but every three tiles are white. So the hallway is mostly black tile except for those few white accent tiles. If I step on a white tile (the less dominant color in the space), I get that weird, heavy, sometimes painful feeling in the foot that steps on it. It's not anxiety, it's physical pain. I does not matter if that accent tile is white, gray, blue, or whatever. I'd still feel the same discomfort. I don't know how else to explain it.

Oh...okay. I'm not sure what that is then, PastIsPrologue. A heaviness in the foot when stepping on a colored tile that's not the same color as the majority of the tiles inside of a hallway....hmmmmm...it could be something related to synesthesia if not synesthesia but I don't know what it'd be called. That's interesting.