#tactile synesthete

[sounds-to-touch]

Sometimes I don't think about my audio tactile synaesthesia at all, for huge swathes of time.

But then I think about why it's so easy for me to identify specific voices in songs i like, and the closest word that comes to mind is texture.

I really do sort vocal sounds primarily by tactile means. When I'm certain I've identified a specific voice artist I'm thinking not about how it sounds, but about how that sound feels, physically, in my body.

[beatbawksradio]

🪞He Listens with his Body🪞

[celeluwhenfics]

Regarding our conversation about the fact you are synesthetic (which I find fascinating) do you think that this helps you when you write? I would imagine it helps with writing descriptions that are very evocative, which I find yours to be!

That is such an interesting question, and something I had never thought about before! Strap in, I’m gonna be talking about my own brain for a minute.

But first, what is synesthesia? Basically, it’s a particularity of some people’s brain, often associated with other forms of neurodivergence, where connections are made between senses and/or concepts, such as letters and colors, sounds and tactile sensations, etc. The wikipedia article is really interesting, and I happen to experience a good chunk of the combinations listed, especially when I’m relaxed and tired.

I’ve been thinking about it, and overall, I don’t think it helps me much when I write, because synesthetic associations are 1) deeply personal and 2) completely random.

Personal: There’s no better way for me to find another synesthete in the wild than to start listing my associations: A is magenta, B is burnt orange, C is deep blue, D is dark red, E is transparent white… (‘What do you mean?’, cries the newfound, sometimes self-unsuspecting synesthete from another room down the hallway, ‘D is pink, and E is dark green!’) Therefore, I’ve always been acutely aware that using these kinds of associations to convey something to my readers would be absurd and puzzling to most, and OUTRAGEOUS to those whose brain is creating equally vivid combinations of their own.

Random: the associations my brain makes between different stimuli are not rooted in reality or even in similarity. I once told a piano teacher that Haydn’s sonatas were like a vinaigrette with olive oil and lemon, and understandably, she went ‘???’. There’s a place of my face next to my nose that always brings the feel of a random intersection in the town where I grew up. Period pain is flat and round and orange with little holes in it. Also see this recent post of mine about how brushing my carpet reminded me of Éomer’s vibe. I just don’t share that often, because it makes no sense and it’s weird to describe. These kinds of very, very far-fetched metaphors could be a literary device in more modern poetry and fiction, and who knows, I might be interested in exploring that at some point in the future! But as I’m writing something that’s inspired by Austen and Tolkien, I’m not tempted to go that far when choosing comparisons and descriptions. (Austen’s language tends to be quite matter-of-fact, and Tolkien’s metaphors, STUNNING as they are, remain palpable and convey clear, familiar images to the reader.)

But maybe I relate intensely to ‘cultural synesthesia’, which is using cross-sensory comparisons to communicate something better, for example when we say that a sound is warm, or a taste is sharp, or a mood is dark.

Synesthesia is just one side of a very, very sensitive brain and nervous system of mine. Not only in that I get many stimuli through several channels at once because of synesthesia, but also my senses are unusually sensitive: in the past few weeks I’ve had both an audiologist testing my hearing and a dentist trying to freeze a tooth mutter ‘wtf’, and I spend my life in sunglasses, blue light blocking glasses, different kinds of earplugs and sound blocking headphones. Because otherwise the world is SHARP and BRIGHT and LOUD and OVERWHELMING.

Maybe that is what allows me to write what you described as evocative descriptions (thank you!!) : a very, very perceptive brain that feels everything and feels it A LOT, therefore it’s tangible to me when time comes to try and write descriptions.

Thank you for the ask, and for giving me the occasion to reflect and ramble on this subject!

[tripstitan]

Yee Gods Yes

Found this on Harvard Health while I was thinking up a reply to a post about which hypersensitivity a person has the most of. (Hint, for me, it's all. Tactile, light, sound, crowd-overstimulation... Every sense of mine is heightened except smell, which I do not have as a sense. I'm anosmic I think is the term.)

Holy hell that would have been useful when I was trying to "be normal" for most of my life, trying to act as if I were neurotypical and not disabled, trying to work within the bounds of society's expected rules. Way to go Harvard Health. This sorta stuff needs to be seen more often by more people, especially employers.

I don't even realize that I'm stimming when I have to "even out" the pressure on either sides of my cuticles. Like if my right thumb gets pressure along its left half, I have to tap/press the right half of the cuticle thingy in response. Sometimes I just have to hit both sides, then eventually, all my fingers need evening out on both sides of my nail(which, once I notice, can become a near endless spiral, because I use my other finger edges to even out the pressure on my other finger edges...)

Don't even get me started on how wearing denim feels like my flesh is on fire. (Tactile hypersensitivity + fibromialgia = NO JEANS PLEASE.)

I used to be more heavily synesthetic, or have synesthesia to a higher degree. (Maybe I still do, but I've avoided the main triggers for a long, long time.) To me, voices and sounds have/had flavor. Too many voices/too much sound ends up just tasting like vomit, just nasty worst flavors combined coming to the fore. Yuck. Crowds suck. School assemblies SUUUUUUUCKED. I know I was a weird creepy kid, and the few things I remember from my past (yay trauma blanking out memories for me,) I'm pretty regretful of. I was sheltered, and I was an idiot... but I... anyway, let's just say I'm glad I'm in a position in life where if I don't want to, I'll never have to enter a crowded/loud space ever again.

As far as sound, and/or light, it depends on the day, because I do get photosensitive migraines, but I'm hyperaural/hyperaudiosensitive all the time. Depending on how I focus my ears, I can hear things, usually further away things, more clearly. It feels like I'm turning an internal radar dish in a crowded room, picking up other people's conversations, unable to hear the person right next to me trying to speak over the noise. ... I can also hear the thrum of electricity in power lines, and, with enough familiarity, can tell you whether or not someone has more appliances running than normal at the end of a segment of power lines. (I could always tell if dad was watching TV before I made it the 200 yards home down our long-arse dirt driveway basically out in the woods, based on the static hum in the power lines. It was just a tiny bit more audible, or a slightly different pitch. I think I probably could have also learned to guess if he'd opened the fridge and it had to kick in to cool things, or was using the microwave, but the easiest one to prove was the TV being on, or not, as based on the sound when I arrived home from school.)

Sarcasm suuuuuucks to try to detect. I trained myself to learn inflections and so on, and some people deliver without inflection! Or use it online, where there is no inflection! I... yeah I went undiagnosed most of my life, my therapist and I are proud of how far I'd come without help, without even knowing what I was facing. I grew up pretty poor, raised by a single parent, in the 80s and early 90s into late nineties and early 2000s, before there really was a ubiquity of internet access, before anyone could even reasonably be expected to have access to information, especially when living in such a rural area, or areas, as we did.

Anyway, sort of like Ren's admission in Hi Ren, as I got older, I learned to be less rigid about attempting to fit into society, and I honestly lucked out by landing on my feet in the way that I did. It was a pretty long, multi-year fall, a tumble if you will, to the outskirts and edges of society. Not quite as graceful or eloquent as Ren's "an eternal dance, a pendulum swinging between the light and the dark, and that the harder the light shone, the deeper the darkness that followed it" or such. I'm paraphrasing. (Seriously, if you haven't watched it, Hi Ren puts a lot of feelings to words that peeps in our situations feel and deal with. Impostor syndrome, depression, intrusive thoughts, struggling with disabilities and getting the help we need, and so on. I guess content warning for it, since it's pretty personal and deep. I dunno what TW to say, maybe uh... bpd? Ren acts out two different internal voices in the song.)

Gods, I'm letting all this stuff get way too personal. It's just supposed to be my webnovel ad blog thingy. Then again, AAoMM is a huge part of me, it's a chunk of almost everything that I am, in a lot of ways. It's already pretty darn personal, carrying so much of me with it.

[tripstitan]

For me, probably sound, people, and texture are tied. Oral texture/mouth feel has led to me having pretty terrible neck pain, because my tongue is always fishing around in my mouth, trying to even out my teeth, and clean them off, so that they feel exactly as they should, at all times. It's like I'm brushing my teeth with my tongue every minute of the day, and that pulls on various muscles in my neck. But then again, tactile texture of things like denim, or crappy upholstery fabric are SO BAD that my fibromialgia can flare up and feel like my flesh is burning away. But also then again, again, too many people causes me to mind blank a few times to get my tasks done. Like I have to dissociate to even function to do things around too many people. And of course, crowd noise tastes like vomit, yuck, too many sounds, triggering too many synesthetic tastes.

I don't have to worry about scents/smells, I'm anosmic. I've been grateful for this on occasion (trips to dumps, cleaning out people's homes who've left them filthy, a few things.)

It’s definitely sound for me. As always reblog for a bigger sample size please!

[commaiscomma]

WIPs :3

I’m currently working on a watercolor project which explores synesthetic perception. My synesthesia manifests as an overlapping of auditory, visual, tactile, and emotional senses. This project seeks to articulate these sensations, and to explore the textural elements of wet-on-wet techniques.

In the Orange piece (top) I'm having a lot of fun trying to make the anatomical forms seem accidental + blend in with the texture of the paint! :D

[the-wizard-zietgiest]

2023-05-25

Finally tried jhana meditation and it’s all it’s cracked up to be. Initially decided to investigate based on recommendation from [C.Q.AGE.], found general information online. Of interest, a practitioner in thailand, who goes by [RDCT] and makes some interesting claims.

This is a report of two separate sessions, [S.20230524] and [S.20230525].

SESSION 1 -

Time: 2023-05-24 1205h

After the point in entry level meditation where the breath becomes very shallow and infrequent, I shifted my attention to a pleasant sensation in my hands, as per traditional first-time instructions. I payed attention to the pleasant quality of the pleasant sensation. After long conversations with [C.Q.AGE] and [C.Q.NC] it has become clear to me that qualia, or the specific individual qualities of qualitative conscious experiences, is the vast depth that must be plumbed if a world free from suffering is to be created. The claim that specific subjective conscious states have objective mathematical descriptions carries the implication that with the right technique a mathematical description of a conscious state may someday be imported to an experiential consciousness.

Leaving aside for now the “mathematical description” portion, one can easily see why jhana practice is spoken of by Gautama Buddha as a necessary companion to insight meditation, or vipassanabhavana. Jhana practice produces extraordinary states of consciousness in a predictable and linear way, and does so without the confounding variables of psychoactive substances or group settings. It is by studying, or meditating on the experiences produced by these states that one gains insight into the nature of reality and consciousness. This insight is what will eventually allow the creation of the aforementioned mathematical descriptions of conscious states.

But enough discussion of the future, let us return to the session at hand:

In this session the sensation of piti was clearly experienced and was present in fluctuating intensity, but did not seem to reach a critical point or point of total saturation with piti. Because of this, I cannot claim to have experienced in full the 1st jhana, but I have seen enough to know that the 1st jhana can be achieved, which leads me to suspect the other jhanas may likewise be achievable for me. This possibility excites me.

As Ram Dass would say, “You don’t worship the gate, you go into the inner temple.”

“Ah, so. Ah, so.”

[technical notes and session description elsewhere]

SESSION 2 -

Time: 2023-05-25 2130h

Session 2 was performed at my place of work, quite late into the evening. I found an empty conference room and set a timer for 26 minutes. I was able to sense the nested toroidal structure of energy around my body, but again found that the degree to which i was able to experience that sensation, whatever it was [the experience being described here took quite some time to articulate in the author’s handwritten notes, but essentially what is being described is a visual synesthetic representation of a tactile experience of some high-charge electromagnetic field permeating the body, similar to static electricity but produced bio-electrically] fluctuated throughout the session but did not reach a peak or total saturation point. I’ve attempted a few drawings of the visual stimuli but will need repeat sessions to correctly draw it.

Again, the sensation of piti came and went in waves, but the waves had higher peaks, and it did feel at many points as though a critical point or point of saturation was just over the horizon. Even so, the sensation of piti was quite intense and present for much of the meditation period. The experience was intensely positive, high valence, and medium arousal. OF NOTE, upon returning to normal consciousness I found my body moving fluidly and feeling painless, energized, and limber, even though prior to the session I had been on my feet working in a high-stress environment for quite some time.

[technical notes and session description elsewhere]

[synesthete-culture-is]

About Synesthesia

For anybody who wants to know more or who has just started learning!

What is synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sense activates a response in another sense. In simpler terms, it basically means that two or more senses can be connected, leading a synesthete (person with synesthesia) to associate senses that others probably don't associate!

As an example: my synesthesia connects my sense of hearing to my sense of sight. Whenever I listen to music, I associate colors and images with the sounds I'm hearing.

Estimates on how much of the population has synesthesia varies - as few as 1% or as many as 10% of the global population could have synesthesia. We just don't know.

What kinds of synesthesia are there?

Here are some (but certainly not all) types of synesthesia.

Grapheme-Color Synesthesia: individuals with this type of synesthesia associate colors (and sometimes textures!) with written symbols, such as letters and numbers. A lot of grapheme-color synesthetes, for example, associate the letters of the Roman alphabet with different colors! (Note that such synesthetes can also associate the same colors with different letters/numbers/symbols. It varies wildly from person to person!)

Chromesthesia: this type of synesthete associates sounds with colors and/or images (or abstract visualizations). Some chromesthetes may see colors when they listen to music, and the colors depend on the varying aspects of the music they listen to. Some see moving images or patterns when listening to music as well. Still others may associate colors and/or images when hearing everyday sounds, such as people's voices or the creaking of a staircase! This type of synesthesia can often result in hearing sensitivity for those who have it - Misophonia is thought to potentially be connected to synesthesia.

Spatial-Sequence Synesthesia: this type of synesthesia affects how people see certain sequences, such sequences being numbers, the alphabet, the months of the year, the days of the week, a timeline, etcetera. Spatial sequence synesthetes see or imagine these sequences in the physical space surrounding them; as an example, one might see the months of the year as a spiral that surrounds their body, or physically picture the number line when doing math (this specifically is also known as Number Form Synesthesia). Again, it all depends on the person!

Auditory-Tactile Synesthesia: with this type, the synesthete experiences physical sensations in their body when certain sounds are heard. These sounds could be music and/or everyday sounds. As an example, an auditory-tactile synesthete may experience fluttering sensations on their scalp when listening to music, or they may feel as if they are being touched when surrounded by sounds in public locations.

Ordinal Linguistic Personification: this type of synesthete will associate ordered sequences (numbers, letters, months, etc) with genders and/or personalities. For instance, they might think of the number 2 as a short-tempered man, or otherwise associate letters and numbers with human traits!

Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia: with this type of synesthesia, one experiences tastes in association with certain words. For example, this kind of synesthete might experience the word "experience" as lemon flavored, and otherwise associate tastes with specific words! (Note that the experienced tastes don't always correspond to tastes that exist in real life. A word might have a distinct taste, but a taste that cannot necessarily be connected to any food or other taste that actually exists.)

Mirror-Touch Synesthesia: synesthetes with this type of synesthesia will physically feel the touches that they witness other people experiencing. A mirror-touch synesthete may see someone getting tapped on the shoulder, for example, and feel that shoulder-tap themself, even though no one has physically touched them. (This has the potential to be painful, however, if the synesthete witnesses the physical pain of another person.)

Awesome, right? In many cases, yes! Having synesthesia provides a unique and often beautiful experience to the synesthete. However, there can be negative effects. A grapheme-color synesthete may have trouble focusing on reading due to the varied coloration of the letters they see, or have trouble with numbers for the same reason. A chromesthete may experience sensory overload much faster due to intense visualization of sound. While synesthesia can be very positive, it's also important to recognize that it can be disadvantageous in certain situations.

Now, onto the last section:

Associative Vs. Projective Synesthesia

In general, there are two ways to experience synesthesia.

Projective Synesthesia: this is probably the most well-known conception of synesthesia. Projective synesthetes physically experience their synesthesic associations. For instance, a projective grapheme-color synesthete will actually see the alphabet with the colors that they associate with letters!

Associative Synesthesia: but projective synesthesia isn't the only way of having synesthesia. Associative synesthetes intrinsically know that their associations exist, but they do not physically experience them. A grapheme-color synesthete may know that the letter E is yellow, but they will not actually see the letter E as yellow. An associative chromesthete may know that a certain song is purple, but they will not physically see purple; they will simply have the instant and internal knowledge that the song is purple.

This concludes my synesthesia post! I hope it's helpful to anyone who reads it, and I hope that you, dear reader, have an excellent day / night / whatever time it may be.

[4eternal-life]

Zhong Lin has an otherworldly ability to create something like synesthetic images: her sensuous, vibrant photographs have almost a tactile quality to them, you can feel the texture just by gazing, you can almost smell them. The confluence of different cultures and aesthetics shines through her imagery, from the Red of the Chines opera, to the vibrancy of Malaysia... https://www.vogue.com/article/zhong-lin

Zhong Lin

[lemonwhorror]

Are there any other synesthetes who thought everyone experienced the same thing? I didn't find out it wasn't the norm until highschool when I asked my dad what color this one sound was to him and he was like "da faq u mean?"

[dopamine-and-melatonin]

Y'all, where're all the folks that have synesthesia that has nothing to do with colors. I know y'all are out there because I am one.

I feel sounds all around my body and some of them have temperatures. And looking at y'all argue about the colors of words, letters, and characters I have nothing to add. I can however say that I feel the screechy sound of styrofoam in my mouth, throat, and teeth and I avoid it like the plague for that reason. Also mirror-touch synesthesia is weird and is probably something a lot of people experience without realizing it.

[lesbianologist]

i created a playlist that specifically induces my synesthesia (mostly my auditory-tactile) so i can get free serotonin/dopamine/whatever drug that is pushed naturally through my system when i experience the euphoric aspect of my synesthesia.

[androidboy]

im learning so much abt my synesthesia tonight. apparently i’m a triple threat and visualizing/ feeling texture is NOT a part of my auditory-tactile but is a separate sound-texture synesthesia that can happen in conjunction to mine AND me physically needing to move when listening to music as in it feels like a compulsion or tic that needs focused attention to stop is a phenomena not officially named but currently thought to happen only to auditory-tactile synesthetes called auditory-motor synesthesia

[sollucets]

five favorite fics

i.... do not love complimenting myself. but for you @calicostorms i will try. it’s probably good for me. another thing i’m bad at doing is tagging people; please feel free to if you see this

mind in the moment

this was the first redacted fic i posted & i still think it’s my best one. there are some things i would edit in there now if i could but i think it hits the Correct Emotional Beats. i made it because i so badly wanted sam catharsis after inversion; i just wanted to tell him to take a break, to let him be vulnerable & slow down, and it worked! so that’s nice. also important to me because posting it multiple times and reading people’s comments gave me the courage to post my backlog & publish more when i fully Never Have before. it was the beginning of these wild few months, and now i’m, [waves arms wildly] here! so. that’s my paragraph about that. the other entries will be shorter

refractions

very self-indulgent content that other people liked too, which is always good. i love Yearning, and i love monterey, and i love gavin/freelancer. i think there are some clumsily phrased bits of this, but i like it (’:

synesthete

i had a lot of fun trying to tactile-ly describe emotions and i will force my “cay-cay” agenda if it’s the last thing i do

bring me a dream

yes i know this is my newest one but it’s... nice. i posted a lot about this today already, so i’m gonna shut up

painkiller

this is my most kudos-ed fic on ao3, which was really surprising to me. it was very easy to write (only took like two days versus my usual output); i love writing geordi hehe. i’m very glad the formatting went over well! also one of my fic pleasures is to take a problem i have and fix it with magic, and when u can do it with a forehead kiss,,, simply why not

also....

i understand this tag was meant to be about my fics but i would like to add that my actual five favorite redacted fics are ej’s fuck up the friendship, domini’s why the duck, evilbunny’s old number seven, my friend misuaki’s “won’t let you out of my sight (even when you’re sleeping)”, and sealy’s “commit it to memory”

[winterandwords]

Hello! Are you a synesthete? I have lexical-gustatory synesthesia.

Hello! Yes!! Aaaah, I love running into other people with crossed brainwires :-) I have conceptual and audio-tactile synesthesia. I also sometimes perceive colour in non-colour things, often related to the other they appear in a list. The first thing in a list is mostly red with a bit of green, the second one is blue and yellow, the third is mostly green with a bit of orange, the fourth is orange.

I also get taste and mouthfeel from looking at things, but it absolutely horrifies me to the point where I've put a lot of effort into trying to switch it off. There are certain insects I still can't look at because I automatically feel like I'm biting into them >.<

I'm totally fascinated by how this stuff connects to other weird brain things. I have an internal whiteboard (not sure how else to describe it) so if I'm doing complex things, I can 'write' part of it on that and come back to it later so I don't need to remember it while I'm figuring out something else. I was the "No, you have to show your working out" person in maths class at school.

The internal whiteboard can also be a calendar, a filing system, or notes I've made. I don't have a photographic memory as such, but I can kind of snapshot things like pages of textbook and remember where different bits of information were on the page.

I've always assumed those things are related, but I also assumed everyone's brain worked like that until well into adulthood, so I'm still discovering.