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Synesthesia: What is it???

AuBurney Tuckerson

AuBurney Tuckerson

~GigglesTheAutisticHyena~
So I was looking on another autism site, and I found something called synethesia! It's when a person uses one of their five senses but experiences it as another. For example, people who smell colors often picture a color in their head when hey smell a certain scent. For example, the scent of barbeque is maroon or burgundy, but the odor of a fart is purple. B.O. is orange while the taste citrus is greenish to me. Whenever I'm excited to get or do something I really want, a gradient rainbow color appears in my head. Sometimes, if I inhale through my mouth and noise at the same time as well as smacking my lips, I can faintly taste the smell. That's why I often said that Cole slaw taste like the way garbage smells to me. It's listed as one of the sensory differences under autism here: Sensory differences - National Autistic Society
 
There are dozens of senses so the term "6th sense" is a bit redundant ;)
Synesthesia is not a sense in itself but a perceptual crossover. Senses can be linked so we experience more than one sense from a single stimulus. It can be very specific elements within that stimulus too. I have an auditory/visual crossover but it only applies to spoken words most of the time.
I wrote about it here:

Narrative: The World's Online Journal
 
I have Spacial sequence synesthesia, Auditory-tactile synesthesia, Misophonia, which is, basically, auditory-emotion synesthesia. I, also, experience the type of synesthesia that causes certain colors to affect appetite taste and olfactory senses, of which, I don't recall the name/term.
 
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I smell colors and just barely taste certain smells (like wood or cardboard, for example). So delicious! XD Ya, I'm weird. Deal with it! I can also see someone being tickled and feel it myself. Don't tickle someone in front of me, PLEASE!
 
I just recently learned about this, too! So interesting.

I have auditory tactile, auditory emotional, a kind of mirror touch, plus everything I see or feel has an associated sound. That's a lot of layers of information, no wonder I'm prone to sensory overload, haha! What's nuts is that it never occurred to me that this was at all strange, but every stimulus elicits a perception or association as dynamic and complex as the input that produced it. It's seamless and constant.

My brain just about exploded when I finally realized that this is not the average human sensory experience. I used to think I was just overly sensitive and couldn't handle what other people can (and I'd feel bad or embarrassed about it), but it turns out that sometimes I can't handle it because I'm constantly processing a massive amount of sensory information, way beyond what most folks deal with.

I certainly have a new level of appreciation for it all. ​
 
Are there any synesthetes out there? How would you describe your synesthesia to someone else and how do you use/find expression with it?
 
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