Hello everyone! I decided that it was time to make a post about my synesthesia types. Many synesthetes will have many types of synesthesia, and I am one of them! I have 5 types (that I know of) (EDIT) : I have discovered that I have 6 (SECOND EDIT) : I may have a 7th type (THIRD EDIT) : I have a 8th type (FOURTH EDIT): I have 9 types , and some of them are weaker than the others. I don’t know if I have others, since I only just discovered I have synesthesia about nine or ten days ago. I won’t write too much about my types, since I will be doing separate posts for pretty much every type of synesthesia and I’ll explain them more in depth later.
Grapheme-color (numbers-colors, letters-colors)
My grapheme-color synesthesia is probably my weakest type. Only 7 letters have colors, and only the numbers 0 to 9, and 17 have a color. For the other numbers, they have a color, but I need to focus to pinpoint them. As you can see for my letters, they have kind of weird colors (the letter m isn’t that exact shade, and the c has a bit more of a turquoise tint to it). My z is kind of like a ‘moving’ rainbow. My numbers can be yellow, white or a dark blue.
Spatial sequence (days of the week, dates and memories)
My spatial sequence is with the days of the week, but also the way I remember my memories. It’s as if I’m… reaching into files that are interconnected… I’ll ‘jump’ from memory to memory… like actually jump in my head. All the memories (and years and dates I have to remember for history) are connected in some tiny way that only makes sense to me, and that has always helped me remember things.
Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP) (numbers-personalities)
Pretty much every number has a personality, although most of them are really ‘faint’. And my personalities are simple; the numbers are either neutral, good or bad. They have some ‘degrees’ of good or bad, for example 7 is a really bad number, any irrational number too. 17 is the best, and that makes it my favorite number. None of my letters have personalities.
Mirror-touch (touch, pain and emotions)
My mirror-touch synesthesia, even though it’s a bit weak, it’s way more present in my life, and I now notice it way more. When somebody gets touched, I can feel kind of a tickle. Sometimes I won’t notice it, since it’s a part of my life. When I’m watching a horror movie (I only watched one in all my life and HATED it), I’m always so tense sand I don’t feel good at all. When somebody gets hurt, I’ll feel an extreme discomfort in that place in my body, and I noticed that I always need to shake it to get the feeling out of my body. Mirro-touch also affects my empathy. I always over-empathize! It’s just ridicule!
Ticker-tape (English and French)
Even though it sounds weird, Ticker-tape synesthesia is actually my ‘favorite’ synesthesia. And, it’s also my ‘strongest’. I love it, since it helps me remember things better. Since it’s a rare type of synesthesia, it’s not really well know. Well, basically, when somebody talks, I see ‘subtitles’ of the words they are speaking. It can get annoying when either I just don’t want to listen to someone, or that TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE TALKING AT THE SAME TIME. When too many people are talking at the same time, I’m like : asdfghjkl; and my ticker-tape goes WILD, and I have a hard time concentrating on one of the conversations.
I love my synesthesia. Pretty much any synesthete will tell you that. It can sometimes bug me a little, but most of the time, it helps me! I wish everyone could experience it!
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below!
(EDIT): I have discovered that I have a sixth type of synesthesia; mirror-emotion. It’s similar to mirror-touch, except… you guessed it…. with emotions! I’d say this type is as strong, if not stronger, than my ticker-tape synesthesia.
(SECOND EDIT) : New type : Mirror-sound.
(THIRD EDIT) : ANOTHER new type : Mirror-kinetics
(FOURTH EDIT) : I have nine types, since mirror-touch and mirror-pain aren’t the same
Synesthesia & Such 
I’m loving this blog! I’m trying to imagine ticker-tape in a crowded room — if you can’t pick out all of the conversations, you just see a massive jumble of letters? Ugh. How exhausting. For your mirror-touch, do you have to be (this makes sense, but I want to be sure, so I’m asking) looking at the person in order to feel their sensations? Is it all tactile and emotion, or can you feel if someone is, say, nauseous, too?
Hi Denise! Thank you!
Oh yes, when there are many people in a room, it gets overwhelming, and I just see random words as I hear them, so I really don’t like crowds,
For the mirror-touch, I pretty much have to look at the person, or read about it. For emotions, I have mirror-emotion too, which is like super-epic-empathy,
Are you a synesthete too?
Denise,
I also have TT (extremely strong), sound to color/shape/texture (very strong), grapheme to color (strong for whole words/names, weaker for individual letters/numbers), mirror touch (very strong)., OLP (weak though – limited to good/bad/neutral like you – they don’t have full personalities 😉 and spatial sequence (very strong).
Several interesting notes:
1.) My SS calendar for the week is similar to yours, but not arched as much, but completely reversed (i.e., Monday is always on my far right, Sunday is on my far left, the rest of the week arches in between, from right to left. Each day also has a tinge of color associated with it (Friday is yellowish, Monday is bluish). I found it interesting that your calendar is left to right…..How about your annual calendar? Again, for me, right to left, with January on my far right and December on my far left, and again, each month has a shade of color (October is brown, April is light tangerine color, September is rusty red, etc.
2.) Ticker Tape – I know what you mean about too much interference! Do you ever find yourself closing your eyes when talking in a serious conversation with someone? I realized a long time ago that I naturally do that. It was brought to my attention a couple times by people who were like “Why are you closing your eyes?!” (I suppose other people were too polite to mention). Once it was brought to my attention (most notably once by my boss) I started working NOT to do that, but I realized that sometimes there is so much background noise going on, I close my eyes so I can close out everything BUT my TT, because I read it constantly, lol. Oh, does your TT scroll left to right like your calendar? Because mine scrolls right to left – just like a TT at the bottom of CNN, lol! Sidenote: Apparently I was closing my eyes a lot as a child – when I was 4, I could say the alphabet backwards. When my mom asked me how I did this, I replied “I just read it off the back of my eyelids!” (Seemed normal to me, lol!)
3.) Mirror Touch – I totally am with you about watching movies/TV shows where pain is depicted. I absolutely can not watch anything with any torture scenes – so much of today’s great cable shows (The Tudors, Game of Thrones, etc) will have scenes where someone is being tortured and it completely undoes me. I have to leave the room. On another note – I love watching “good” touch sensations – like, watching someone have their hair done 😉
Great thoughts, Denise!
My ticker tape is kind of different. I don’t see it when other people talk. I only see it when I talk. And it’s in a certain font. Like a typewriter font. And it runs from right to left rapidly. I can still read what I say when I talk, but it’s just a little fast. That’s why I’m a fast reader and somewhat writer/typer because I see what I’ll write before hand.
I also have the calendar one. But I see the days of the week in lines inside of boxes with the days of the week inside the boxes and its super straight and lined up.
I discovered synesthesia in a book called Mango Shaped Space about four years ago, in sixth grade. Evidently I wasn’t as normal as I thought. I checked more into it online, and I definitely have it.
I definitely have ticker tape, but not every word appears. Only words that are large, uncommon, or pronounced wrong. Closing my eyes actually enhances the words.
I also know for certain that I have spatial synesthesia. My week isn’t an arc, but a cylinder rotating clockwise. A year is like a ferris wheel, January at the bottom, February up and to the right and so on. Also, 1980 is physically further than 1990.
I have the type where voices have colors. One of my friends has a voice that is the same blue as her eyes. Come to think of it, the closer I am to a person, the closer their voice is to their eye color.
I also have the type where music brings on colors. This sounds kinda corny, but country is typically grain colored or John Deere green, depending on the gender of the singer. Taylor Swift normally sounds golden pink, which is conflicting because I don’t like her voice very much. Songs with darker lyrics are normally black, grey, and purple, regardless of how upbeat it is.
I didn’t know about mirror-emotion until now, but I realize I’ve always had that.
I have a few other types of synesthesia as well, but they are very faint and I really have to concentrate to experience them.
I don’t know if this is related to my synesthesia, but the majority of my memories, at least the ones from further back, are in third person. Practically none of my childhood memories are from my own eyes. They are all from a point behind and above me, at about the same point in each memory.