Sensory cross-over experiences

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What sensory experiences do you have that cross over between senses, or feelings? For instance,

- When I put my hands in warm water, I feel a gentle sense of falling forwards;
- A sudden sound, such as something being dropped, causes a flash of brightness;
- Sometimes sounds hurt;
- A full bowel, or flatulence, makes me feel anxious and jittery;
- If I am reading my laptop screen when it dims, it feels like the whole room goes dark.

I guess that these are sensory integration issues.

I have this happen too. Especially the flash of brightness.

Certain sounds do cause pain; like the sounds of forks and spoons clashing together, or someone scraping a cast iron skillet clean.

Some pretty colors have a flavor.

I've got:
pain with light
pain with some sounds
I can't stand the feel of some textures

All of these thing can cause me to have simple partial seizures.

Sharp sudden sounds cause a painful sensations like needles piercing my whole body all over. Hard to describe...but the pain is everywhere at once, not just my sensitive ears.

Some types of touch also cause multiple sensory sensations like above only it's not painful.

The feeling of filing nails sounds like nails on a chalkboard - clipping nails if done with bad clippers sounds like it too.

That is called Synesthesia (sometimes Synaesthesia). It's a rare mental condition where experiencing one sense triggers another sense as well (seeing letters of the alphabet, seeing music/sounds, etc.)

I have it. I see each of the letters of the alphabet, the days of the week, the months of the year, etc. as different colors and textures; I used to see music (in my mind's eye, though some people actually see it projected into the real world around them) but I guess I grew out of that part.

I've done several research projects for school about it because the condition fascinates me. There are dozens of types of synesthesia, some being very bizarre (orgasm/color, taste/sensation, pretty much anything you can imagine). The most common is grapheme-color, which is the letters/numbers/months thing I described.

I also have spatial synesthesia which means I imagine time (years/months/weeks) as being laid out in my head, and when I think back into the past it's like finding a physical place for me (but in my brain).

I see at least some of this as separate from Synesthesia. I don't have sets of things that I perceive with additional senses (aside from the nails on the chalkboard both physical feeling and sound coming from things similar to that, there's nothing). However, if I'm overly stimulated, I will start having minor crossover (only with negative things - I think the nails on a chalkboard thing is so overwhelming that its enough on its own to have this occur).


I do find synesthesia really interesting and would actually take any opportunity to see what it was like to experience the world in that sort of view. The person I know with synesthesia sees colors with personalities - like she sees a physical aura around people when around them, and gets the same reactions in text. I'm apparently a light orange.

Yes, some of these are not synesthesia, but a lot of them are (sounds causing "a flash of brightness", colors having flavor). Some of them like noises causing pain aren't.

Your friend's synesthesia is one I have never heard of before and sounds a lot like what people mean when they talk about auras.

I think there is a relationship to synaesthesia, which is common amongst people with ASD. (I can smell things that I see images of, and smells have shapes).

I think that there is also a relationship with sensory integration disorder, which is what I was more interested in - for instance confusing auditory and visual signals (I find it hard to tell which is early when sound and video are out-of-sync), and experiencing vestibular effects in response to other stimuli (feeling like I am falling when my hands are in warm water).

I am doing some occupational therapy at the moment on sensory issues (mostly for the usual ASD sensitivity to sound and tactile sensitivity to clothing and textures), so I would like to hear similar experiences.

-cold water makes me feel like i'm falling... losing balance. warm water makes me feel claustrophobic.
-colors make me feel textures, smells and tastes and vice versa.

This post might a little tangential, sorry. I don't have synesthesia. But, when I hear music, I immediately convert it into movement (auditory/visual cross over). I suppose I could have been a choreographer, if I'd pursued this when I was younger. Also, when I see something painful on someone else, I get a fleeting pain in my abdomen. I don't know if this is extreme empathy, or something else.

When this happens, it makes me sick to my stomach. I have to leave the room. It almost feels like motion sickness. It initiates a seizure, as well. In fact the sound of people chewing popsicles does the same thing. I just realized, though, that the stomach pain may be due to anxiety from anticipating a seizure, with the popsicle thing.

About the aura thing, though, I often notice a when I look at something that there is an area about an inch or so around it, depending on its size, that has a color. I wonder if that's the same thing. People tend to have a bigger field, so maybe it's actually a magnetic field. Either way, it doesn't seem to be a good thing or a bad thing.