How Many of Us Are There?

When I was little, I thought everyone heard colors like I did. I didn’t realize I was “special” until my first grade art class. My teacher, turned on some music and said to color what we saw when we listened to the music. I remember getting very frustrated because I couldn’t find the right blue for my drawing. When I complained to my teacher he showed me almost every shade of blue he could find in his class room. When I didn’t find the color we had the following conversation.

My Teacher: “Can you describe the blue you want?”

Me: “It’s really hard, I don’t know to describe it. It’s the blue I heard in the music.”

My Teacher:“… you heard it in the music.”

Me:“yeah, it’s the blue I heard in my head.”

My Teacher: “…I think you’re mixing up what you hear and see.”

Me: “You don’t hear colors when you listen to music?”

My Teacher: “You can’t hear colors in music. No one can. You just have an overactive imagination.”

Me: “… I still can’t find the blue I need.”

My Teacher: “Just use one of the blues I gave you.”

Many synesthetes have this type of experience when they’re young. Once they find out that their perceptions are not normal, they usually do what I did and shut up about them. This is one of the main reason there is no set number of how many people have synesthesia. Guesses have ranged from 1 person out of 23 to one out of 2000 and up to one out of a million. Most people don’t talk about their synesthesia after childhood to avoid getting made fun of or just because other people just don’t understand.

Other reasons why no one exactly how many synesthetes there are include:

• Some people just don’t know they have it
• Synesthesia is not a common term. I didn’t know my colored hearing had a name until a couple of months ago when I enrolled in my Visual Music course that covered the subject

• There is no concrete way to diagnose synesthesia.
•   I’ve brought this up before, but synesthesia is completely subjective. Each synesthete has their own experiences. Combined with the numerous forms of synesthesia, this makes it very hard to tell if synesthetic perceptions are actually real.

The awareness of synesthetic perception is the basis for almost every reason synesthesia is so hard to figure out. The fact that perceptions are different for everyone or synesthetes just don’t notice them, just make synesthesia even more fascinating. 

I Know How You Feel...

So upon further research I have discovered that I more than one type of synesthesia. Along with sound-color I also have a rarer type called Mirror-Touch synesthesia, which is a type that deals with emotion.
When put into simple turns when I see a person I can easily sense their emotions. I had always thought this was simple intuition until I read the description of it during my research.

Another part of mirror-touch synesthesia is that when I see someone get hurt, I can feel the pain as well. One example of this is when I see someone get a shot, I feel the needle prick on my arm as they get it.

This also applies to things I see in pictures or on TV. For instance I have never been able to watch an entire slasher flick without hiding my eyes at some point.

The fact that I have more than one type of synesthesia is pretty normal. People who have one type, especially a common type like my sound-color, usually have another. Carol Steen is one known example of this with multiple types of synesthesia which she incorporate in her art. She is also the co founder of the American Synesthesia Association.

There are types that are more uncommon than others but it's hard to say how rare they are when most researchers don't even have an accurate idea how common or rare synesthesia is in general. There are several reasons for why it's so hard to estimate, but we'll get into those next time.

More Than One Kind?

My uncle and one of my closest friends are the only other people I’ve met that have some form of synesthesia. My uncle and I both have sound-color synesthesia but my friend Celia has a rarer form that’s called number-spatial form synesthesia. It’s even harder to explain in detail but the gist of it is that when she sees number lines or lists of numbers, in her head she sees a 3 dimensional line stretching out with the higher numbers further away. Each number has its own level of exposure and shadow which changes the higher the numbers go.

There are dozens of documented forms of synesthesia, because of the numerous combinations of senses. What most people don’t know is that there are more senses that can be affected by synesthesia than just the basic five.

• Time
• Space
• Emotion
• Personality
• Language

To name a few.

Some of these don’t seem like senses but are still classified as synesthetic experiences because they are paired with a sensation they normally wouldn't be. The experiences are also still automatic and involuntary. When the definition of synesthesia was expanded beyond sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch, the combinations of sense went from about 25 to an almost infinite amount. Types of synesthesia are still being discovered, especially with recent research.  

The types of synesthesia that involve more obscure combinations of senses are usually rarer than forms that mix the basic five.  You can read about other forms of synesthesia here.

Or you could just wait for me to blog about them ;)