To be surprised not everyone sees smells as shapes

[Tahdahdah]

I am 53 years old and made a passing comment to DH that I've didn't like his new aftershave because it smelt too oval. He looked at me like I was insane. It turns out he doesn't see shapes as smells!

Anyone else see smells? I feel like I may have some weird super power but can't for the life of me work out how to save lives with it or makes myself rich from it. 🤣
Anyone else have any strange superpowers they have just discovered?

Tuesday is sooo yellow but I would say Thursday is green or maybe blue.

I see numbers and letters as either male or female and some are associated with colours or personality types.
H is a motherly woman, for example.

Yes, I do the same and I "hear" trees and plants as musical notes.

Wow, I've never heard of smells as shapes! So interesting but can't imagine it myself.

I've always been fascinated by how differently people visualise weeks/months/years so this is v similar. OP, I wish I had your superpower!

Me neither. The mind boggles.

i hear sounds as round, blobby, spiky etc with different colours, not quite the same but you are definitely not alone OP!

I do this too but I don't think it's the same is it? I think everyone sees months / seasons as colours hence the "I'm a soft spring" talk. I might be wrong though

I get this too. Red and blue are 1 and 2, yellow and green are 3 and 4. Orange is 5. I don’t know why.

I also group things together. Like… 7, Tuesday, Purple, March are all in the same group. I don’t know what that group is. But my brain tells me they belong together.

sounds nuts written down haha

I have time/space and grapheme/colour synaesthesia, before I could even spell the words they had colour when I heard them. I see words in colour- they come up in my minds eye as if they're being typed out.

All sounds have shape and colour. All days, months etc. I have a timeline that I can zoom in and out, of weeks/years/centuries, going back to ancient history. It fades out after about 2050.

I cannot see smells as a shape. I do have a very good sense of smell and am good at identifying scents. For me smells trigger memories.

@LargeChestofDrawers DD also feels pain as sound - the OT said she had never come across it before so it is great to hear someone else has that too!

Always entertaining in a&e when they ask if something hurts (despite me saying she rarely feels pain!) and she says it is a c# 😂😂

😂 I sang the pain to the doctor once (it was a low trombone kind of pain) - I honestly thought he'd know exactly what I meant, but he boggled at me as though I was completely mad!

I love meeting other synaesthetes in the wild!

Names (occasionally other words, but mostly names) have flavours, mouth-feels or actions for me; I keep meaning to do an AMA about it.

Examples: Laura tastes/feels like celery, Hannah is pushing a headband back on your hair, Paula is flat Coke, Lucy is Haribo rings, Joanne is chocolate-covered toffee, Craig is a buttered cream cracker. Jess is a baguette, but Jessica is a jacket potato.

I do that. Monday is dark green, Tuesday is lighter bottle green. Wednesday is brown, Thursday is light grey, Friday is pink, Saturday is black and Sunday is white! Been like that since I knew what days of the week were!

Edited to say I see the day, weeks, months and years as if they were in a picture too. Years are like a sort of flat circle. Weeks, are lines with a sort of hook at the top for the weekend - like a walking stick shape. And days are sort of a rough hexagonal shape.

@LargeChestofDrawers Interestingly, she says that listening to music can be a form of pain relief as the music drowns out the sounds..... Does this work for you?

I have it and so does my son. We both see letters as colours, but he also sees sounds as shapes. Welcome to the club!

www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/man-who-tasted-shapes-book-richard-e-cytowic-9780907845430

Wow! That is amazing. Definitely needs researching

I smell bullshit when I see Mumsnet posts sometimes.

My daughter and I are both aphantasic. My daughter is also synaesthetic. Which seems like a contradiction.
There are some amazing types of Synaesthesia. Like the chap who tastes words. His favourite railway station tastes like an egg and bacon sandwich 😂

No but some names are foods. For example, Hannah is custard and Kate is a hazelnut 😬 I don’t get it with all names and I don’t admit it to many people because I definitely think it’s weird 🤣

I don’t see shapes but some words have a ‘taste’. For example ‘Ruth’ tastes like cough blackcurrant cough sweets, ‘Tuesday’ like lettuce etc. Not every word but some do. DD2 seems to have something similar, she told me once she didn’t like the world ‘pupil’ because it tastes slimy.

Genuine question. What is Wednesday? I wondered for you if Wednesday is Orange and horizontal because Tuesday is yellow and Thursday is red? So between them Wednesday is orange. Or doesnt it follow a logical pattern just what feels right?

No smells as shapes but days of the week have colours and abstract things have shapes.

There was a brilliant FB post about it and I met my soulmate who drew the year perfectly and agreed October is way bigger than January or February 😂

Tuesday absolutely is yellow but Wednesday is grey.

I have the coloured hearing version, which is the most common version of syn. A-Z is coloured, as with 1-9 and 0 and days of the week. Musical notes CDEFGABC (and the sharps) are all coloured, meaning I also have perfect pitch as I hear+see the notes and know what the notes are.

I knew by 1997 that it was called synaesthesia as my mum believed me despite me being a teenager and I could have been telling porkies. She looked it up for me and found out what it was.

Every coloured-hearing syn have their own set of colours which is personal to them but it sticks for life. The colour set doesn't change.

Syn is classed as a neurological condition but I don't like the connection with autism. this is because it seems to me that armchair detectives and internet doctors like to throw the a-word around willy nilly.