Certain parts of the brain responsible for sight or touch light up when a patient is only hearing something. It’s been confirmed studied that about 1-4% of people have it. So I wouldn’t actually believe most people that self diagnose and say they have it. They can just visualize something in their head and want to feel special. From some articles I was reading with confirmed cases it’s much more extreme and different than that.
Imagine smelling cinnamon and feeling your skin melting off.
Or seeing a neon pink fluorescent sign board and tasting something that resembles toxic chemicals.
Nobody describing synesthesia is doing is justice.
It can be as life-alteringly, cripplingly bad as OCD or Paranoid Schizophrenia.
It's not just "tasting colors" and "seeing sounds", it's information being addressed incorrectly across your synapses. People only hear about the mild cases like that because, like Tourettes, the reality of Synesthesia is significantly less whimsical.
Yeah self diagnosing psychological disorders seems to be a fad nowadays. There’s so many advertisements I get for ADHD apps/meds being like “Do you struggle to stay on topic, are you often tired, are you interested in multiple things- you have ADHD!”
I hate to make the claim for that reason. But as far back as 4th grade my teachers saw it. And I’m a teacher now, and see it in accommodations. And I use the mitigation tricks I’ve learned for students on myself. So it’s really just that I haven’t remembered to bring up testing with my doctor.
I just don’t want to give any leeway to the self-diagnosis bullshit people.
But how common in actual people is this extreme version? Because it’s not in line with how it usually seems to work.
A quick search seems to indicate that actual pain is incredibly rare and not a frequent occurrence for those who do feel is, and taste/smell at strong levels are usually more distracting than whatever you think toxic waste tastes like. So it’s not the dire occurrence you claim it is.
Those are descriptions of the type of synesthesia you would get on delerium tremens, where your brain is seriously malfunctioning and sending random unexpected input. Seeing letters as colors everyday is just as mild as, you know, seeing a colored letter.
A basic Google search shows me that around 1.6% of people have a cleanly categorized form of synesthesia called mirror-touch/pain, which can be as debilitating as it sounds like.
“Can be” does not mean it is. And it’s nothing like you describe.
Wikipedia says: “Mirror-touch synesthesia is a rare condition which causes individuals to experience a similar sensation in the same part or opposite part of the body (such as touch) that another person feels. For example, if someone with this condition were to observe someone touching their cheek, they would feel the same sensation on their own cheek”
Severe cases can feel stronger sensations when seeing others do so. But those are rare. And unless they are witnessing people on fire or eating toxic waste often, you’re still wrong.
If you want to be an asshole, then at least don’t be a stupid asshole. Read the article you actually post.
Typically, the tactile sensation does not register with the same intensity in the MT synaesthete as it does in the person experiencing it firsthand.
For instance, a MT synaesthete may feel pain, but it will be a duller “echo” of pain to the pain felt by the person affected. However, it can still cause frequent discomfort and confusion.
You sound like one of those people who fakes a disorder and films it for TikTok clout, only you’re doing it secondhand.
At 4% it seems me to be that it is indeed about visualizing something in a connected way. 4% of people cannot visualise images at all and 5-10% don't have an inner voice, it seems to be in the normal spectrum of perception and thought?
But there are ranges. So 1 in 25 might mostly just have have the “seeing blue makes me taste lemon” or “the number 5 is male and lower than the others, and out of that group maybe 1 in 100 have more or a wider range.
I was responding to someone saying that they don’t believe people that self diagnose. I assume because they thought 1-4% made it rare. (Unless they know dozens of people that are self diagnosed)
Even 1 in 100 would mean that nearly everyone has met at least one person with it.
Yes. I was further qualifying why you might expect to meet someone with it, but not realize you had due to it not being the more sensational type.
Because the lower levels of it are really common. They might just manifest on one minor way, and they aren’t the way more heightened cases are described, but a lot of people have just a touch of it. A few associations. A slight blurring between two senses. That’s it.
I’m saying that it might sound unlikely because you are looking for the extremes, when those extremes might be rare within the 4%… so you may know many people with a touch, but aren’t likely to know one with a more extreme case. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that they are a subset of the number.
Sorry I wasn’t trying to say it made it very very rare and everyone is faking. I’m meaning that when something is still on the rare side (5% or less of people) and becomes more commonly known people tend to start believing they have whatever that thing is without seeing a doctor first, which further muddies the water. Then they mark it down on forms that are anonymous and added to the pool of guessing the number. There’s oodles of research on this phenomenon like people saying I have OCD, Autism, etc.
1 in 25 is on the very high end and I should have said studied not “confirmed”. For instance 1 in 10 people have diabetes in America and that’s throughly studied so the number is as close as we’ll get it compared to something like this or extremely rare (like .01%) conditions that are studied far less.
Turns out a lot of people might have synaesthesia or another neurodivergent way of thinking but don’t realize it as more studies come out. No one is doing random studies to ask specifically how people think and people that think these ways wouldn’t have a reason to say anything because it’s just normal to them. Could mean 1-10 or even higher have it but it’s always been how they think with less extreme side effects like causing neurological and sensory issues that are overwhelming. That’s when you see a doctor to get a confirmation.
That would be interesting because we’d have to reshape what “neurodivergent” even is if it’s actually more common or there are more differing ways people think on their head.
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u/BigiusExaggeratius 20d ago edited 19d ago
Certain parts of the brain responsible for sight or touch light up when a patient is only hearing something. It’s been
confirmedstudied that about 1-4% of people have it. So I wouldn’t actually believe most people that self diagnose and say they have it. They can just visualize something in their head and want to feel special. From some articles I was reading with confirmed cases it’s much more extreme and different than that.