My experiences with synaestheeeeeeesia

[lethargic_man]

When I'm lying in bed at night trying to get to sleep—which invariably takes a long time, with me—something happens to my body as it's slowing down, so that a sudden, unexpected noise can send a throb of pain through my head.

What I didn't discover until I was twenty-eight or nine was that it also turns me mildly synaesthetic. At that time I used to turn off the radiator in my room before going to bed, and would be entertained by the *pink*pink* noises of the radiator cooling down as I waited for sleep to claim me. About halfway through the process, the radiator would emit one *pink!* noise louder than the rest, and I would experience a momentary pattern of alternating black and white vertical stripes across my visual field, each half a degree or so wide (about as wide as half a centimetre appears at eighteen inches distance).

I experienced this reaction regularly for the duration of the time I lived in that room, but have not experienced it since. I have, however, occasionally experienced a different phenomenon: a flash of four white ovals in the rectangular corners of my vision—not entirely unlike the cue marks you get on anamorphically-projected films to tell the projectionist to start the next reel—in accompaniment to violent coughs.

Last night, I experienced a new one for the first time: jagged spikes at the top and bottom centre when I sneezed.

I've actually been meaning to post about this for months, if not years, but the only times I remember are after I've had these experiences, when I'm falling asleep; it's taken until now for me to remember about them whilst awake.

Does anybody else here experience anything like this?

Comments

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

When you see black and white shapes is synaestnesia? I see shapes as well but only when I just put off the lights. It is just twinkling like stars in front my eyes. I might have had that phenomen with black and white shapes in the darkness as well. But I can't remember when and how exactly it looked like. Besides the sleeping problems we seem to have even more in common.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

No, synaesthesia is when stimuli in one sense have effect in another; in this case, sounds makes me see things as well. (Another common form of synaesthesia is to associate colours with letters or words.)