An
alternative name for emotion-colour is coloured emotions
Note: this page is about synesthetic experiences evoked by the synesthete’s own emotions, not those observed in other people. To find out more about this latter type, see the page Perceived emotion-to-colour (and other concurrents).
This type of synesthesia consists of having visual experiences of colour (or colour and shape) in response to different emotions. Some synesthetes actually see these visual concurrents physically in front of them (projector synesthetes), while others only see them in their mind’s eye (associator synesthetes). They may take the form of a transparent colour field like an overlay, tinting their vision, they may resemble a cloud or mist, or the synesthete may feel that the colour is irradiating out of a particular part of the body, for example. When the colours also have shape it is normally a simple or complex geometrical figure, either single or multiple. Colours and shapes are the most common visual concurrents, although there is also a very rare variant where complete figurative images are seen. In general it is not a very common type: in Sean Day's study on 1,143 synesthetes, 3.24% reported having visual experiences in response to emotions. The colours perceived for each emotion are consistent, and they are also idiosyncratic, varying greatly from person to person. They are not guided by conventional correspondences such as red=anger or passion, grey=seriousness or boredom, although they may occasionally coincide. (A colour semiology chart explaining the traditional connotations symbolised by each colour can be consulted in this interesting article.)
Here
are some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:
Emotion-colour
“When I'm happy I see a blue color floating in the air. It's slightly transparent and usually lasts only for a second or two. I see yellow the same way usually when doing chores or during an endless math lesson. I see magenta when having really negative emotions.”
“I
can see the colours near the top of my head, floating like a giant cloud. For
me the colour also varies with the degree of emotion. Extreme
happiness/Ecstatic – Golden. Contentment - Pale yellow. Energetic happiness -
Bright yellow. Love is always degrees of pink. The more love I feel the paler
it gets. Sometimes I don't understand all emotions so I can just see a colour
floating about. Like I can see a metallic grey cloud but I can't decipher my
emotions."
(Source: This post and comments on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2016.)
“Sometimes when someone hugs me and I feel safe or protected, then everything is covered in a light, translucent cyan. When I’m feeling loved the world is pinker than usual (a very pale pink). When I’m angry it’s a bright but translucent red hue around everything.”
(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)
Freshness is jungle green.
Sickness is chartreuse.
Fatherliness is lime.
Concentration is emerald.
Frantic is alternating lime and red.
Tenderness is amber.
Motherliness is matador.
There are others, but those are the ones I can list off the top of my head.”
(Source: This comment and this post/comment on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2022.)
“The journey…. the journey always stresses me out, and stress appears to me as a deluge of little watery red spheres like caviar that crash into me and explode one by one. My emotions grow as I pack my suitcase. The idea of departure starts as carmine red, and when the time actually comes it has turned into an opaque, amorphous white goodbye. The feeling of saying goodbye is a whitish-grey mist that engulfs me, expanding all around me until it touches the rest of my family.”
(Source: the artist Pepa Salas Vilar, cited in the book “Sinestesia. El color de las palabras, el sabor de la música, el lugar del tiempo…” by Alicia Callejas and Juan Lupiáñez, pub. Alianza Editorial 2012. Original in Spanish.)
“As my emotions get stronger, so do the visions I see in my mind. This is especially true for negative emotions, for example extreme fear. For example, in one instance, I have suffered severe panic attack because of the fear I was facing. All I could see were these glowing white branches that were gently growing into beautiful shapes, and it was as vivid as real life. It did not help me calm down tho lol. On the other hand, sadness looks like metallic-grey fog. Happiness is like cubes, spheres and pyramids coated in vaporwave shade of purple.”
(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)
“I have something like hallucination since my first memory. It's colorful bubbles in the air. … The size, color, shape and movement of the bubbles change according to my mood. For example, when I feel happy, the bubbles are small, yellow and move upward in the air. When I'm angry, the bubbles move faster from left to right.”
(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2019.)
Emotion-texture
It is also possible for emotions to be consistently and consciously associated with a particular texture, which can be visualised or felt as a perception. Although the texture may form part of a colour concurrent, some synesthetes may feel it as just texture alone, without any inherent colour at all:
“When I have certain emotions I start getting flashes of textures. Especially when I am anxious, in my head a rough leathery texture to smooth peach texture keeps flashing. (…)
The texture isn’t something I am feeling on my skin, or just visually in my head, it's almost as if I am a part of it.
[Excitement] feels like the hairy tingling you get when you almost touch something staticky. [Depression] feels like hard clay.”
(Source: This post/comment on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2023.)
For the case of actual tactile sensations being felt in the body or on the skin, with or without a specific textural component, see the page on Emotion-tactile synesthesia.
Emotion-image
Although
it is very uncommon, some synesthetes perceive emotions as figurative images. Cases
have been reported where feelings are consistently perceived as objects, scenes,
places or people. I am only aware of cases where the pictures
are formed as a mind’s-eye impression (associative synesthesia) and I don’t know
whether any synesthetes actually see them physically in external space. In
any case, the associations of this type appear automatically, consciously and
consistently (same emotion=same image) on feeling or perceiving the different emotions:
"My emotions are physical things. Like anxiety is a knotted
hollow tube. Joy is like a belt around my lower back, and so forth. They’re
real to me, but when I asked others if they experience this, they say no."
(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020.)
“For as long as I remember, when I feel certain emotions strongly or think back on a memory where I felt such an emotion strongly, I picture a character at the same time.
For example, excitement is a dark-skinned young woman,
frizzy hair, dyed a pastel rainbow at the bottom, wearing a purple tank top and
black denim shorts, with a unicorn horn headband. Anger is a young pale-skinned
man with fawn brown hair, wearing a red flannel shirt. His body cuts off at the
torso and has no arms, and he has floating purple hands.”
(Source: This post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020.)
Related types of synesthesia:
Perceived emotion-to-colour (and other concurrents)
This page is about emotion-color synesthesia and emotion-shape
This page is about emotion-colour synaesthesia and emotion-shape
This page last updated: 2 September 2024
I have emotion-texture synesthesia. Or at least I think I do. When I have chaotic feeling it's like I can. "Feel"my feelings as black tar moving and stretching really fast. Calm is a soft quite ball. It's wierd ti explain because it's not a feeling but it is...its like oneness with that texture.
ReplyDeleteSoft white ball I mean
DeleteYes, it certainly sounds like you do. I agree it's difficult or weird to explain how the sensation feels, it's more than just perceiving a shape or texture, its proprioceptive so you feel it as being part of you, a "oneness" as you say is a good way of putting it.
Deletedoes anyone else also experience concepts as textures? like numbers, IE, prime numbers as marbles, real numbers as blocks of wood. or maybe specific to me; mathematical proof and computer programs as something like a rube-goldberg machine of combined textures?
Deleteim tryna figure out if i have synesthesia and idk who to ask about it so im putting what i feel here.
ReplyDeletebasically for as long as i can remember, i've been able to like feel things on my skin and feel strong emotions with them when i look at certain objects. for example, dead pixels on a phone screen feel like they're on me and are going to swallow me like a black hole. growing crystals feels like mushrooms on me that i cant shake off. sandpaper feels like getting put in a meat grinder and everything is all rough everywhere on my skin and my clothes dont sit right either.
if someone could assist, that'd be appreciated.
Hi! I don't think this is synesthesia. To me it sounds more like a combination of tactile hyperphantasia (= when you look at textures you can easily physically recreate them as a real tactile sensation) and some kind of hypersensitivity/sensory processing issue that unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough about to be able to identify. I hope you find your answers!
Deleteis it emotion-color synesthesia if strong emotions trigger like a colored shape sensation thing across your body?? what brought me to ask the question was that yesterday, i was at a concert and the band went from one song to the another randomly, and as soon as i processed what song it was, i got hit with a physical wave of emotion, that was yellow. it started near my chest and went down to near my feet. i couldn't tell if it was inside or outside of my body. i only felt it though, i didnt see it physically or anything. the emotion i felt was very complex as well. it wasn't like happiness or whatever (because happiness is usually associated with the color yellow) but i cant exactly describe what the emotion was. another thing, i also have chromesthesia (associative type) and music-spatial. im 99% sure that the sensation was because of the emotion, though.
ReplyDeleteThe way you experience the colour sensation in response to a particular emotion certainly sounds synesthetic: it’s perception of a colour, that can also have a shape, that occurs automatically when you perceive the emotion it’s connected with, that involves proprioception and a spatial component (inside or outside your body)… It doesn’t need to be physically visible in your field of vision: most people’s synesthesia is in the mind’s eye or just a “feeling”. Of course, if it’s something that only happens once in a lifetime then it’s unlikely it’s synesthesia, because synesthesia is something that would gives different specific colours/shapes etc. for a range of different emotions. But perhaps the strength and specific nature of the emotion (and already being a synesthete, as you mention) is what has made it so tangible for you this time, and perhaps you would realise you associate other specific colour and shape sensations with other emotions if you felt them strongly or focused on them. Perhaps you do, but just haven’t mentioned them in your description. Anyway I would certainly say it’s a synesthesia thing you’re experiencing, yes.
DeleteI’ve had what I call an ability since I can remember. I can feel and see other peoples emotions. Their emotions are processed by me as if they were my own. But they look like waves in the air when they come off people. I can differentiate the emotions by the waves I see. Different emotions are like different wave patterns and after years I feel like I have developed another language as I can be quite specific as to someone else’s emotions. I can also see pain waves coming off bodies to the point where I can go right to the place on their body and when I touch the place people sometimes are surprised as they thought their pain was originating somewhere else until I touched them.
ReplyDeleteI also see wave or vibrations coming off pretty much everything. I can feel air moving in the room when people walk in. I walked past someone with horrific head trauma and I immediately passed out. I am not afraid of blood. Since I grew up in a family of 9 people I learned at a very young age to let people have their privacy. And while I can just look and see emotions I do try to ignore them often with friends and family.
Also I can see shapes in front of me meaning not in my mind but my minds eye - at least that’s how I explain it. When I took a lot of college math I could see 4th 5th and 6th dimensional math formulas in my mind. I would read math and physics books from cover to cover and when I took tests I would just bring up the entire page in front of me and reread it to pass the tests.
Also If someone wants help moving I have them take me through their house pointing out all things they want to put in a truck or car and I will just know how much space is needed. Then i can pack their car or truck so that there isn’t one square inch of space leftover anywhere. I can look at a carrot and know just how much to cut off the side to just ever so tightly fit into a rectangular space. I can tell if a picture or floor or wall or whatever is off or slanted by a very small fraction of an inch. Good thing I do not have a compulsive disorder!
I can also just know time of day.
I have seen what will happen in the near future like it was actually happening in the present. I am in the future and see in color all the people and the things they do and say … in the future. And it has happened exactly as I’ve experienced it. I can see the direction of peoples future and I think it’s based upon the energy waves they are currently emitting from their bodies.
Anyway now since I’ve stumbled onto synesthesia I am wondering if I might have that or even more than one.
I have a lifetime of experiences that others can’t explain. Please any information would be appreciated.
Hi! Of the things you say, the ones where you have a visual perception of colour in your mind (or physically) would certainly be considered types of synesthesia. They would be the result of your intuition telling you something about the various emotions, types and locations of pain, etc.
DeleteThe maths one, maybe yes maybe no. As you perceive shapes and not just mathematical formulas, there could be a synesthetic connection there.
The other things you mention I don’t think so. But if what you are automatically perceiving are abstract colours and shapes in response to intuitive thoughts/categorisations/solutions about certain groups of concepts, then that is what synesthesia is about and so for those things you can definitely be considered a synesthete.
These are the Tree pages you could take a look at to see if you identify:
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/perceived-emotion-to-colour-and-other.html
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/pain-colour-and-pain-shape-synesthesia.html (and look at the example “A colour concurrent in response to other people’s pain”.)
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/mathematical-synesthesias.html
and perhaps
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/concept-shape-synesthesia.html