This is one of the types of synesthesia that can be called "visualised sensations" or "coloured sensations"
Alternative names are pain-vision or algesic-visual synesthesia
The different types are pain-colour, pain-shape and pain-image
(the last of these three types is uncommon)
Pain-vision synesthesia is normally triggered by one’s own pain, not that of other people. There are some cases of people who experience a synesthetic colour triggered by perceiving other people’s pain, although it is not as common (see an example below). In this case its name would be perceived pain-colour.
For people with this type of synesthesia, feeling different kinds of pain triggers visual concurrents. These usually consist of seeing or perceiving a colour or a combination of colours, which are consistent and specifically linked to the particular type of pain. If the colours are seen physically it is considered projective synesthesia (although this is a less common variant), while if they are perceived in the mind’s eye or the person simply “knows” what colour the pain is by receiving a strong impression, it is associative synesthesia. Some synesthetes perceive not only colours but also shapes, which can have texture, and these photisms can occupy a specific spatial location, while the experience of others is limited to perceiving colour but with no other properties so it may be seen as a kind of “transparent overlay” to their vision or as a coloured cloud or fog. Some synesthetes – although only a few – perceive complete images, a subtype that bears some similarity to the typical visualisation of figurative images occurring with some forms of tactile-visual synesthesia and also with sexual (and romantic) synesthesia. Pain-colour/shape synesthesia should not be confused with the non-synesthetic phenomenon of “seeing stars”, i.e. physically seeing dots of coloured light appear behind your eyelids on feeling a sudden pain (see below).
According to the study by Sean Day, just under 6% of synesthetes report having this type of synesthesia.
Here are
some descriptions written by people with this type of synesthesia:
Pain-colour
“For me, toothaches are black, headaches are orange, heartburn is neon green, getting shots are bright pink, burns are yellow, and throat pains are light blue.”
(Source: This post on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2019.)
“After a workout, my muscles are a mix of bright and dark red. But when my myalgia is flaring up, it's like a blackish red. When I have knots, they are yellow, and when I pull a muscle it's a sickly greenish-yellow. I get allodynia (hypersensitivity) with migraines, and it's like my skin is a light blue. Normal touch is orange. Tension headaches are in the red to yellow range, while migraines are a different mix of dark blue, lilac, and a light green. If I have pain in my head or neck, it's hard to see past the color.”
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2019.)
Pain-shape
Backache.
Source: Corinna, in the Gallery of the website Sensequence. “I feel like this after having sat at the computer for too long in a crooked posture. I "see" the typical backache as magenta coloured figures in my back.
The shapes produced as a concurrent of pain tend to be simple and
abstract (geometric figures, lines, etc.) and it appears to be relatively
common for synesthetes who perceive colour on receiving a painful stimulus to also
see shapes.
Pain-image
It is much less common to perceive a complete image as a synesthetic concurrent for different types of pain, although cases do exist:
“For
example when my back hurts I see a close up of ball of twine and it's kind of
dark. When my hands hurt I see a beach on a cloudy day with mountains at the
back of the beach, the sand is more rocky and there are some black rocks like
obsidian down by the water in front of the "camera".
I say image because it is like looking at a photograph.”
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2014.)
Perceived pain-colour: a colour concurrent in response to other people’s pain
“I'm not sure if it's a spiritual thing or a synesthesia thing, but sometimes I can pick up on a colour around a specific area of [a person's] body, kind of like an aura around where the person may experience the sensation. And depending on what the colour might be I can guess what kind of sensation it is.
I.e., when I watched a friend bump their elbow, I knew they bumped their funny bone because their elbow was yellow. Or, when a friend told me how their leg was sore, I knew it was muscle pain because I saw red. If it were blue it would be nerve pain and pale yellow for bone pain, etc.”
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2021.)
Pain-vision synesthesia can sometimes be useful
People with
this type of synesthesia often explain the colour of the pain they are feeling
to doctors and other interested parties, only to be met with blank looks and
incomprehension. But in other situations this type of synesthesia can actually
be quite useful. Some of them are able to interpret a slight colour change as a
sign that something is wrong and they go to the doctor before the first
symptoms appear, while others with a knowledge of anatomy can pinpoint with
great accuracy where in their body the problem radiates from and what its exact
nature is.
“Seeing stars” is not synesthesia
Pain-vision
synesthesia shouldn’t be confused with what we call “seeing stars” on receiving
a painful stimulus, particularly a blow to the head: the dots of coloured light
that appear behind the eyelids are called “phosphenes”, they can happen to
anyone and they are not a type of synesthesia.
Other related types of synesthesia:
Emotion-colour and emotion-shape (triggered by emotions that include emotional pain)
This page last updated: 04 January 2025
This page is about pain-color synesthesia and pain-shape synesthesia
This page is about pain-colour synaesthesia, pain-shape synaesthesia and visualised sensations
I always found it interesting how visual Synaesthesia where people perceive shapes, colours, texture, and movement felt so close to how I experience pain, but I couldn’t find anything about it until now!! I currently have diffused soft white-light pain in my back that’s a small circle. Five minutes ago it was a dull grey ball on the side of my neck. With my arm outstretched, pulling on the muscle running from the side of my neck to my shoulder, it’s a bright (but not sharp) pain that’s a warm white light, kind of a line that’s thicker in the middle and coming to a point at the ends, and slightly curved. The texture of the light is like when you mess with the focus on a camera and the lights transform from circles into stars.
ReplyDeleteOMG I found my people.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I was trying to explain the pain I feel to a surgeon and he was confused. I didn't understand why he couldn't understand what I was telling him. It's because my brain translates physical experience into imagery. When a nerve gets pinched in my neck I see a hand pinching there. The pain that shoots down the inner arm looks like a lightning strike. When a nurse forgot to put a numbing agent in the IV before the anesthesia I saw a circular saw cutting through my arm. Thank God that only lasted 9 seconds! Another event produced an image of a bluish white, thick liquid spreading up and down the spine, with frost on the edges. Now I know why people look at me like I'm crazy when I try to explain what I feel.
ReplyDeleteI actually have mirror pain synesthesia, and this has happened to me before from the pain I was feeling from the other person. My sister pitches in softball and her arm was hurting really bad at the time (her muscles). That night we were playing hide and seek and I was thinking about her when I felt it. It was sharp and ached really bad. I was also holding myself up in a dark tight space so it just made it worse 😂. But then I saw a thin colored line in the darkness just floating there. It was green in the middle, fading into purple and pink on the outside (if i'm remembering correctly). It was the first time it had ever happened, and since then its only happened from my mirror pain experiences.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young I thought it was just flashes of color or light like the stars behind your eyelids type phenomena, I just thought mine were stronger. Later I began to notice it as a wash of color to my upper left mental vision. Then I started noticing that through the years the patch of color started becoming a shape, a two dimensional shape of color and would hang around until I paid attention to the pain that it was indicating. I have Ehlers-Danlos and I've been in constant full body pain now for 55 years, so pain is a constant companion, and now I have what I call my annoying little cat in the head that tells me when the pain has changed or gotten worse or is new. Recently I've been seeing full three-dimensional shapes. They were still featureless but they were shapes and often began to become three-dimensional. I began to realize that this might be synesthesia. While I was in the hospital in 2017, my lungs began to fill with water and I was drowning so they gave me Lasix, a diuretic, but they didn't check the medications I was on and combined it with two other medication you're not supposed to. Within hours I started getting this vision where my synesthesia usually is except it was now an abstract animation. A line would start to form in the upper left corner of my mind's eye, come down, then jag over to the right a bit and then come down again. Basically a stylized vertical zigzag. The line would be almost white at the top and slowly would degrade down to near solid speckled brown black. Then the line would expand, widen side to side to become a strip in the jagged shape and colorization of the line. Once that was done another line would be drawn exactly the same as the first one, what looked like an inch to the right of the first. Same thing, same color gradation, would be drawn down in the same shape and then would widen into a strip. Then a third line would be drawn an inch over to the right and the same thing what happened. Then the whole image would disappear and then it would repeat itself. I began to realize that it was following my heartbeat which was a little weird and felt funny but no pain just odd feeling for a heartbeat. I meant to tell the nurse but I forgot and it went away. Then 12 hours later in the middle of the night around midnight it started again except the heart sensation wasn't as strong but the image was very strong and the animation would play over and over again. So I decided I probably should call the nurse. As she came in I pointed into the computer in the room and asked her to check if I had gotten my heart meds and I died in front of her. My heart just stopped. I survived because she was in the room and saw it happen. I really thought at the time I was just being hyperbolic, overreacting to what I was seeing but since it happened twice in 12 hours I thought it might be important. Turns out it was the medication that they had given me for the fluid in my lungs and it caused what's called an elongated QT. This is where the two beats of your heart, because of the two chambers, no longer beat one right after the other but have a slight pause in between. The first beat is the Q And the second beat is the T. They are usually one right after the other but now the distance between them was "elongated". Hence the term elongated QT and your heart can stop beating right in the middle of it which mine did. My synesthesia literally saved my life. I've had a few images but very little animation since then, except when my brain was dying and I had a full film strip of an animation of people standing in a black void shoulder shoulder, wearing Renaissance and other period costumes. They talked for a few moments to each other and then they began to melt like ice cream in the sun from the head down towards the shoulders and then there was nothing and I woke up hours later. I now have a great appreciation for my little annoying cat in my head and a great fondness.
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