[littlethistle]

I used to think it was all about seeing music, tasting words and see numbers as colours. But now a psych professor told me I might have this and this is why I perceive entities that others cannot see.

I did not understand the explanation at all. I am googling but finding nothing. He is sure I do not dissociate like my doc thinks.

None think I have psychosis. It is like I can see into other layers of reality. If it is real, fine, but if it is synesthesia and from inside me I want to know how it happens.

Any info welcome.

[MickeyCheeky]

Are you seeing a psychiatrist?

[littlethistle]

I have a psych doc once in a while but that will stop since I do not need medication. I just needed a diagnosis to apply for welfare. They do not care about what goes on inside people's heads. They just want them cleared and sent on their way.

They do not have knowledge and they do not care. My therapist helped the doc with my diagnoses, same clinic. Doc wanted me to be schizoid and ADHD but she made him write RAD and dissociation.

I did not want or need self knowledge in the past but now that I do, no one cares. There are no experts. That is why I ask here and not one of them. At least therapist had some valid points bit her education seemed very basic. I do not see her anymore because I used up my number of times.

I spent most of my life in nature so I think maybe I was shaped from that. I am used to everything around me being alive.

I do not see or hear them. There is no communication. It is more I know they are out there, I feel what is in nature has its own soul and personality. I know I cannot explain it right.

It is like this thing is encoded in everything. Like if I see patterns in nature they make sense to me. Like maths almost. It is like other people only see one dimension.

Also wild animals do not shy away from me, I have petted moose and deer and that is normal to me.

It is nothing that is bad that needs to be treated, I just want to know more about this.

[amandalouise]

the easiest way to understand synesthesia is that its a bran problem where a person uses more than one of their senses at a time. its not always about colors and numbers.

my MS caused me to have this. I may look at an apple but at the same time as my eyes are seeing the apple my mouth has the taste of an apple, and at the same time as my eyes are seeing the apple and my mouth is tasting the apple, I hear the sound of an apple crunch in my ear, and can spell the apple.

this is all going on with out my even taking a bit of the apple, just sensory hallucinations because I am looking at an apple.

this sometimes gets more compounded if for example the apple is red on a dark colored bowl and the bowl is sitting on a bright table.

my senses do an optical illusion kind of thing where the apple color will blink from red to dark color of the bowl to the bright color of the table.

my point is that big word synesthesia just means your brain is processing information from more than one side of things at the same time, instead of like other people do, which causes sensory hallucinations. (not psychosis kind of hallucinations)

[*Laurie*]

There are many great intellectuals who believe that synesthesia is a tremendous gift, and the sign of an elevated mind. I learned this because when in Europe I was seeing a psychiatrist who taught me that while my psych diagnosis is bipolar disorder, the other experiences...the ones you've described...are not necessarily a psychiatric disorder.

Please find books about what you are experiencing and study them. I encourage you not to think of yourself as flawed, but as extremely blessed with a great gift.

[-jimi-]

I think there is a type where you feel other things have a personality and indeed it IS a type of synesthesia. Some people think that the "childhood schizophrenic" girl Jani Schofield has non psychotic and synesthetic hallucinations. But her parents want her to be schizophrenic. Her parents seem kind of weird. Not to go too much off topic.