Synesthesia

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I think it is one of those things that can't really make sense to someone unless they have experienced it.

This isn't synesthesia, but I associate certain textures with peoples' personalities. My favorite kind of personality is "soft". It's no surprise that this is usually a very gentle-natured person. I often find myself saying "I like that person. They're soft." This would probably be more classed as a neologism.

Blunt and somewhat hot-tempered people make me think of sharp edges and loud noises. Most likely because these people are often loud themselves.

A stubborn but quiet person I usually visualize something like a large smooth stone. Smooth to the touch but still pretty hard.

I also associate tactile or visual sensations with emotions.

-Confusion (a very common emotion for me) gives me the mental image of a cloud of electrons with a mild electricity lighting in random places.
-Anger I associate with an urge to roar and a visual of a lion and also a volcano bubbling forth in my abdomen.
-Frustration is a brown volcano which is just about to burst, almost like a pressure cooker with the lid on and the sides are bending outward.
-Happiness I associate with the color yellow and Giddiness I associate with the color pink.
-Depression and sadness are just sunken surfaces, as if the air were too heavy above them.

As far as I've been able to tell reading the research, whether something is in your mind's eye (or ear, etc) or in front of you isn't a measure of the intensity of synaesthesia. It's a measure of whether the synesthesia is 'projected' or... can't remember the other word. There are also sensory and conceptual synaesthesias, differentiating between having a particular sensory output connected to a sensory input or else to a more abstract concept. Again these aren't measures of degree, more of kind. And a person can have more than one kind.

I used to spend a lot of time on synaesthesia lists. And one thing that was found was the "experts" had come up with theories about what traits constitute "real" synaesthesia, but among synaesthetes, we often "broke the rules". For instance, some people have synaesthesia that changes over time but is no less vivid for doing so. Some of the associations seemed arbitrary and some did not. One thing that became very clear was that there was no one "real" synaesthesia where everyone else just had... I don't know... "fake synaesthesia".

I do have synaesthesia, but I could not vote on the poll, for the same reason that I would not be able to accurately vote in an autism poll that was worded the same way. I can't put "severity/interference-with-life/etc" on the same axis as "liking/disliking" a thing very well at all.

At any rate, some of my synaesthesia is conceptual, some is perceptual, some is intense, some is not so intense, some is inside, some is outside, some comes and goes, and some stays the same. No clue what that says about me.

Conceptual synaesthesia is synaesthesia in reaction to concepts. Like letters and numbers having colors or textures.

Perceptual synaesthesia is synaesthesia in reaction to sensory input. Like sounds having texture, tastes having color, and so forth.

A lot of people have both.

I need to add that when I perceive sound as textures, it may not even be Synaesthesia. it may be my brain referencing different sounds that are made when certain objects strike gass, or fall into water and my brain is just associating the sound I am hearing in music to a sound that is similar to what I have heard certain textures produce.

Changes would mean that for the same person, 5 might be red at one point and green at another. Or a sound might be orange and spiky at one point, grey and round at another, and not anything at another. This goes against conventional wisdom on synaesthesia but it does seem to happen to some people, although I haven't heard as much of it described for things like numbers or letters. I've mainly heard it described for the perceptual stuff. Not sure if mood is what alters it or not. For me, overload level is a major factor.

I think that with sound there are many things that affect the perception, such as timbre. For instance, in my experience the color, shape, or texture of 440 Hz (middle A) is not the same on a piano as it is on a guitar. It may not even be the same on the piano every time middle A is played, but will depend on how the note is actually played. Even if played in the same manner it may also vary from piano to piano, depending on the sonic qualities of each instrument.