People have their "personality colors" or animal forms

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Irulan
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07 Aug 2022, 3:46 pm

I decided to come up with the following question for you all (I think there is no better place for unusual questions of this sort than an aspie board :D ) – more precisely the question about some unusual phenomenon I have observed for years about myself and my way of perceiving the world around me – more specifically, the people surrounding me. As I said, it’s an unusual question but maybe I’ll manage to find someone on the board who shares with me this just as unusual feature I’m asking about now. :)

So, here it comes: does it ever happen to you that you – like myself – tend to perceive other people as having some, to put it in this way, „personality colors” or an animal form attributed to them? Maybe you don’t understand what exactly I am talking about, speaking about the color the personality of someone can be characterized by, but I’ll try to explain what I mean by this seemingly weird statement I’m hereby delivering. :) When I think about someone whom I know well, I catch myself thinking about said person as about a color I attribute to them. I just associate this person with a color in the manner some folks associate numbers with colors. And – or – with an animal. Yes, to me people assume their animal form as well – it’s not as visible in everybody on the same level but still. It doesn’t have anything to do with the personality features typically associated with said animals („he’s shy and timid, so I see him as a tiny mouse”, „she’s very proud so I see her in the form of a peacock”; no, nothing like that) – it just is the way I see someone, regardless of what sort of personality features he/she has. For example, when I was a college student, one girl from my group was always a navy blue beaver to me 8O – I still don’t know why :) . She even didn’t have any outstanding personality traits – just an ordinary young woman like any other. With this one exception: even 15 years later I still recall her as that dark blue beaver girl. As for myself, I am always a snake (a thin and light brown one, to be more precise) and my „personality colors” to put it in this way, are also navy blue as well as dark green. No idea why, again – I even don’t like dark colors, let alone reptiles (I prefer mammals as pets, in case someone of you thought I am especially fond of snakes). I have no the slightest idea why it is so. The closest description of a similar condition I ever found in the literature is the example of Sara Stanley from „The Story Girl’ and „The Golden Road” books by L. M. Montgomery; a teenager who had the gift of „having the colorful thoughts” and her friends were always associated by her with some specific colors. For example, she saw her cousin Beverley as being „striped” – when she shared this piece of information with the rest of her friends, they were very amused by this simple statement. Well, I, after reading it, wasn’t amused myself”… because Beverley King’s personality was also „striped” to me :D – more precisely, it was horizontal white and green stripes. :D

So it's time for asking my promised question now – does anything like that ever happen to you? It’s not ALWAYS like this in my case – not with everybody but still. Is it some sort of unusual synesthesia or something like that, what do you think?



klanka
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07 Aug 2022, 4:03 pm

No, nothing like that at all.

:lol:

boring answer but there ya go.

When I meet someone I'm kind of sizing them up to see certain traits like honesty, personality disorders , agreeableness, and see if they have a similar sense of humour and so on.



Fnord
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07 Aug 2022, 4:48 pm

Nope. Never.

Like Klanka, I perceive people in their current physical forms, with certain dominant personality traits. I suppose that if I was a Disney animations specialist, I might perceive people differently; but I must be a realist in that respect.



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07 Aug 2022, 8:47 pm

It sounds like it could be related to synesthesia. A few people I know of on WP have it. Here’s a definition:

Quote:
Synesthesia is when you hear music, but you see shapes. Or you hear a word or a name and instantly see a color. Synesthesia is a fancy name for when you experience one of your senses through another. For example, you might hear the name "Alex" and see green.Or you might read the word "street" and taste citrus fruit.

https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-is-syn ... 9233a5-1-1

It’s pretty interesting. If you want to learn more about it, research it or click on the link above.


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CockneyRebel
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07 Aug 2022, 9:06 pm

Om Nom represents my personality colour and my animal form. He's the Sweet Pea in my avatar.


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Dillogic
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07 Aug 2022, 10:45 pm

I associate people with colors. Person-color synesthesia. Never realized I had it and thought it was just normal until it was brought to my attention.



Irulan
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08 Aug 2022, 3:15 am

Thank you for your replies, especially Dillogic and Twilightprincess - I do know what synesthesia is, of course, but I wasn't aware of the existence of that "person-color synesthesia" phenomenon until now :D

I just found this website and quickly skimmed through it: https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021 ... hesia.html The pieces of information from that site do happen to coincide with what i observe about myself in this respect. But I swear - I wouldn't ever think that could be it. I tend to see also people's names in colors, as well. Once, for example, I read an Internet article in which a Polish man named Dionizjusz ( a very rare name; one generally considered weird) was mentioned - I instantly knew this name was honey colored; I couldn't get rid of this impression concerning said name for quite a long time.



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08 Aug 2022, 4:06 am

I don't have a form of synthesia or anything of the sort.

Yet I do have certain sensation or feeling like patterns associated in many sorts of personalities.
And without any labels to put them into.

But yeah. I do. Minus seeing colors or associating them with animals.
But I can and try to attribute it to a color though -- a lot of associations do not have colors or is outside the colors' spectrum.

I usually associated certain people with a collection of other people -- fictional, non fictional...
Like some sort of spectrum, with endless images and 'movements and moments' as a 'label'.

A lot of them I don't know who they are or what those movement means.
Kinda like some form of sorting by archetype, behaviors, tone like patterns of order. :? I just don't have a name of those.

Heck, I'd even recognize other people through 'this' than their name.


And if I try to describe mine??? Mine is chaotic.
It doesn't match with what I'm in my mind or what and how I want to be.


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Dear_one
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08 Aug 2022, 10:31 pm

Irulan wrote:
I decided to come up with the following question for you all (I think there is no better place for unusual questions of this sort than an aspie board :D ) – more precisely the question about some unusual phenomenon I have observed for years about myself and my way of perceiving the world around me – more specifically, the people surrounding me. As I said, it’s an unusual question but maybe I’ll manage to find someone on the board who shares with me this just as unusual feature I’m asking about now. :)

So, here it comes: does it ever happen to you that you – like myself – tend to perceive other people as having some, to put it in this way, „personality colors” or an animal form attributed to them?


I don't think in colours, except to find things. You do remind me of my Native American neighbours, who each feel associated with a "totem animal." I notice that even brutish white hunters almost all have a soft spot for one species that they won't harm. Once, I noticed one guy who resembled a Raven, but I didn't ask if that was his totem.



Irulan
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09 Aug 2022, 2:44 am

My very first thought was also a totem animal (although I'm not a Native American by any means, I was born and raised here in Europe, so very far from any potential cultural influences of this group I could be exposed to), I just read about this concept on the net :) But I can't answer the question why I see others in colors and especially in their animal forms they assume in my mind :)



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09 Aug 2022, 3:19 am

I have color synesthesia and to me people do have colors. Nearly everything has colors, including abstract concepts. My family members' colors have been quite consistent. But I know it's not aura because I have to know someone quite well before they have colors. As for my own color, see avatar. :D


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10 Aug 2022, 12:55 am

A really interesting question Irulan! As the trend of answers is heading, I would also think of your account as a form of synaesthesia. I tend to experience sound to taste synaesthesia mostly with the odd flashes of sound to colour. Makes music interesting lol. People's voices also tend to have a taste sense which can be really disturbing sometimes when the voice does not taste good!! ! 8O 8O


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Irulan
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10 Aug 2022, 4:51 am

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13551876/1/Synesthesia Once I even wrote a short - very short - fanfic, in which a person with synesthesia can "see" the color of other people's voices :)

And here is another mention of some sort of my synesthetic experience in that old thread of mine :) viewtopic.php?t=84793



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10 Aug 2022, 9:13 am

y-pod wrote:
My family members' colors have been quite consistent.


The colors I associate with people tend to stay the same too, likely because by the time I do, I genuinely know them, and people don't change too much overall when it comes to their true personality. In fact, I can't recall anyone changing color outside of myself, which went from green to red. It's not an aura in my case either, rather just the color I see people as, when I see or think of them. Some things can accentuate the color itself, which makes it all feel stronger, such as a simple article of clothing being a similar color.

People I don't know tend to have none. There's just the physical, which I don't pay much attention to on its own.



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11 Aug 2022, 5:33 am

No I don't have anything like that going on. I used to think it vaguely useful to categorise people as "dog people" and "cat people," but that was just a product of my thinking, an imperfect analogy that can't reasonably be taken very far.



Irulan
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26 Mar 2024, 5:37 pm

I'm hereby resurrecting this thread to add something that just came to my mind - something I forgot to mention back then - I perceive also NAMES as having their specific colors as well :)

Does anyone else also share this feature with me? :)