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TYPES OF SYNESTHESIA IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER



Find your type here! 
Links to types, subtypes, manifestations and a few other phenomena.
NOTE: These 300+ entries don't all lead to separate types of syn! They lead to about 100 different pages.   


Acupuncture-colour/shape (tactile-visual) (not always synesthesia)
ASMR (not considered synesthesia; for similarities/differences see auditory-tactile)
Flashes on hearing sudden or loud sounds when falling asleep (not considered synesthesia)
Flavour (see taste)
Gender as a synesthetic concurrent (concepts, letters, numbers, etc. are masculine or feminine)
General sounds-colour (and/or shape)
Geometric shapes-colour
High-production synesthesia
Ideasthesia (or ideaesthesia) (not a type of synesthesia but an alternative way of defining it)
Mathematical concepts-vision
Mathematical synesthesias
Mirror kinetics (involuntary movements on seeing other people move)  Mirror-kinetics   Mirror movement
Musical notes-texture Musical note-texture
Musical synesthesias (all the different types)
Music-colour
Music-emotion (not considered synesthesia)
Music-images, landscapes or “music videos” (not considered synesthesia)
Sight-smell: see either smelling images or concept-smell
Sight-taste: see either tasting images or concept-taste
Smelling colours (colours trigger smell perceptions)
Smelling images
Smelling music or sound
Smelling numbers
Smells-vision  Smell-visual  Smell-sight
Smell-taste (not considered synesthesia)
Social synesthesia
Songs-colour  Song-colour
Songs-smell 
Songs-taste
Sounds-colour  Sound-colour
Sounds-emotion (not considered synesthesia)  Sound-emotions
Sounds-personification  Sound personification
Sounds-physical sensations
Sounds (sudden or loud) produce visual flashes (not considered synesthesia)
Sounds-shape  Sound-shape
Sounds-involuntary movements  Sound-movement  Sounds-motions
Sounds-kinetics  Sound-kinetics
Taste-memories (not considered synesthesia)
Taste-musical notes  Tastes-musical notes
Taste-shape  Tastes-shapes
Taste-smell (not considered synesthesia)
Taste-sound  Tastes-sounds
Taste-tactile sensations  Tastes-tactile sensations
Taste-vision
Tasting colours (colours trigger taste sensations)
Timbre-shape
Time units-colour
Time units-image (mentioned in time units-colour)
Visual-olfactory synesthesia (vision-smell): see smelling images, concept-smell or colour-smell
Visual-gustatory synesthesia (vision-taste): see tasting images, concept-taste or colour-taste
Words-odd or even
Words and letters-shape/texture/colour/images  Word-shape
Words-smell  Word-smell
Words-taste  Word-taste
Words-temperature
Years-colour  Year-colour
Years-spatial location


This page last updated: 18 February 2025


75 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 12, 2022 at 8:26 AM

    What would seeing colours at people's feet when they walk be?

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    1. PauDecember 12, 2022 at 9:33 AM

      I like this question!

      People’s gait can be a good indicator of personality, and perceiving colours appearing around people is quite typical of “aura” synesthesia or personality-colour, so I think it could be that. I hadn’t heard of it around their feet before, it’s more common around their face, head, upper body… but if they way they walked was intuitively giving you the information about their personality, then that might be the case. Or if you tend to look down towards foot-level rather than maintaining your gaze on people’s faces when you see them in the street, that could be another reason. Here’s the page:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/aura-synesthesia-projective-personality.html

      The other possibility would be that it’s the sound of the person’s feet that produces colours for you, although I think that’s less likely as you would have realised it was the sound causing it. But in the page on General sounds-colour/shape, right at the end of the page, there’s a compilation of all the different colours and shapes a lot of different synesthetes associate with the sound of heels on a pavement, so you might like to read that too:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/general-sounds-vision-colourshape.html

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  2. AnonymousDecember 18, 2022 at 6:41 PM

    What would you call being able to feel someone’s face as your face when watching them and feeling their expressions as though your face is making them, and feeling their voice in your throat and your mouth making the dialect they use?

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    1. PauDecember 18, 2022 at 7:42 PM

      Feeling people’s voices in your mouth and throat as if you were making the sounds yourself would be mirror speech (https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/mirror-speech-synesthesia.html) and I think feeling somebody’s facial expressions as your own might be connected with mirror kinetics, if it depended on the movement of the person’s face (https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/mirror-kinetics.html).

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2023 at 12:59 AM

    Any chance there's a Tactile–Tactile Synesthesia (experiencing tactile sensations from being touched)? It would be the same effects as auditory–tactile synesthesia but evoked from physical touch - I can't find any answers on this, please let me know if you're aware of anything.

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    1. PauJanuary 3, 2023 at 3:03 PM

      Hi! No, that wouldn’t be a kind of synesthesia. I'm not completely sure what you mean, though. Do you mean like a kind of “referred itch” phenomenon, but only when other people touch you, in a different part of the body from where you were touched? And which wouldn’t be accounted for by emotion (e.g. if someone you have a romantic interest in touches your hand and you get a tingle in your spine?)

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    2. AnonymousJanuary 5, 2023 at 10:19 AM

      Hi, thanks for your answer! No, it's not tied to a "referred itch" at all, and it's not mainly emotionally-tied. As a person who experiences similarities to (self-diagnosed) Mirror-Touch and Audio-Tactile Synesthesia's, I can describe it as experiencing Audio-Tactile synesthesia. I'd say it's like feeling pulsation/ripple sensations from the point where you're touched that travel throughout your body (it's also like tactile-visual but more involves feeling that energy movement throughout your body instead of seeing it in patterns/colors). I apologize if this is unclear; I haven't found a great way to explain it yet. Thanks for your questions and time!

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    3. PauJanuary 5, 2023 at 9:45 PM

      Ah, OK! That's very interesting... and I hadn't heard of it before. If you say it isn't really emotionally-tied, what aspect of the touch experience do you think causes it? I can sort of imagine it as I have auditory-tactile too and get those kind of sensations from sound, although it's a bit difficult for me to capture it exactly. Is it always when people touch you or is it also other kinds of touch, like when you brush against something? Is it different depending on which person is doing the touching, I mean if they're someone close to you, a stranger, etc? Does it depend on the kind of touch (caress, grab, hit, accidentally brush, etc.)?

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    4. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2023 at 3:49 AM

      Thanks, again. It's most consistently stimulated by other people's touch but from brushing against soft or smooth textures too. It can be from anyone (but it's the most intense when it's someone close rather than a stranger) and it's from all kinds of touch, just not to a point of pain. I can't find anything that describes it, I've looked into touch sensitivity and just about every synesthesia platform (but it's technically just one sense - so I understand that it wouldn't be synesthesia applicable). Rippling energy is the best way for me to describe it.

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    5. AnonymousAugust 16, 2024 at 8:59 PM

      I have the same experience as this commenter! I also have self diagnosed mirror-touch and audio tactile synesthesia. If I am touched say on my arm, in a manner that has an emotion attached to it, either with love or anger etc... it will send off a ripple through my entire body of that same emotion.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 29, 2023 at 10:18 AM

    I will be very grateful if any Synesthete could let me know if she or he sees colours or different shades of the same when certain letters are pronounced aloud.There is an interesting aspect of chanting alphabets I am trying to investigate.Thanks,

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  5. AnonymousFebruary 11, 2023 at 10:02 AM

    If anyone knows what feeling sight would be(feeling like its distance to yourself like a needle to your eye if its sharp) could you tell me.

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  6. AnonymousApril 19, 2023 at 12:22 PM

    Can you add musical-space synesthesia on there?

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    1. PauApril 22, 2023 at 10:49 AM

      I've answered you over on "Musical synesthesias".

      Delete
  7. AnonymousJune 17, 2023 at 12:41 AM

    would imagining being touch in a part of the body and being able to feel it be considered synesthesia?

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    1. PauJune 19, 2023 at 10:06 PM

      No, that wouldn't be considered a type of synesthesia. It would fit in more with hyperphantasia, in this case tactile hyperphantasia, meaning that if this happens to you often or at will, you would have an above average ability to recreate and actually feel tactile sensations just by thinking about them. Some people have this kind of detailed perception on looking at or imagining textures too.

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  8. AnonymousJune 24, 2023 at 8:50 AM

    What would it be if in my Minds Eye, I know what shape someone's singing voice is? I don't see the colour or shape, but I KNOW what the shape and colour of the song is in my head. Sometimes I hate the shape, so I hate the song. Another one: When I'm writing, where my infomation/writing has been hangs off of the paper/my fingers like loose hairs growing everywhere. For example, if I put my writing through an online paraphraser, the mess of... idk what I'll call them, but tendrils becomes more and more chaotic. If I have loads of different excerpts from websites on a PowerPoint, the same thing happens. They only go away when I stop and leave for a good 24 hours, but even when I come back I KNOW they are there, like the strings in Sherlock Holmes' corkboard tying the words allover the world/internet/idk

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  9. PauJune 24, 2023 at 10:23 AM

    The singing voices one would be voice-colour/shape, and it's just as valid if it's associative (=you don't see it, you just know or perceive it in your mind's eye) and not projective.
    https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/voice-colour-and-voice-shape.html
    The second one, this sounds like it would belong to the concept-shape type, in fact on the page on this there are several examples of synesthetes having perceptions of shape and movement specifically when they are writing or doing things connected with texts, even if they don't usually notice these perceptions for other areas of activity or thought, so that might be your case too:
    https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/concept-shape-synesthesia.html

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  10. AnonymousJuly 22, 2023 at 8:04 AM

    I was wondering if there is a category for visual-tactile (or motion-tactile) synaesthesia, other than mirror touch. When I see objects I have a sense of their textures kind of within me or on me, almost as if I'm feeling it just by looking at it. I also feel the motion of objects kind of like sensations on my body, especially when people are gesturing at me. Their hands sometimes feel like vague slashing movements across my skin. I think of it sort of like having an invisible extension of my body that feels the world without actually touching it. What are your thoughts on this?

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    1. PauJuly 27, 2023 at 9:41 PM

      Hi, those are interesting comments! The looking-at-objects-and-feeling-their-texture-physically I think is more connected with hyperphantasia (hyperphantasia tactile), even perhaps if it's automatic. I've heard several people mention this, but I don't think it has a specific name and I don't think it's ever been considered synesthesia by any scientists. Feeling sensations on your body from gestures of other people I really don't know, in a way it sounds kind of related to mirror-touch, somewhere between mirror-touch and mirror-kinetics but... different! In a category of its own perhaps. Then again, if it's not strictly either of those then it wouldn't be considered syn. As far as I know this kind of sensitivity doesn't even have a specific name (yet)... although I must say I haven't studied the subject enough to be able to say much else. If I come across anything of interest about this I will try and post it here in response to your comment. Sorry I can't be of much help!

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  11. AnonymousAugust 11, 2023 at 1:40 AM

    What if you had mirror pain that controls you. What if big rooms feel like marshmallows pushing on you and the air is thick to breath. Where does one seek help if their synesthesia is more neg than positive?

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  12. AnonymousDecember 31, 2023 at 5:56 PM

    Hi! I am a Middle school student and recently I discovered synesthesia. I heard about it through a 'book talk' that one of my classmates did on a book called "A mango shaped space". I decided to read the book myself, and I was confused when the characters in the book responded to the main character talking about the things she saw. They acted like it was unusual and weird. As long as I remember I have seen letters and numbers in my head as colors. I went to a Montessori school when I was younger and we had many hands-on lessons and songs about things like days of the week, months in a year, and the alphabet and numbers. The alphabet is the main thing that I could relate to in "a mango shaped space" and ever since I had learned it, I have seen it as a wiggle line of colorful letters. The number line also formed in my head with color. as I learned about things like negative numbers, it grew or became more detailed, but the colors of each letter or number never changed. C has always been yellow, and 6 has always been cool white, etc. In grade school we used bead bars, colored beads on wires, to represent numbers. It annoyed me the way certain numbers were colored. 3 was a pink bead bar, when it was "supposed" to be red, and 2 was green when I saw it as yellow. 4 was a very cool yellow bead bar, which almost perfectly matched mine. The most annoying bead bars, however, were 7 and 8. The bead bar 7 was white, when it should have been brown, and the bead bar 8 was brown, when it should have been white. Math wasn't as hard as many people with colored numbers describe it as, but one of the best parts was that 6 plus 3 equaled 9. Red and white makes pink!
    We used to sing songs about the days and months in order, and in the month song, we had cards. The cards said the month name and had color all around it. I don't remember particularly being annoyed at the color choices, but the way we put them in a circle made me cringe. The weekdays are a loop in my head. Monday is purple and rounded and near the top left corner of the loop, Tuesday is brown, diagonally below it to the right, Wednesday is teal-ish blue and flat, closest to me (the color makes it my favorite) and so on. My family doesn't see any of this except maybe my younger brother, but he keeps telling me that it isn't synesthesia and everyone has colored stuff and sees time as a loop. I don't actually see my colors in the physical world. Another thing I wanted to mention was that I "see" certain songs. I can only remember seeing a few. One example I have, though, is the song "a thousand years" because I heard it somewhere when I was younger and always saw a pinkish orange background and darker pink around the words of the chorus. I recently heard the song again and the colors are so familiar. They never changed. I see color and stuff for other sounds and even sensations. When I get too active and I can feel my heart beating in me, it's Grey with lighter Grey in the middle, oval shaped, and pulsing with my heart. When people cough it's brown and gritty, and breathing it usually shades of grey in stringy, painted looking brushstrokes.
    Left is yellow and right is red. Left is proper and high class. Also L is yellow and R is red, so that might add to the reason behind those colors. Shapes have color too. Some classmates did an experiment for their science fair project where they tested people on naming the shape versus the word over the shape, (if that makes sense) and I did the best out of them because I ignored that the letters were words and focused on the colors of the shapes instead, and vice versa. Circle the word is yellow, while circle the shape is blue. Triangle is brown and red, but triangles are orangish yellow. Is any of this synesthesia? I have not been diagnosed at all, and I haven't even brought up the subject to my parents other than that restaurant time. Ty!

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    1. PauJanuary 1, 2024 at 11:57 PM

      All of it's synesthesia! And from what you say, it sounds like your younger brother is a synesthete too. It often happens that synesthetes think their perceptions are just something ordinary that everyone else must have too. Let me know if you need help in identifying any of your types in particular, although I think you can probably find all of them here without too much difficulty. About being diagnosed or not, a doctor's diagnosis isn't necessary for this as it isn't a medical condition, so you wouldn't need that.

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  13. AnonymousDecember 31, 2023 at 6:07 PM

    Edit- I changed stuff and didn't add the restaraunt thing in there in the end, but forgot to remove it at the end of the comment. restaraunt time means the time I mentioned it to them and they said they did not see the colors, besides my brother. Sorry if that caused confusion.

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  14. SalertseJanuary 9, 2024 at 8:33 PM

    É sinestesia se as cores não tem relação com personalidade ou sons? Elas só estão lá em volta de tudo e todos. Geralmente a mesma cor no mesmo ambiente. Mas muda às vezes ou aparecem cores diferentes no mesmo ambiente. Geralmente é a mesma cor em volta de tudo. Tipo só branco transparente. Ou só amarelo transparente etc. Porém elas se projetam e seguem o movimento do meu olhar fazendo com que o formato da pessoa ou objeto salte no ar aonde estou olhando. Também segue o movimento das pessoas e objetos. Porém às vezes acontece formas de linhas, quadrados, ou pessoas aparecerem no ar sem ter o objeto ou a pessoa lá. E no caso das linhas e objetos já apareceram uns 5 juntos cada um uma cor no mesmo ambiente. Existe algo semelhante a enxergar as coisas se movimentando ou derretendo lentamente quando estão paradas? Tipo uma ilusão de ótica. E eu sinto muitas sensações estranhas tipo de sentir o sangue circular na cabeça. Pontos do músculo pulsando, partes da pele queimando, pinicando ou coçando. Seria algo como sinestesia ou outra coisa?

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    1. SalertseJanuary 9, 2024 at 8:35 PM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. PauJanuary 11, 2024 at 12:48 PM

      Olá, Salertse.
      Os fenómenos que descreve não parecem relacionados com a sinestesia, não.
      Infelizmente não tenho conhecimentos suficientes para saber o que podem ser, mas não são consistentes com a “sinestesia de auras”, que se apresenta duma forma diferente, nem com as sinestesias táteis, que são invocadas por indutores específicos (conceitos, sabores, tipos de música etc. etc.: há muitos), que costumam a ser facilmente identificáveis pela pessoa que as experimenta. Talvez estas experiências tenham uma origem neurológica, e um médico seria a pessoa mais adequada para as esclarecer neste caso. (Mas como já disse, não tenho conhecimentos disto e pode ser qualquer outra coisa!) Espero que consiga encontrar a resposta e esclarecer as dúvidas.

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  15. AnonymousJanuary 10, 2024 at 10:54 PM

    awwwwwwwwwwwwwww

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  16. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2024 at 2:36 AM

    Hi I have an interesting experience and I was wondering if it’s synesthesia. When ever I think of past, present or future I see a color around my area. For example whenever I think of the past I see gold in my vision so is this synesthesia?

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    1. PauJanuary 23, 2024 at 10:03 PM

      That certainly sounds like synesthesia, yes! Some synesthetes have a colour perception for periods of their own lives, others for more specific periods of time in general like years or months or times of day. So past, present and future can definitely be a series of time concepts that evoke synesthetic colours (as long as they make you perceive the same colours each time and not different ones). This would be a type of time units-to-colour synesthesia, or coloured sequences. Actually I'll add a mention of this subtype on the pages on these types:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/coloured-sequence-synesthesia.html
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/time-units-colour.html

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  17. AnonymousApril 2, 2024 at 7:09 AM

    Not to gross anybody out, but when I was a toddler, I think I had my first sin, aesthetic experience that involved soiled diapers. I a recall the sound that seemed to have been generated by the warmth of the feces against my buttocks. Imagine the lowest A-note a child or a woman can hum. Now imagine someone saying ‘gurrrrrrrr’ in that single a-note pitch. That was the sound I heard, and the ‘rrrr’ part of it continued endlessly until someone removed my diaper, at which point it ended abruptly. Is this a form of synesthesia? I am wondering if it would be considered temperature/Audio synesthesia. It was because of this that I referred to my feces as ‘gur’ when I was around two years of age, though my mother did not have a clue as to why I did so. She knew nothing about my synesthesia, and I knew nothing about synesthesia either. I just assumed that everybody had it being that I felt those sensations. I have other synesthetic experiences, and they are associated with sound generating flashes of light, music chords generating sense of either touch or smell, etc.

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    1. PauApril 3, 2024 at 3:08 PM

      Hi! If it was just a one-off thing that happened to you it couldn't really be considered synesthesia, but if you've noted that you have consistent sound perceptions on a more regular basis, or used to have them on a more regular basis as a child, with different temperature sensations, then I think you could consider it a type.

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    2. AnonymousApril 3, 2024 at 9:47 PM

      Being that I am bowel incontinent and therefore must wear diapers, yes, I still experience this sound. If I am holding somebody’s hand or feel body heat on other areas, I hear the same hum though, but without the constant ‘gurrrrrrr’ in the a-note. Instead, it’s just an a Oatey hum and soft sound.

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    3. AnonymousApril 3, 2024 at 10:08 PM

      Darn this phone! I meant note not Oatey. I don’t know how that happened. It is supposed to read a-note, not a Oatey. Pardon my screwup once again. iPhones are stupid!

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    4. PauApril 6, 2024 at 1:10 PM

      Yes, if the tones you hear are consistent with the different types of temperature experiences, then it could certainly be considered temperature-to-sound synesthesia!

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  18. AnonymousApril 2, 2024 at 7:14 AM

    I am blind, and I use the dictate function on my cell phone. I just now caught a typo. What I meant to say was I believe I had my first synesthetic experience as a toddler.

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    1. PauApril 3, 2024 at 3:12 PM

      Understood! I like the idea of synesthesia being an aesthetic sin, though, so I liked the typo!

      Delete
  19. AnonymousApril 4, 2024 at 8:37 AM

    I didn’t know this interesting fact about synesthesia until I interviewed Dr. Cytowic last month, but a lot of blind people are synesthetes.I wonder if my synesthesia, however, is why I have very vivid memories of my childhood. These memories are pleasant, but they are so rich in detail. There was a set of oak stairs in our house, on which I used to play. There were many times, back when I was about a year of age, when I would hold onto the legs of the banister and walk up the outside of the stairs. I will hold onto the edge of the stairs with my tippy toes and walk clear up to the top. I can still feel the smoothness of the oak, nice and polished, which had an anesthetic sound to it. it was soft white noise mixed with merging musical notes that were ululating tones that I just can’t begin to describe, but every time I feel polished oak or any other polished wood that even resembles that staircase, I hear that sound in my head. Looking through the long list of synesthesia, I have identified myself as having numerous different types of synesthesia. I have alphabet and spatial sequence synesthesia. Another type is temperature to sound. Certain names are synesthetic. The name Doreen taste like a peeled orange. The boys name Warren has a repulsive edge to it like an onion that had been cut into. The name, Eric taste and feels like a piece of cake whereas the name Alice is a ripe apple. The name Ruth smells like a Thanksgiving dining room. It even has that feel. I don’t know why, but the name Ruth is a spacious dining room with a table loaded with Thanksgiving food and a carpeted floor. The name Matthew feels like soft flannel. Whenever I hear the state Tennessee being mentioned, I feel on my hand, a metal sprocket chain like that of a bicycle. The sound of a piccolo smells of tarnished, copper or brass. The sound of a warbling piccolo generates a wavery light in my head. It is as if a mirror is being held in front of my eyes and rock back-and-forth. I have light and shadow perception. It is as if somebody is rocking a mirror back-and-forth rapidly when I hear a warbling piccolo. I am curious to find out about some of the words and phrases we use and whether or not they were invented by somebody with synesthesia. The two words that come to mind are white noise. I wonder if the man or woman who invented that word had synesthesia. Certainly for me, white noise. Looks like it sounds. It is white. Can see perhaps packages of toilet paper on the bathroom shelf and I could feel the softness of the packages whenever I hear that. This is the white noise you hear coming out of an analog television set or radio. not to confuse anyone with the description of the oak stairway I described earlier, but the white noise I am talking about is just white noise alone and not a mixed bunch of musical notes involved with it. The sound of the distorted screaming guitar used in the Heights song, How Do You Talk to an Angel, feels to me like a baby of about nine months old. It is as if I’m holding the baby in my arms. Whenever I hear that sound, I feel a baby. I don’t know why, but I do. Though I appreciate the song for all it is now, I must state that the threshold track of Steve Miller’s jet airliner used to scare the hell out of me as a child. It felt like searing heat, almost painful, focused like a beam on my skin. I still feel that heat when I hear the threshold track, but I appreciate it. It makes it all that much more interesting. It doesn’t scare me anymore like it used to, and I know that it is just my synesthesia. I cherish and embrace every single experience I have. Even the painful ones I find interesting. Synesthesia is a very fascinating thing, a journey of the senses.

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    1. AnonymousApril 4, 2024 at 9:36 AM

      I noticed another typo. I meant undulating tones, not ululating, lol.

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    2. PauApril 15, 2024 at 9:43 PM

      Thank you for telling us about your synesthetic experiences. They're very interesting.
      To me, white noise is grey :D

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  20. AnonymousApril 4, 2024 at 8:42 AM

    Correction: synesthetic, not anesthetic. Sorry once again.

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  21. AnonymousApril 4, 2024 at 8:48 AM

    My sincere apologies to all of you for the text that I didn’t speak, but was inserted. Hopefully, this problem was resolved because I went into my settings and turned off the auto correct function. Now, we can talk about synesthesia with a more clearer means of communication, or so I hope.

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  22. AnonymousApril 5, 2024 at 2:19 AM

    I have identified myself as having several types of synesthesia listed here. I have letter-tactile with the letters a, b, f, i, k, o, q, s, w, and y. C, g, j, and u are associated with spacial location and light. Letters d, e, h, l, m, n, r, t, v, x, and z aren’t synesthetic.

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  23. AnonymousApril 5, 2024 at 6:10 PM

    Could I have mirror pain synesthesia? The reason why I am asking is because my mother would have me rub her feet. If I came across a sore on her foot, I felt a painful feeling deep inside me like in my belly - the upper right and lower left quadrant - and in both sides of my back, down in my kidney area. It hurt, and I would wince. I got that same feeling when I felt my cousins dogs claw after she had broken it off badly and it was dangling deep down by her toe. Could this be a form of empathetic pain synesthesia?

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    1. PauApril 6, 2024 at 1:13 PM

      I think you are referring to the phenomenon described on this page of the Tree: https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/pain-empathy.html
      Not usually considered synesthesia as doesn't fit in with all the criteria and it's experienced by a larger part of the population and not just synesthetes, although some researchers do consider that it is.

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  24. AnonymousApril 8, 2024 at 5:08 AM

    I hear and crest rhythms out of the world around me. When people talk I hear the rhythm of their voice. I get rhythms stuck in my head. Sometimes I think in iambic pentameter for days on end. Is this a type of synesthesia?

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    1. PauApril 9, 2024 at 9:11 PM

      No, it doesn't sound like a type of synesthesia. Sorry can't tell you what it might be called. Hope you find out!

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  25. AnonymousApril 18, 2024 at 5:30 AM

    i see a single colour when reading a book (ex: the perks of being a wallflower is a burnt orange, dead poet's society is a greyish-blue, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo is a chartreuse), what would this be?

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  26. PauApril 18, 2024 at 10:53 AM

    Hi! This would be coloured sequence synesthesia. Books are one of the less common variants, but it can exist for many different series or sequences of concepts.
    https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/coloured-sequence-synesthesia.html

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  27. BaileyJune 4, 2024 at 7:21 PM

    I always see different letters and numbers as different colors, but I don't see it like, if I look at letters in the real world, I just know what colors they are. I'm unsure if that's synesthesia or not. And then like, sounds have shapes, but again, I don't see it in the real world, I can see it in my brain, so I don't know if it's synesthesia

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    1. PauJune 5, 2024 at 10:26 AM

      Yes, just "knowing" that letters or sounds are a certain colour or just seeing them in your mind's eye is also synesthesia, and in fact this is how the majority of synesthetes experience it!

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  28. AnonymousJune 18, 2024 at 9:43 PM

    what is the most prevalent synesthesia for each of these categories (inducers): sight, smell, sound, physical/touch, taste, time, concepts, things, sequences, and emotions.

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    1. PauJune 20, 2024 at 9:42 PM

      Colour, for all of them. You could add spatial location for time, as that's also very common.

      Delete
  29. AnonymousJuly 10, 2024 at 11:41 PM

    Is smelling temperature considered synsthesia? I might had missed it on the list but hot air smells lumpy and like blood (weird) and cold smells like dust

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    1. PauJuly 17, 2024 at 7:35 PM

      Hi! As far as I'm aware this has never been considered a type of synesthesia.

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  30. AnonymousJuly 20, 2024 at 10:39 AM

    Hi, I was wondering if this was some sort of associative Synesthesia. I’ve only recently realized that most people don’t automatically mentally feel things in their heads or see colors and shapes of things. I don’t physically hear the sound of images or see colors when I look at words; I see and mentally feel them in my head. When I say mentally feel, I don’t mean in an emotional or physical way; I don’t know how to describe the feelings other than the fact that they're in my mind and these feelings change for everything. Everything different has its own mental feelings. I don’t remember or learn things without mental feelings. Every number has a mental feeling, and when I’m trying to remember numbers, I automatically feel them, and that feeling brings out color and personalities within these numbers. Days of the week are mapped out in different colors and feelings in my head. I love certain words because I love their color combos. I avoid the number 7 because I don’t like the color orange, and orange feels very uncomfortable. It’s easier for me to remember a set of numbers using their colors because number shapes move around too much in my head to focus. When I’m multiplying, I mentally feel the numbers translating, and I see their colors. When I’m specifically thinking about someone, I feel their personality in my head and can feel them in different places in my mind with colors. If I imagine certain objects, I feel them in different places, distance wise, in my head. With very specific sounds and images, I get a really gross taste feeling in my mouth. When I finally gain an understanding of a concept, I strongly feel the mental feeling translating. When I feel pain, I feel the color and images mentally. I can describe the sound the pain would make based on what it looks like in my head. I don’t know how people’s brains function if they don’t have mental feelings. If I don’t have a mental feeling for something, I struggle to remember and understand it. My mental feelings set in before I fully comprehend anything, and they don’t change once they’re there. It’s like everything is already there, waiting to be unlocked. Is there a name for my mental feelings? Is any of this related to Synesthesia? (Sorry for how longgg this question is.)

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    1. PauJuly 28, 2024 at 10:31 AM

      Hi! If the “feelings” you describe lead to colour perceptions (and personalities, as you say for numbers), then it can certainly be considered synesthesia.
      What you say about the weekdays also fits in the with the idea of synesthesia.
      Being able to describe the different colours of words, even if they aren’t physically visible to you, or if they’re totally merged in with a “feeling” that also has many other – often indescribable – aspects and not just colour, is how synesthesia manifests.
      Person-colour with additional mappings of the people in mental locations around you is also synesthesia.
      As to objects having locations when you think of them, if the objects are part of a series, sequence or group and not just random one-off objects and the locations you feel they are in are consistent, then that could certainly be spatial sequence synesthesia too.
      In general, having the “mental feelings set in before I fully comprehend anything, and they don’t change once they’re there” is very typical of synesthesia.
      You might want to look at these pages, if you haven’t already, as they describe some of the types you mention:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/spatial-sequences-of-concepts-other.html
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/mathematical-synesthesias.html
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/sensation-synesthesia-or-mixed.html
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/pain-colour-and-pain-shape-synesthesia.html
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/pain-sound-synesthesia.html

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    2. AnonymousAugust 28, 2024 at 12:02 AM

      Sorry for the late reply but thank you for your response and providing pages that specially match my experiences :D I appreciate your response, thank you for clearing this up for me.

      Delete
  31. AnonymousJuly 24, 2024 at 9:55 AM

    Hi! I was wondering if I may have some sort of synesthesia…

    I’ve recently realized the way I describe art is rather… strange to most people. I don’t just describe emotions as a lot of people do because while art pieces do evoke emotions in me they also just… they FEEL like certain things??? They just… they have a vibe to me??? Like I was just trying to describe how an artist’s style felt to me and all I could think of to say was “it feels kind of like wiggles and also like a sleezy, jazzy bar from the mobster era but like… in a good way.” The art was fantasy art. It was depicting a scene from Alice in Wonderland.
    I’ve described art as soft, fluffy clouds that made me think of flowy watercolor paint (it was not a painting). I’ve described it as squishy and like… you know the good kinda squishy when you squishy something in your hand but it doesn’t destroy it? It just reforms and it’s fine but it also makes this really satisfying squishy noise and it also FEELS satisfying to squish and is pudgy??? Yeah that.

    I think it’s only happened when I look at art, but I’m only really now coming to realize it, so I may not have noticed it when I was looking at other things.

    Is this anything like Synesthesia????

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  32. AnonymousAugust 7, 2024 at 9:22 AM

    Hello, I am Aman from India. I am working as a Writer and a Director. Currently I am working on a story which is about Synesthesia and Synesthete. I am looking for someone who can help me in research and share his/her experience of being a synesthete and their world view. My aim is to spread awareness and make the people aware about this subject as many of the people haven’t even heard about this yet. So, if anyone is interested then please reach at my mail id imbansalaman2004@gmail.com

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  33. AnonymousAugust 17, 2024 at 3:28 PM

    Hi do basically I think I may have multiple types of synesthesia I see pain as dark red like blood like color I also see personality’s as colors as well as numbers can vision synesthesias have vision that’s related to another type of synesthesia like whenever I see the number 7 it reminds me of a bad time so I see it as dark red and when I see a person that hurts others or myself their personality is dark red to me

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    1. PauSeptember 4, 2024 at 2:09 PM

      Hello!
      Whether you could consider your dark red 7 to be grapheme-colour synesthesia, well that would depend on whether you had colours for other numbers as well. If you have no other colours for the other numbers, then it would probably just be an assocation in this case.
      If perceiving a dark red colour for an abusive personality is just one of the different concurrent colours you have for a range of personalities (I think that’s what you’re saying with “I also see personalities as colours”, is that right?, like a fun person might be blue or a artistic person green or a careful person yellow and white, etc.), then that would certainly be part of your personality-colour synesthesia. The fact that it’s the same as your colour concurrent for other concepts you associate with painful experiences could be quite logical, I think. I don’t think I’ve read any reports of this cross-over effect across different types of synesthesia so I can’t really say for sure, but it seems logical to me that it might happen.

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  34. AnonymousAugust 17, 2024 at 3:28 PM

    *so that was a typo

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  35. AnonymousOctober 9, 2024 at 12:20 AM

    I have ordinal linguistic personification synesthesia, that was surprisingly easy to suss out. One I can’t quite figure out though is looking at food (or anything I would put in my mouth as a young kid) and having an idea of what that should taste like. It’s like I’m remembering a taste. But that flavor doesn’t actually exist. There are often textures associated with the flavor too. Most of these associations I believe don’t have any real world analogue. It doesn’t have to be real food either, filmed or cartoon foods do it as well. I’ve had this as far back as I can remember and it makes it insanely hard to try new foods even now as an adult. I still know what steak, tomatoes, lobster, beans, etc should taste like but don’t and never have. I ended up eating mostly bland foods as a kid because of this and I feel like I’m having to overwrite my brain to eat new things.

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    1. PauOctober 24, 2024 at 2:39 PM

      Hi! Your taste sensations wouldn’t be considered synesthesia, as the types of synesthesia related to tasting things are for specific idiosyncratic taste perceptions not with foods or things you might actually eat but with series or sequences of other categories such as words, colours, musical notes or other aspects of music (musical genres for example), numbers, letters, body movements etc.
      Perhaps you can find something similar to what you’re experiencing on this page:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/smelling-images.html
      I’m not sure if the exact same thing is there but it still seems like it would be more related to “savourisation” (i.e. automatic recreation of tastes in your mouth) or some kind of gustatory hyperphantasia.

      Delete
  36. AnonymousNovember 2, 2024 at 3:46 AM

    Would it be a type of synesthesia if when your listening to music a colour gets stronger/ more vibrant, like listening to a specific song the greens get more vibrant?

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    1. PauNovember 12, 2024 at 2:27 PM

      Hi! You don’t say which aspect of the songs gives you the colour impression, but getting consistent colour impressions from music is synesthesia. If you just have one colour per song and that colour gets stronger as it progresses, then that would be part of Song-colour synesthesia. The fact it gets progressively more vibrant wouldn’t have a name as a separate type, as the names of synesthesia types only have to do with which aspect of the music produces your perceptions (timbre, tones, chords, songs, genres etc.) and whether those perceptions are colour, shape, taste, etc.

      If you’re not sure which aspect of the music is giving you the colour perception, you could look at the different types of musical synesthesia to see which one you identify with:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/musical-synesthesias.html

      Or answer the questions in the Synesthesia Finder to narrow it down to one type:
      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/p/0.html

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  37. AnonymousDecember 6, 2024 at 6:20 AM

    i'm not sure if this is synesthesia or not, but foods have shapes. this one time i made a dessert, and it was a tortilla with butter, cinnamon and sugar. i took a bite of it and it tasted weird. i have an autistic cousin who i'm close to, and he was there, so i gave him a bite. "it tastes....." we both had no words for the taste until i said it tasted like a triangle. he said that was the perfect description for the taste of it. my brother said it just tasted weird. i can also feel sounds. certain music has colors depending on the genre. people have colors. sound has color as well. i can't really describe it, but colors have shapes. orange is a wavy circle. red is a rectangle. brown is an oval. when i feel a loss of words for something or for an experience, i can always trace back the feeling to a color and shape. colors have sexualities. so do numbers. i can always pair a number to a shape and color. 7 is blue and a circle. it's also a boy. weather has color. my classes in school have color. my friends have shapes, too. i can always tell if people are red or black that they are bad news. a boy who was navy blue wanted to date me, and i said no. he had the wrong color. he got arrested for raping a lot of girls. it's weird, but it's also like a superpower, cause it's like i'm living in a 8D world while everyone else is in 5D. emotions have shapes. a lot of things have shapes and colors. ummm but yeah. synesthesia????

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    1. AnonymousDecember 6, 2024 at 6:27 AM

      also i've gotten letters mixed up based on their color. there was a word i was thinking of and i remember it had a purple first letter so i couldn't figure out if it was m or p (the word was medic)

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    2. PauDecember 6, 2024 at 8:47 AM

      Absolutely, synesthesia, yes! Everything you mention there. Your taste-shape and person-colour synesthesia sound especially interesting.

      If you want to know more about your different types, I suggest you use the Synesthesia Finder for each type, as that should take you to the page about it.

      https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/p/0.html

      If there are any of them you can’t find, let me know via these comments and I’ll point you in the right direction.

      Delete
  38. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2025 at 3:22 PM

    Hi, so there are many reasons one uses xenogenders but for me, it’s because I feel that it’s actually my gender. Like for example, how my gender feels like a color rather than better represented as a color. My gender actually feels like a color. Seriously. Well, more like a swirl of colors. No, it is not a metaphor, it’s what I actually feel. And my gender also feels like an animal (nonhuman) and also feels like the emotion of deepness and sadness. And other concepts as well, it is very complicated. Once again, no metaphors. It feels the same way as I feel as a boy. I wonder if this would count as synesthesia?

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    1. PauJanuary 26, 2025 at 3:19 PM

      Hi! Although I'm not knowledgeable about the subject of xenogenders, I see what you mean and as to whether your different perceptions are synesthesia, well if you perceive a consistent colour or combination of colours for each of the different genders or gender concepts that exist, that would be coloured sequence synesthesia. If you only perceive colours for one gender, which is the one that you identify with, and not for any of the others, that wouldn't be synesthesia in itself but you could perhaps think whether you have colours for another series or sequence of aspects that are not gender itself but perhaps, for example, different aspects of yourself. Some coloured sequence synesthesia sub-types correspond to aspects such as different time periods in your life, different ways you've seen yourself as a person over your past and present, different moods, different personalities... so perhaps it is connected with one of those or something similar.

      A metaphor of one single gender to an animal or an emotion wouldn't be considered synesthesia. But if the range of different emotions each correspond automatically and consistently to some kind of manifestation - usually colour but could be shape, spatial positioning, feelings involving a sound, smell or taste, or more rarely an image for each one - then that could possibly be synesthesia, if you feel you've never assigned them consciously and they've just always been like that.

      Delete
  39. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2025 at 3:24 PM

    (Im the one who just commented about my gender, when I say “It feels the same way as I feel as a boy.” I mean that I also have a boy gender, and Im saying that my xenogenders feel as real as my boy gender)

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  40. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2025 at 3:27 PM

    (Xenogender person) And for my emotions, I feel like they’re their own creatures, form and everything, like I didn’t create them I just found them out, but Im less sure about this one being synesthesia. Im just adding this in here just in case. Yeah it probably is something else. But it isn’t a metaphor either.

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  41. AnonymousMarch 29, 2025 at 6:56 PM

    Hello - just found this page! I'm not exactly sure what I have. It is definitely some type of synaesthesia but no description fits it. I am thinking maybe Kinesthetic as I read some comments I could relate to about people with that but unsure. Basically the senses involved are sight, motion feeling(?) and sound. I also have a bit of mirror touch, where I can feel some pain of others but mainly if it's in the context of movement e,g movement to injury. A still image of an injury or someone's injury stationary like a bruise won't make me feel anything but someone hitting their elbow would. I also have a bit of the "being able to feel objects by sight" in that I can imagine how each thing I look at feels in the space around it, like I can reach out and touch it just by looking.
    Other than that the main thing is - with sound I can feel movement? I guess. And "sight" fits into that if there is movement that I see. The reason I got into researching this is I found I was having visual auras after watching very in-sync music videos of someone who definitely has a similar type of synaesthesia to me (I can tell by how they edit - I like to make these music videos myself, but not as good quality as theirs!) Anyway, in watching these I was finding I was inducing the auras. Basically inducing migraines by having my synaesthesia overactive (feeling the motion, in sync with sound and sight)- which got me down this rabbit hole.
    I found some descriptions of "kinesthetic synaesthesia" as feeling outside oneself, by sight/sound/feeling, almost on another dimension. One comment I read on Reddit on this summed it up perfectly. I can't remember the precise words but they said they had served in the military and the synaesthesia effectively gave them 3d/4d maps, almost processing by feeling around them - and that this state was induced by high stakes situations. For me it is less cool than that - in that the "high stakes situations" are like the door going when I don't know who it is, but still, that anxiety can put me in this mode. I used to call it echolocation, but it's like I can feel, by the sounds etc, the space around me very intensely, to the point it maps out and I can feel and see it as if it were a part of me. 4D is definitely the right way to describe it because it isn't exactly a visual map that I see, but instead like some other weird sense, like I am extending beyond myself. This only activates when I am very anxious (high stakes), and it is hard to put into words what exactly it is other than the senses combining to give me some weird spatial connection.
    It's hard exactly to describe things here and even the senses named individually cannot really describe it. Taste and smell are excluded. It's visual - the movement I see I can feel and hear? I guess? But also the space between me and things is like I can feel what I see anyway, and the movements I feel do not have to be related to a person moving. So an example of that is - I love watching aerobatics routines. If I watch them, I feel myself as the plane, not the pilot. I feel the plane move as if I was the plane????! What even is this?
    Anyway all of this intermingling of sense is extremely overwhelming at times. I am on the autism spectrum too so it is quick for it to overwhelm me (busy motion, like crowds, too loud and too much etc, etc). It is however useful for video editing and in anything related to movement (e,g dance).
    The migraine connection through inducing/overstimulating synaesthesia is also something new I'm wondering if anyone has looked into yet? I am guessing that portion of the brain becomes overactive, hence begins the migraines.
    Sorry for the long comment! And Reddit military kinesthesic synaesthesia person - if you are reading this - we might be twins lol. If I find that comment again I will reply. I am still amazed it was described exactly how I feel it.

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