This page contains all the readers’ comments on the “Calendar synesthesia” article, received between 2021 and 2026.
Comment by: Pat Duffy. August 31, 2021 at 2:16 PM
This is a great resource! It is striking how similar my
internal calendar is to the "decades" one above, a landscape that
begins at the lower left and extends up to the upper right. I read in a book
called "The Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene that a number of
people (both synesthetes and non-synesthetes report such internal number lines
(though in the case of some "projector-synesthetes", such "time
landscapes" may be external). Thanks for this terrific tool!
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). August 31,
2021 at 7:57 PM
Thanks for commenting Pat and I'm glad you find it
interesting! I'll have to check that book out because I've also read about
calendar and number apatial sequence being quite common in the general
population and not just synesthetes and I need to do some updating about that.
I wonder if the difference is that only synesthetes see them in colour or with
the great amount of detail/perspective, and as you mention the projector
synesthetes actually seeing them in space are a clear case. It's something I
want to read about and get more figures for... I don't have this type! I
have... an agenda :D
Comment by: SeaCharm. March 30, 2022 at 8:38 PM
I'm 62yr old artist, learning about calendar synaesthesis
today for the very first time! I recall trying to explain this to people and
had no idea there were "others" like this. I'm very visual and find
this fascinating. There is also new studies in brain as a holo-deck (Star Trek
NG) where the mind sees possibilities as projections or 3D models of
time/space---amazing! thanks for this great site!
Comment by: Anonymous. June 6, 2022 at 2:26 AM
Same here! I make abstract art and play instruments, and
just learned about calendar synesthesia yesterday. I just thought that maybe I
had a more visual way of doing things but had no idea is was somewhat unusual.
I see the months upright, in a counterclockwise direction, and in an oval
shape.
Also, my daughter tells me she sees days and months in exact
colors..and her friends think shes weird. Lol. Would love to know more about
this! How interesting!
Comment by: Anonymous. June 30, 2022 at 2:38 AM
I thought everyone had a calendar wrapped around them and
never thought anything of it til Reed on criminal minds mentioned synesthesia
and I looked it up
Comment by: Anonymous. August 19, 2022 at 9:18 PM
Is it common for someone who has calendar synesthesia to get
“zoomed in” on a specific point instead of seeing the entire thing at once?
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). August 21,
2022 at 9:59 PM
Yes, it is. Especially when they think about
"today" or the present time, they feel as if they are zoomed in or
perhaps standing in front of a particular part of their calendar. I think this
could also happen if they choose to think about a particular time in the past.
Then if they focus on the whole of time in general, they would perhaps be able
to look at the whole thing at once, or at least in larger groups of days,
months or years. I don't have this type myself so I can't speak from experience,
but I know the "zooming in" effect is very typical.
Comment by: Anonymous. October 14, 2025 at 8:45 AM
I can zoom in on my timeline, like I could be at the
farthest possible zoomed out point (which is around 100 BCE to present) and I
can keep zooming in, to 1900-present, then the past five-ten years, then to the
point where I see the year, then the month, where I can see the four weeks
inside it, and the days for each. I think my type of spatial synesthesia is
interesting because most images I’ve seen on here, as well as the drawings my
dad did to show his, showed circles/ovals for the years and straight lines for
the centuries, making zooming in to show the individual weeks/years not
possible. But mine are all stacked neatly, making it easy to zoom in. Are there
any instances of a person with oval/circle months of the year being able to
connect with the lines of the centuries, or are they entirely different images?
Comment by: Anonymous. December 10, 2022 at 11:04 AM
So I'm not sure if this is synesthesia, but I have weird
associations between time and space? Like I can draw the way the timeline
looks, especially within the past several hundred years. There's a distinct
turn at the Renaissance, and at around 1700 it starts moving
"towards" me? Like if I drew it the line would go down, and then any
year since I've been born is moving left to right, like I stepped to the side
to watch it. Months are always in a cycle, with January being at the top left
and December at the bottom left (idk why there's a gap). Weeks are weird
because they go right to left, and then on the weekend they loop back around.
Saturday and Sunday are almost sitting on the top, and Monday takes place at
the right.
I also used to do a similar thing with songs. On my iPod I
would visualize the track order in an oval-ish shape, but distinct
songs/"sections" of the playlist took place around certain bends or
something. I don't do this anymore because I just visualize the album
cover/tracklist the way it looks on my phone. I also have certain songs that
feel like things like green tea during a rainstorm and the color sage, but I
may have just been letting my brain wander. The room doesn't turn that color,
it just has the same vibe to me. And I will argue with someone nonstop about
what color each subject is in school, but I think everyone has an opinion on
that.
Sorry for the long comment lol, this is all just really
interesting to me even if these are just random associations.
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). December 11,
2022 at 9:39 AM
Yes, your time-space associations are definitely
synesthesia!
Automatically classifying the songs in different spatial
locations would fit in with the type of synesthesia to do with spatial
sequences of concepts
(https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/spatial-sequences-of-concepts-other.html),
and your colour/vibe reactions to different songs might be song-colour
synesthesia
(https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/song-colour-musical-genre-colour.html),
you could focus or think about it a bit to see if you get it with many songs
and if the colours/vibes are consistent.
Yes, I think most people have some kind of colour
associations for school subjects, but it can also be a type of coloured
sequence synesthesia. Some ideas how to distinguish whether it’s syn or not:
- if the person doesn’t have any other types of synesthesia
it’s unlikely
- if the person can clearly tell you “it’s because my folder
for this subject/the textbook/how it’s coloured on the timetable/etc. is this
colour”, then it probably isn’t
- if it really seems to matter a lot emotionally what colour
the subject is and all other colours seem very wrong, you don’t know where you
got the association from but it just seems to have always been like that and
you have these automatic consistent associations for a lot of subjects and not
just two or three, then it more likely is syn.
Comment by: Anonymous. December 29, 2022 at 3:05 AM
Is it still synesthesia if you have a time space association
but its linear? Its not a spiral or circle, without bends or curves but its
still clear, distinct and involuntary?
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). December 29,
2022 at 1:24 PM
Absolutely! It’s true you tend to see more pictures drawn by
synesthetes of elliptical, spiral and circular shapes, but a line arrangement
is actually just as common, and just as valid. An excellent study from 2009 by
David Eagleman (the creator of the Synesthesia Battery) discovered that in the
case of months, 27% of the spatial sequence synesthetes studied had a line
arrangement. Here’s a link to the study if you’d like to see it:
http://www.daysyn.com/Eagleman2009.pdf
In figure 2 on page 6 of the pdf you can see the
representations of the most common arrangements, with lines clearly among them!
I will be adding the information in this study to my description here on the
Tree. Thanks for writing!
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). December 29,
2022 at 2:12 PM
I'd just like to add that in the study I mentioned, if you
go to page 5, in section 3.1 there is a whole paragraph about linear time-space
synesthesia which I think would be of interest to you!
Comment by: syd. April 10, 2023 at 6:06 AM
I only tonight found out this was a thing! I am twenty years
old and have spent my whole life visualizing the months of the year in the
exact same way without fail. same with days of the week and years and where
events in my life fall on the timeline! i'm in a period of my life where im
trying to understand my brain and the things im uncovering are WILD
Comment by: Kath. July 6, 2023 at 3:26 AM
I’ve seen time in a linear track my whole life. And the
calendar is an oval track running counter clockwise with December at the top
and summer months at the bottom. My numbers from zero to nine have are
different colors and have personalities which sounds really weird but it helped
in elementary school when learning simple arithmetic. I was amazed to learn
that other people had no idea what I was talking about. I just thought everyone
saw time and numbers like this.
Comment by: Anonymous. July 18, 2023 at 12:40 PM
I didn't learn about this until I was almost 50! I thought
everybody did this! Yet another thing I do differently. I think it's pretty
neat, but hard to describe to others how I 'see' days of the week, months,
years, etc. It's almost like a road map in my mind, where I 'feel' (see) I am
throughout the week, month, year. How I see it in my mind's eye. So hard to
describe for me.
Comment by: Anonymous. February 9, 2024 at 5:11 PM
I'm a 55 yr old woman who has calendar (months, weeks and
days of week) associate synesthesia.
Comment by: Daurade. September 16, 2025 at 6:11 PM
My daughter has this and discovered it at age 17 by
realizing other people don't do the same thing. She sees the months as
rectangles in a circle around her that change color as they get closer or
farther away. She has a hard time describing it. She finds it funny that we are
so interested because for her it's just so normal. I think she forgets she has
it because is kind of surprised when we ask her about it.
Comment by: Anonymous. January 9, 2026 at 9:58 PM
I’ve had this my whole life and thought everyone had it. My
calendars, days and time are all in the shape of ovals which move in a current
rotation (the calendar stacking on top of each other). I don’t necessarily have
a great memory with names of people, but can remember spaces, colours and sizes
of objects in great detail within my own life experiences. I only heard this
was thing a few years ago… I thought everyone had it until it came up in a
conversation.
Comment by: Anonymous. February 27, 2026 at 5:34 AM
I've had something like this for as long as I can remember.
I see a long ribbon spread out beside me with years, months, weeks, and days
marked on it, and normally I focus on just the year it is, and the previous and
next, but if I want to go back to years further in the past, the ribbon between
now and the year I'm looking for wrinkles up. Not sure if that makes sense, or
if this is synesthesia or not, but it kind of sounds like it.
Go back to the Calendar synesthesia page
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