This page contains all the readers’ comments on the “Pain-colour and pain-shape” article, received between 2023 and 2026.
Comment by: Anonymous. July 13, 2023 at 3:52 PM
I always found it interesting how visual Synaesthesia where
people perceive shapes, colours, texture, and movement felt so close to how I
experience pain, but I couldn’t find anything about it until now!! I currently
have diffused soft white-light pain in my back that’s a small circle. Five
minutes ago it was a dull grey ball on the side of my neck. With my arm
outstretched, pulling on the muscle running from the side of my neck to my
shoulder, it’s a bright (but not sharp) pain that’s a warm white light, kind of
a line that’s thicker in the middle and coming to a point at the ends, and
slightly curved. The texture of the light is like when you mess with the focus
on a camera and the lights transform from circles into stars.
Comment by: Anonymous. April 1, 2024 at 5:12 AM
OMG I found my people.
Comment by: Anonymous. June 29, 2024 at 4:57 AM
Thank you! I was trying to explain the pain I feel to a
surgeon and he was confused. I didn't understand why he couldn't understand
what I was telling him. It's because my brain translates physical experience
into imagery. When a nerve gets pinched in my neck I see a hand pinching there.
The pain that shoots down the inner arm looks like a lightning strike. When a
nurse forgot to put a numbing agent in the IV before the anesthesia I saw a
circular saw cutting through my arm. Thank God that only lasted 9 seconds!
Another event produced an image of a bluish white, thick liquid spreading up
and down the spine, with frost on the edges. Now I know why people look at me
like I'm crazy when I try to explain what I feel.
Reply by: Anonymous. March 25, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Omg, same what i experience. No one can under me.
Comment by: Anonymous. November 29, 2024 at 8:58 AM
I actually have mirror pain synesthesia, and this has
happened to me before from the pain I was feeling from the other person. My
sister pitches in softball and her arm was hurting really bad at the time (her
muscles). That night we were playing hide and seek and I was thinking about her
when I felt it. It was sharp and ached really bad. I was also holding myself up
in a dark tight space so it just made it worse 😂. But then I saw a thin
colored line in the darkness just floating there. It was green in the middle,
fading into purple and pink on the outside (if i'm remembering correctly). It
was the first time it had ever happened, and since then its only happened from
my mirror pain experiences.
Comment by: Anonymous. December 26, 2024 at 11:44 PM
When I was young I thought it was just flashes of color or
light like the stars behind your eyelids type phenomena, I just thought mine
were stronger. Later I began to notice it as a wash of color to my upper left
mental vision. Then I started noticing that through the years the patch of
color started becoming a shape, a two dimensional shape of color and would hang
around until I paid attention to the pain that it was indicating. I have
Ehlers-Danlos and I've been in constant full body pain now for 55 years, so
pain is a constant companion, and now I have what I call my annoying little cat
in the head that tells me when the pain has changed or gotten worse or is new.
Recently I've been seeing full three-dimensional shapes. They were still
featureless but they were shapes and often began to become three-dimensional. I
began to realize that this might be synesthesia. While I was in the hospital in
2017, my lungs began to fill with water and I was drowning so they gave me
Lasix, a diuretic, but they didn't check the medications I was on and combined
it with two other medication you're not supposed to. Within hours I started
getting this vision where my synesthesia usually is except it was now an
abstract animation. A line would start to form in the upper left corner of my
mind's eye, come down, then jag over to the right a bit and then come down
again. Basically a stylized vertical zigzag. The line would be almost white at
the top and slowly would degrade down to near solid speckled brown black. Then
the line would expand, widen side to side to become a strip in the jagged shape
and colorization of the line. Once that was done another line would be drawn
exactly the same as the first one, what looked like an inch to the right of the
first. Same thing, same color gradation, would be drawn down in the same shape
and then would widen into a strip. Then a third line would be drawn an inch
over to the right and the same thing what happened. Then the whole image would
disappear and then it would repeat itself. I began to realize that it was
following my heartbeat which was a little weird and felt funny but no pain just
odd feeling for a heartbeat. I meant to tell the nurse but I forgot and it went
away. Then 12 hours later in the middle of the night around midnight it started
again except the heart sensation wasn't as strong but the image was very strong
and the animation would play over and over again. So I decided I probably
should call the nurse. As she came in I pointed into the computer in the room
and asked her to check if I had gotten my heart meds and I died in front of
her. My heart just stopped. I survived because she was in the room and saw it
happen. I really thought at the time I was just being hyperbolic, overreacting
to what I was seeing but since it happened twice in 12 hours I thought it might
be important. Turns out it was the medication that they had given me for the
fluid in my lungs and it caused what's called an elongated QT. This is where
the two beats of your heart, because of the two chambers, no longer beat one
right after the other but have a slight pause in between. The first beat is the
Q And the second beat is the T. They are usually one right after the other but
now the distance between them was "elongated". Hence the term
elongated QT and your heart can stop beating right in the middle of it which
mine did. My synesthesia literally saved my life. I've had a few images but
very little animation since then, except when my brain was dying and I had a
full film strip of an animation of people standing in a black void shoulder
shoulder, wearing Renaissance and other period costumes. They talked for a few
moments to each other and then they began to melt like ice cream in the sun
from the head down towards the shoulders and then there was nothing and I woke
up hours later. I now have a great appreciation for my little annoying cat in
my head and a great fondness.
Comment by: Anonymous. April 20, 2026 at 5:25 AM
I didn’t know this was a thing. I’ve suffered major nerve
pain in my back and multiple back surgeries over the past 25 years. This past
week, I did something and it was excruciating. When I closed my eyes, I could
see blue stretching out down the paths where the pain was. Last night, I jerked
hard in my sleep, and the color changed to yellow. The jerk must have helped
because today the pain has lessened considerably. I told my mom, “Hey, want to
hear something weird?” She looked it up, and I’m like, that’s an actual thing?!
Wow. It’s a very interesting sensation.
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