This page contains all the
readers’ comments on the “Spatial sequences of other concepts” article,
received between 2022 and 2025.
Comment by: Finn. December 27, 2021 at 4:00 AM
Wow, it's so fun to see something I wrote in 2017 quoted on
here! (I'm "Flappyfluellen"/"Synaptic Synnie", though I
haven't really used those blogs in years.) You might be interested to know that
the basic shape of my Shakespeare sequence has stayed the same for me, though
some plays have shifted places.
I noticed you have some more images of mine around the site
- if you'd like to credit them to a uniform source, my DeviantArt page has some
of those and a bunch more images you might be interested in checking out!
https://www.deviantart.com/star-kwafie/gallery/60365646/synesthesia
You could also credit them to "Finn F." if you'd
prefer names to old internet handles. (sounds a bit better than
"Flappyfluellen" at the very least, lol)
It's also quite funny seeing that "her" pronoun,
as I'm a man! Synesthesia may be more common in women, but it certainly occurs
in people of all genders...
Super cool site! I'm excited to look around some more.
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia
Tree author). December 27, 2021 at 10:59 AM
Flappyfluellen! I’m so pleased to meet you! To me, you have
one of the most interesting cases on the whole of my site and I remember how
pleased I was to find your drawings of the Shakespeare plays and Star Trek
series, they’re a perfect illustration of a type of synesthesia that people
just don’t talk about but which I am starting to think is more common than it
originally seemed, and I think this is helping more people to find cases
similar to theirs.
I’m so sorry about getting you mixed up, I really did think
you were a girl :D I read through your blog and I was sure, otherwise I
wouldn’t have put “her”. I got it wrong though, I’ll learn from that! Maybe in
part it was difficult for me to believe otherwise because of your name
Flappyfluellen, for me that is so feminine, I see a red-haired lady with wavy
hair who kind of waves her hands around when she speaks :D, now I’ll get
another image in my head for Finn. I’ve corrected the mistake on both pages it was
wrong on, and I’ve credited you as Finn F. in the 4 you appear on. If it’s any
consolation, I did think Star-kwafie was a man! Hadn’t made the connection that
they were the same person. I’ve added the DeviantArt link to the picture that’s
on there too. If you prefer “their” instead of “his” or any other change, just
let me know and I’ll alter that. It’s actually a pet hate of mine when people
write “she” and “her” for synesthetes by default (and also when article writers
don’t bother checking or updating the old belief that there were more female
synesthetes than male), so there was nothing intentional about it!
Beautiful art on your site by the way. And that’s great if
you like the Tree. Thanks!
Reply by: Finn. December 27, 2021 at 2:38 PM
This was such a delightful comment to receive - I'm so
flattered that my drawings have meant so much to you! (and that you like my
other art!) Now that I think about it, I haven't really heard others discuss
spatial sequences based on TV shows and the like, though admittedly I haven't
been in many synesthesia-focused spaces lately. If you like, I can draw up my
sequences for some other shows and movie series... I barely think about it
because it's so natural for me, but I definitely get strong sequence impressions
from all sorts of fictional series. Maybe it has something to do with being a
writer! :)
Don't worry about the mix-up! I think I tend to have a more
"feminine" typing style? And though it's not me, I like the image of
a wavy-haired lady who waves her hands around! Also, I didn't realize that the
"more female than male synesthetes" was an outdated belief - how
interesting!
Reply by: Finn. December 28, 2021 at 12:17 PM
Thinking about this more, I just remembered my old Wordpress
site, where I shared more about my experiences with synesthesia, as well as the
results of a few surveys I conducted in 2016 within a synesthesia mailing list.
I'd privated those a couple years ago, but in case they're of interest to you
(or anyone else), I just went back and put them all up again!
https://starkwafie.wordpress.com/synesthesia/
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). December 28,
2021 at 1:33 PM
That’s fantastic to know, and also to know that it’s
rekindled your interest in the syn theme. Of course I would love to see any
more drawings you might like to produce!! Actually I’ll be making a new
addition to this very page today as just yesterday, by chance, in Reddit
someone appeared describing their spatial sequence of school subjects and it
was a great post so I asked if I can include it. Hopefully this will continue
and more spatial synesthetes for other sequences will appear and it’ll become clear
that it’s not as rare as it originally appeared, it just wasn’t as well-known.
So my original perception of Flappyfluellen doesn’t exist
any more, but I must say I thought she was very assertive, with a strong sense
of purpose. Definitely very masculine in that. She was quite glamorous also.
She would make a great fictional character. That’s great you’re a writer. Do
tell me more if you want!
I suppose it isn’t so easy for anyone at all to keep up with
all the latest research, but yes, it’s been known for some time that the
women-to-men imbalance was really just a result of self-disclosure being much
more likely in the case of women. That was a study led by Julia Simner and it
dispelled some other myths too, as the first very large study that didn’t
depend on self-referral, as it captured people attending an exhibition with no
knowledge that they were going to be asked about synesthesia. Here’s the link
if you were interested:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6720564_Synaesthesia_The_Prevalence_of_Atypical_Cross-Modal_Experiences
Thanks for restoring the lost surveys to your synesthesia
blog, I shall certainly be reading that again! The colour surveys look
interesting so I think I might find some material to link there!
Comment by: Anonymous. October 4, 2022 at 2:29 PM
I believe I have sound-spatial synesthesia, if thats an
accepted name for it. I describe it looking like number/letter form but with
songs, they go up and down and in various directions throughout. One of my
better examples is a song from my childhood, since childhood songs tend to have
the strongest associations for me, "someday" by No More Kings, it
goes diagonally down to the right, until you get to the bridge, where it starts
going up diagonally and then flattening out at the end. I get a very specific visual
image of this whenever i listen to it however I don't see it in the space
around me. I believe my timbre-color can tie into this, as instruments go
different directions in my headspace when visualizing a song, saxophone and
clarinet go downwards for example, This is a bit more tied to my physical space
unlike songs.
I've met others online with sound-spatial and they have
their own unique experiences and I think its a really cool type!
Reply by: Daisy. December 25, 2023 at 5:00 AM
I call it “mapping”. I’m severely combined type adhd &
autistic & have a hearing issue: using imagined mental maps like this is
the only way I can communicate at all. I use it for everything. It’s how I
remember. It’s how I hold a thought to talk about it. It’s how I understand
what others are saying. It’s how my mind shows my body how to bend, fast like
lightning, in a vaguely human-shaped diagram, so I don’t get hurt when I fall.
=)
I’m ecstatic to find other people do it too. It helps to
prove there are previously established human parameters for my existence, so
it’s allowed to be true.
Reply by: Pau. December 25, 2023 at 11:02 AM
Very interesting, Daisy, thanks for telling us about your
case and I'm glad you've found a starting point for finding other people who
perceive things like you do!
Comment by: Anonymous. April 8, 2024 at 6:40 AM
This makes me feel incredibly seen, but I wonder if there
might be some overlap with other types? I found this page without ever knowing
synesthesia had so many variants or considering it might apply to me, just
frustrated with never being able to find a way to organize my thoughts that
quite "fits comfortably" and researching things I might not have
tried yet. The phrase that popped in my head today is that it feels like my
brain would work best in a language I don't speak, or a dimension I can't see.
And that led me here!
I've always found deep satisfaction in planning and
organizing ideas as a hobby (as a shorthand, my fiancé and I call it
"scheming”). Today specifically, I’ve been novel planning. In my head, I
have this sense of all my plot threads, character arcs, themes, and
"vibes" laid out and overlapping in a complex web with different
"shapes" (for lack of a better term) assigned based on what kind of
concept it is and how it connects to other concepts. For instance, a theme is
more of a foggy haze, while a plot thread looks more like a spiky line graph.
Tools like “mind map” computer programs, kanban boards for
project management, or using a ginormous whiteboard (especially when they
combine with color-coding systems) can mostly help with the spatial aspect of
how my brain works, but there are a couple other facets they don't quite
satisfy--
1) I really need 3D, which is only really possible on a
computer program. But a screen is still 2D and the controls can feel very
limiting, so the itch isn't entirely scratched. (I have yet to try a tablet or
VR/AR, which I think would be closer but I suspect a tactile element might
still be missing.)
2) Written words don't properly capture the
"feeling" of a concept for me, so even mapping out little blurbs of
text can only go so far when it's so clunky having to read back all these words
that bog down my mind with their messiness. I don't have a great way of
describing this, especially because I do enjoy reading and writing, it's just
that for my own thoughts I wish I could use something other than a phonetic
alphabet maybe? Using doodles on my mind maps helps a little, but with
something like noveling, it can be really difficult to capture a complex idea
in a simple image when my mind can just "sense" the concept through
feelings and colors and shapes that are much harder to capture on paper.
3) Sometimes I think the layout of these concepts might be
dynamic too. Like with the noveling example, in my mind I see the shapes
representing my characters physically moving between plot events or along plot
threads, with their shape morphing as they are changed by these experiences.
The end result is that I constantly feel like my mind is
buzzing with these abstract layouts of interconnected ideas, and trying to get
them out is like being unable to fully scratch an itch. On the bright side,
when the concepts are simple enough to have a more "conventional"
layout in my head, that means I kick butt at creating project plans to share
with people, complete with neatly color-coded graphics.
Excited and curious to hear if others can relate to any
combination of these things! Especially if you've found good tools for
untangling the mind webs when they're feeling extra abstract and don't
translate well.
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). April 9,
2024 at 9:08 PM
Hi! Have you seen this page of the Tree?
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/concept-shape-synesthesia.html
You might find something in line with your experiences
there!
Comment by: Anonymous. July 18, 2024 at 1:43 AM
This sounds similar to my experience while listening to
music. Tones have a physical sensation like a ball bouncing on a hard surface
with a definite spatial location within and around my head. Where they sit
vertically is dependent on pitch and their location on the horizontal plane is
dependent on other tonal qualities. For example a deep, bassy electronic tone
would be somewhere around the start of my jaw line to the side, a smooth violin
note would be somewhere between my cheek bones and a high cymbal would be
around the middle of my forehead, out in front of my face. Until recently I
thought that was how everyone experienced it.
Reply by Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). July 24, 2024
at 3:56 PM
Interesting! "Music-spatial" synesthesia is
mentioned by some people as an aspect that should be included in its own right.
Your comment and the one below would fit into that concept, so when I add
something about that I'll include your experience. Thank you for commenting!
Comment by: Anonymous. July 18, 2024 at 7:31 PM
When I hear sounds, I can “see” them in physical space. For
example, the chorus of “bad lair” by imagine dragons is like an explosion in
the air. The song “glass eyes” by Radiohead completely fills up whatever room
I’m in, pushes on every part of my skin and kind of makes me claustrophobic. I
couldn’t find this anywhere on the tree and I feel like it’s different enough
to be included somewhere.
Reply by: Pau (The Synesthesia Tree author). July 24,
2024 at 3:55 PM
"Music-spatial" synesthesia is mentioned by some
people as an aspect that should be included in its own right. Your comment and
the one above would fit into that concept, so when I add something about that
I'll include your experience! Thank you for commenting!
Comment by: Anonymous. November 25, 2025 at 8:24 PM
I process language through this. My brain categorizes words
by semantic association and places them in space or gives them colours
depending on whether it's spoken or visual.
Go back to the page on Spatial sequences of concepts other than time units
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