Joe Telling Me

I suppose I have already let the cat out of the bag that Joe has synesthesia, so I may as well tell the full story. Because it is a good story and well, maybe someone will be helped by it. And maybe that person will be me. Or better yet: Joe.  

Bedtime is the time when kids and parents talk in our house. That has been the tradition forever. Himself always tries to be home for bedtime and we alternate nights so that each kid 'gets' a different parent on alternating nights. We generally chat about our day and anything that is on our minds, and then we read for a bit before lights out.  This has worked very well for us, particularly with Joe, who has gotten into the habit of reviewing difficult moments or questions he may have encountered during that day, later at night when he is calm and in a safe place.

 

So one night, about six months ago, after much apparent internal conflict, Joe looked at me with a Very Serious Face. "Mom. I have something to tell you. But first, you have to promise you won't think that I'm crazy". A promise like tat is very difficult for me to make, because, being on the Aspie end of normal myself, I am very literal and I had no idea what he was going to say. I mean, who knows? I might think he was crazy! But then I figured that if he was truly crazy, I would have an inkling by now, so I duly promised.  

 

So Joe tells me: "I can see people's emotions with my mind eye"

 

I asked him what emotions look like and he told me they look like -are- colors. I thanked him for confiding in me and then I bombarded the poor guy with questions:

 

Me: "Are the colors the same for each person or do they change?"
Joe: "They change. There are different colors for negative and positive emotions."

 

Me: "What color is anger?"
Joe: "Anger is mostly red. Negative colors are red and purple"

Me: "What colors are positive?"
Joe: "Positive colors are yellow, green and blue"

Me: "How do you see the colors? Around the people, or on their faces?"
Joe: "I see the colors on their body. ...not actually *on* their body... ...it's hard to explain."

Me: "What about the animals? Do they have colors, too?"
Joe: "Animals don't really have colors. I know they have personalities, like Ringo is shy, but they don't have colors. Not the same as people, anyway."

Me: "Do people have colors when they are sleeping?"
Joe: "No. not when they are sleeping. I think it gets turned off when they are asleep."

Me: "What color am I now?"
Joe: "You are white because you're confused now.      ...You are confused, right?"

I laughed. He was spot-on, of course. I was very confused.  I think if he has said "I see dead people" I would have been LESS confused than I was at that time! I high-fived him for his perception.  He told me confusion is always white.

I tried to ask him if he could tell if someone was pretending? Like if he broke something and I was really angry but I was trying to pretend it was OK? He said something like "It doesn't work so well when I am upset."

Figures.

I told him I thought he might have some form of Synesthesia (I have heard of it because I have a friend whose daughter has a different form of it), but I wasn't sure. I told him it is a talent that not many people possess. Later I found a little information about emotion-color synesthesia online, and I printed the article out for him. He felt a lot better having a name for it and knowing he wasn't the only one. The poor kid thought he was losing his mind!

You know, this explains an awful lot about Joe; why he can be so very Autistic in his thinking sometimes, and yet so very perceptive at other times. -Oh and later I asked him if he can see his own color? He said he can't see his color by looking down on himself, but he can see it in the mirror (or a shiny surface, which he went on to list in great detail!). He said he often knows how he is feeling by checking his color in his reflection.

Wow!  Now that is interesting, is it not?

So yes, all this was about six or seven months ago. When I first found out about it, I was very excited for Joe. I thought that maybe for a kid who has the difficulties with communication that he has, who has a hard time understanding where others are coming from, the ability to see emotion might be a huge advantage. And an opportunity for me to learn more about him (by asking about the colors I might understand -literally how he sees the world).

 

I contacted the university which had diagnosed Joe and made arrangements for him to meet with the head of the Autism department there. Unfortunately, due to a series of crazy events,  including a blizzard and a house alarm activation, we could never get the appointment accomplished. And then Joe went very sour on the whole idea.

 

In the six months since I found out about Joe's synesthesia, I have learned some more about it as it manifests in Joe. For one thing, it is not always there. There seems to be times when it is more apparent than others. I am not sure of the pattern, but I suspect stress is a factor, although I am not sure if stress makes the synesthesia more or less apparent (Joe has this delayed-reaction thing going on, which makes it harder to spot patterns) .

 

Starting out, I had many questions in my own mind about how if worked:

 

First of: Although I don't doubt that Joe can see emotions, I wondered whose emotions was he really seeing? Was it really the other person's, or was he seeing his own emotions projected onto other people (or was he seeing his own idea of what others' emotions should be in a given situation)?  It gets confusing real fast...

 

If he was seeing other people's emotions, how was he actually reading them?  Was it facial expressions, body language or both, which then in his brain was portrayed as color? Or was there something deeper -almost mystical at play here?

 

Joe seems to be able to turn synesthesia on and off. I remember asking him to look at a random person in the dentist's waiting room and tell me her color. He looked confused and said

"She's pink"

"No. I mean her color, you know,  -in your mind's eye"

 

"Oh!"

 

And he looked at her again and a strange expression came over his face as he changed mode: "mostly white with a little bit of blue.  She is thinking of something happy, I think" (a few months later he told me that he thinks blue represents love).

 

Since I originally found out about Joe's synesthesia, some (not all) of my questions have been answered. Joe does seem to see other people's emotions (I have no idea how). However he is often wrong about the source of them. He has told me "I know you are angry with me, but you are trying not to show it"  And I have replied. "Actually, I am angry at Grace, because of _____.  You are half right. I was trying not to show it to you, because I'm not angry at you."

 

The above incident also answered the question I had initially about someone pretending not to be angry. Yes. He sees right through that!

 

I am not sure if this is going to be a lifelong thing with Joe. It seems to have emerged relatively late, and it is not consistant, which makes me wonder if it is maybe a transient thing, probably related to puberty? From what I have read, people can have synesthesia as children and then grow out of it around puberty. I have not heard of anyone developing it in puberty. But it is still pretty rare and not very well documented, so it is hard to know.

 

I guess with this, like with most things. Time will tell.

Interesting stuff, eh?

Comments

[yanub]

My daughter also has synaesthesia, which I didn't know until a few years ago. Apparently, she has had it since childhood and had assumed everyone was like her. I wish I had known then, because, apparently, it's very common in people with migraines and seizure disorders (even aside from auras and prodromes) and would have been a head's up. Hers is more usual than Joe's is, though. She sees color when she hears sounds.

[Quirky Mom]

Damn, that is fascinating!!!

[One Sick Mother]

Yanub,
You raise an interesting point. Many people think what they see is normal (because you can't see out of other people's eyes) I never asked Joe how he figured out that seeing emotion is unusual.

Wow! she has a cool form of it! Especially as she is so arty. Does she ever draw or paint what she hears? That would be a fascinating exercise.

I get freaky visual stuff behind my eyelids before/during a seizure and I often wish I could paint so I could replicate some of them.

QM,
Heh. I knew you would like that post.

[Esme]

I used to experience this when I was small also, the colours tended to be vaguely around peoples heads and were also like a colour chart of emotions (unrelated to sound too). It sounds odd but I used to really enjoy the colours when they happened - though I don't experience it any more. I think I grew out of it by the time I was about 6-7.

This is a really interesting article, and I don't think we ever really thought of it as Synesthesia. Thanks for sharing! :)

Esme

[The Goldfish]

I have synaesthesia in that I feel sound, but especially music, as different sensations in different parts of my body. Because music I'm really into has the most dramatic effect, I assumed that everyone experienced this. Until in my teens music started having a more dramatic physiological effect, so to speak, at which point I realised it might not be "normal".

I also conceive of time as a three-dimensional shape, but that's so difficult to explain to someone who doesn't share it. And a friend hears colours - he once said he can't azure blue because it's so screechy.

Tschaikovsky shared Yanub's daughter's version - apparently he was baffled when the orchestra didn't understand how to make the music slightly more purple...

[One Sick Mother]

Esme,

I'm glad you found it interesting. I know one other person who had this as a child, but then outgrew it. I wonder if it ever comes back, maybe if you are sick or tired?

Goldfish,

Wow! That is very cool. Have you read "born on a blue day" by Daniel Tammet? He has a similar thing with calendars that you do with time.

I didn't know about Tschaikovsky (LOL), but in reading about this there are quite a few talented people through time that have had it. I may do a post about that. Joe might like that.

Thanks for the input.
OSM