Synesthesia. I can see music. It’s fun.
Also, being resistant to pain killers. Not so fun (takes ages to get drunk, and I woke up 3 times during a surgery)
Oh I got that to a lesser degree. At night, I interpret sudden bangs (door slamming) as flashes of intense white light.
I realised that the lights were not real (phantom lightning, or bright outdoor lighrs winking on and off) once I started sleeping with a blindfold
I don’t think so – the noises I hear are real, they’re just accompanied by flashes of light if my brain can’t place the source of the sound in realtime
I can’t really speak for you of course, but I can add that I thought it was the same for me. Until it turned out I was the only one who was hearing these noises.
Hah! Oh jesus, this will be a fun rabbithole for me to think about over the next few years
Are there any music pieces that are your favorite because of synesthesia? Or pieces that you couldn’t enjoy because of it?
I’d also imagine that watching movies must be a very different experience for you too haha.I have the annoying kind of synesthesia that’s more of a sidecar to OCD. People are hues. It’s even more frustrating that I can’t remember names, and I clearly can’t use that as a reference to another person without coming off as a whackadoodle.
I can hear CRT screens. They emit a high pitch noise that nobody else in my family can hear, I assume most people actually can hear it but never noticed it. My family used to think I was crazy or had tinnitus (jury’s still out on both) until they tested me by making me close my eyes and tell them if the TV was on while turning it off and on at random, with sound off. It was a weird test from my perspective, since I could hear it fine anyway. So far I haven’t noticed a decay due to age, but if it had little use when CRTs were widespread, it’s now completely useless.
I used to be able to tell what refresh rate they were set to because everything below a certain point flickered. I’d ask people why their screens were flickering and they couldn’t see it.
Now that is a superpower. I’ve always thought the ability to see fast was such an interesting skill.
Think about it: you could go to the Olympics in a skillful sport like fencing or boxing, and defeat every opponent without much formal training simply because you can see them telegraph their moves. No anticipation or planning required, you just watch them come to you.
Do you do any competitive sport?
I used to hear it too, now I’m old and I can’t hear anything above 16KHz, maybe less now.
Try that with cheap mobile phone charges. They have an annoying coil whine.
… Wait. I assumed it was my extension cord keeping me up at night. I just learned to use it as white noise.
I swear my therapist says she sees no reason for me to be diagnosed as autistic
think I was crazy or had tinnitus
When you have tinnitus, then you will know it. And then you probably can’t hear that CRT screen anymore.
About “crazy” I don’t know ;)
Diagnosed autistic?
It’s very common for us 'spergs to have a very high frequency cut off on our hearing, all the way to old age.
I’m 43 and can still hear the bats chirping when they’re hunting insects in the twilight round the gardens. People think I’m making it up, until I point the bats out, tracking them by sound until they flutter high enough to see their silhouette against the sky.
CRT TVs and monitors used to annoy the hell out of me. The high pitched whine of the flyback transformer that runs the motion of the electron beam makes a very distinctive hiss. Like someone else on here, I could tell what refresh rate your monitor was running in by the noise it made.
That, plus an abnormally high flicker fusion frequency meant I had migraines every other day when I was working. :-/
Interesting, never knew that. I’m in my 40s and can still hear the annoying high-pitched whine from the speaker outside a shop near me that’s designed to keep kids from hanging around.
Should be an age thing. I remember at school that some teachers would leave the TV on when they were done showing something and the CRT noise would make us students crazy and we had to remind the teacher to turn it off.
So you will probably lose it at some point.
Some power-supplies also do this high pitch noise too and it bothers me a lot. Most people can’t hear it.
It might happen with non-crt screens too. I remember a flat screen (LCD?) that made a different noise depending on the color it displayed. White and light colors made a lot more noise and if you had good ears you could tell the difference without looking. Not sure how they work though to explain this.
I too have significantly more sensitive hearing than seemingly just most people, and can hear and often get annoyed by high pitched but low decibel sounds, very often caused by electronics, off balance high speed fans, etc.
Got gaslit about it by my family as well.
You may wanna look into an autism diagnosis, autists often have this kind of thing going on.
You’d think it would be called super hearing, but instead its often everyone without heigtened senses calling you delusional.
Same thing happened to me when I described seeing the entoptic blue field phenomenon to my family, but not knowing the fancy name for it because I was 11. Family got very concerned I was hallucinating, the reality is I am just more attentive to reality than they are.
So that has a name! Hahahaha There’s no way I can memorise that, I’ll keep call it “eeenergy” instead.
Good to know what it is in case someone wants a serious answer.
I could detect it as a kid, but definitely not past 25
I can still hear the bats pinging for insects round the back gardens. I was 43 last week :-p
I can smell reposts and pictures I have already seen a mile away.
I’m a stair master. I sprint them 3-4-5 at a time, smooth and quiet as a ninja. Up or down, doesn’t matter
I can repressurize my ears without yawning, just by flexing a muscle. Even less useful, I can focus my eyes to different distances without using the finger trick, which comes in handy never.
Is it the same muscle as when you do the rumbly ear thing?
Ear rumbling was gonna be my superpower. And I can indeed also use this to some extent to repressurize my ears.
I can focus my eyes to different distances
That’s not common? Tbh I never asked around if others can do it I just assumed it’s normal.
you can easily view parallel or cross view images
If you are diving the first comes in very practically.
I can bend my thumb further back than most people :3 this literally does nothing of use for me x3
Hypermobility can have side-effects. If your diet isn’t right or you live in a very warm or very cold area, it can affect your tissues. If I’m not mistaken it can sporadically be linked to auto-immune diseases.
Bending your thumb to your wrist is one of the signs of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
I’ve got mild EDS and so far (thirties), it’s just helpful (as long as you stay active and maintain good core muscles). Extreme EDS can result in your skin sloughing off or all of your joints dislocating in your sleep, so it’s not something to ignore, but if the only symptom is your thumb touching your wrist, you might just be lucky.
In a room full of power supplies i was the only one able to find which one was still powering something, because apparently out of the ~20 people that tried before me, i was the only one that could hear the transformer whine.
Also a general annoyance since i need to charge my phone in another room if i want to sleep without simulating tinnitus.
Another one!
It’s a common autistic trait, FYI 💛
I can unhook a bra through a winter coat.
Not, that I wouldI once unhooked a bra with a hug. Sadly not a superpower I retained.
I have special ability to fall asleep quick if deciding to take a nap during office hours.
Unfortunately, it’s not effective going to sleep in the evening
I can rumble my ears, do the vulcan greet, do Stan Laurel’s kneesy earsy nosey and the finger wriggle. I can also measurable lower my heart rate by conscious effort alone, and increase my body temperature by concentrating on it.
I can wiggle my ears.
Both. And each one individually.I can rumble my ears. It’s not at all useful and often highly annoying.
It’s useful when your ears are under high pressure. It can help relieve it. Sometimes.
Well, not really superpowers since they are common in humans. However, they are pretty interesting abilities nonetheless.
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Advanced speech recognition. I can filter out speech of one person while ignoring other background noise and even other speech.
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Advanced face recognition. I can see faces in clouds, floors, and other inanimate objects. Also helps when looking at real faces of people in a crowd. See also: pareidolia
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Auditory hallucinations during hypnagogia. Look it up. It’s weird and trippy.
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Desensitization and habituation to capsaicin. I can eat spicy foods.
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I think those are the same ants in the southwest us that can find a box of cereal in a vault. Not sure if I could smell just one ant, but they are insanely smelly until you’re too hungover to pay attention and get a mouthful
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