Autism and synaesthesia

In this blog I want to discuss synaesthesia and autism. The title of one of my books ‘The Colour Of Wednesday’ made me think more deeply about this. I wrote the book before my autism diagnosis and the book isn’t about autism. It’s actually a follow up to my hard-hitting book ‘Down The Tubes’ where the MC’s sister Elaine has colours for the days of the week. In fact, at the end of that book their mother mentions ‘the colour of wednesday’ which prompted the title for the sequel.

The National autistic Society say a person with synaesthesia can see sound, smell colours, taste shapes,feel sounds on the skin and hear colours. They give an example on the site:

“Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing…Tuesdays are a warm colour while Thursdays are fuzzy.” Tammet 2006

In the video blog I discuss with my sister her different colours for days of the week. Our mother has her own colours too, although she’s not diagnosed with autism. Her colours were different to my sister’s  but we never thought of it as having a name! I didn’t have colours for days of the week but I pictured little girl dresses in blue and white check (probably I had one like this at the time) and I would have a different sized one for different days of the week and they had tiny black arms and legs (but no head!). I only did this as a child so I don’t know if that counts but Mondays loomed large, Wednesday was quite big, and Saturday was the smallest one I remember. The others were in between. I think Tuesday or Thursday was quite small. 

Some people do this for months of the year. I don’t have specific colours but January and February are very light to me when I visualise them but ones near the end of the year, like October, November and December are dark and that makes sense to me. Some people also visualise numbers with colours.

Synaesthesia  is apparently more common in people with autism than in the general population. It doesn’t mean if you have synaesthesia that you’re necessarily autistic any more than it means that you’re autistic that you also experience synaesthesia but the two are associated. 

Here are some links below which I found informative:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24995232

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/synaesthesia

Since I did the vlog I've head about 'ticker tape synaesthesia' in an autism forum This, I believe, is when people visualise subtitles when people are speaking.

Anyway, please do leave your comments below. I always love to hear the experiences of others.