You know, everybody out there says that synesthesia is a 'harmless trait' but I definitely think there can be some degree of disorder from it, at least in my case.
For me, anything that isn't a physical object is impossible to describe. Most notably including emotion and sound/music. Because any time I try to think of it, I can only think of it in terms of color/shape/texture, which nobody but me ever understands. It leads to so much confusion and communication issues, especially when it comes to emotional things because I cannot describe how exactly I feel beyond general terms. I.e. I can say 'I'm upset' but I can't get any more specific, because the more specific I get is I can say 'I'm staticky and purple and orange', but nobody knows what I mean.
There was a time I was trying to have a conversation about music. I was listening to a song and tried to say "I wish [band] made more songs similar to this." and when I was asked what about it I'd want to be similar, the most I could say was "it was round and teal." (And people may think that I'm picturing a round teal ball, but it is important that the roundness and teal-ness are completely separate qualities and have no bearings on each other lol. )
It genuinely feels like I'm constantly trying to translate my internal language that nobody else speaks into english to get anywhere in a conversation. It actually led to some issues with my academic life too when I was trying to explain concepts to group mates but I could only think of the qualities I assigned them in my head and didn't know how to put it into words.
So sometimes I get a little frustrated with it. People think that it's a cool thing that has no bearing on me but it affects my ability to communicate with others a lot. So I feel like I'm stuck because everybody says it's harmless but it affects me so greatly but it always gets brushed off.
Does anybody else with synesthesia feel this or is it just me?
