Yeah, it makes sense in retrospect that emotion would be considered a sense. I have never met, still to this day, anyone else who has emotion>color but I have met other synesthetes.

I cried tears of joy once I discovered some other people writing about their experience with emotion>color for the first time. Emotion being the trigger is somewhat rare in synesthesia but color as the response is the most common of responses. My understanding and exposure to synesthesia was that it worked in conjunction with the traditional 5 senses of touch, taste, sound, sight and sound smell but that is not the case. There are spacial, emotional, personality, temperature and several others beyond that that are also considered to be a part of synesthesia now.

It is hard to classify because the responses are subjective to the individual. My color to emotion pairings are unique to me as well as how it presents in my vision though some of the color pairings are somewhat universal at a basic level.

Thanks for the sympathy but I see it as a gift. Early life sucked as it was very isolating. With my pattern recognition autistic brain that tracked body movements and emotions of others to try and mask better it made it very easy to figure out when adults or others were lying to me or just acting out of character. I had a HUD that would discolor them. I am fantastic at poker but never play with friends or family, while I can’t see their cards I know a bluff without much effort and can run the numbers in my head to make a pretty accurate guess of the probability of their hand, especially with Texas Hold’m.

The benefit, now that I don’t mask any of this as an adult is immense. I gravitate towards honest and open people. I make friends easily as I can cut through the BS but the majority of my friends I’ve had for several decades. I am very lucky to have such deep and long lasting friendships. Narcissists are a problem for me though, I take others at face value and they tend to mask their intentions well, like the antithesis of me. It is kinda weird. I have to be morally balanced in my daily life; kind, honest and fair or else my worldview gets colored in a depressing/angry/resentful or other negative tint. I can get overwhelmed during extremely distressing events and depending on how long those events last for, like a parent in decline or dying, then I can be overwhelmed by it for months or years. It’s better now that I have a more clear understanding and various coping mechanisms.

It all takes balance, like with anyone, I just feel the highs and lows more acutely because so much of my attention has to be focused on it. Once I was able to accept it, figured out how it functioned, worked on coping mechanism and sought therapy for emotional regulation then life became pretty great. Happiest I’ve ever been. Wouldn’t give any of it up for any price but it was a tough road.

It’s genetic too, part of what drove me to figure it all out and use it to my advantage was when I decided to have kids. If they got it then I needed to be able to not alienate them like I was but to help guide them in whatever way it presented in them so they could skip past the several decades I went through to get to the good parts.

Some people still think it is weird and treat me as such but that’s ok, can’t be friends with everyone.

Apologies for the info dump, it’s been one of those morning where I am avoiding doing the things I should be doing today but I figured someone might want to hear more about it in case they have similar sensory stuff going on or know someone who does. It was a comment like this in a random thread on a random forum from a random person where I discovered Emotion>Color synesthesia was a thing. Figured I’d try to pay it forward on here in case someone needs it.

*fixed a word