Synaesthesia

migraine anyone?

By mick

no one who hasn't had migraine really understands that it's not just a headache. migraine is a "whole-body experience" of total pain and malaise. i'm surfacing after a wicked slamming brain-buster.

anyone else do the migraine dance? i have the prodromal warnings the scintillating scotomata designs of light superimposed over the world, and that usually gives me time to take a med to avoid the worst of the pain, nausea and synesthesia.

sometimes it doesn't work. during the worst, i understand why people kill themselves to get away from the pain. there have been times i beat my head against the wall, just to change the pain.

but it's over .. and i am again left alive, and sooo sensitive. sounds have colours and tastes. tastes shard themselves inside my bones. the light and the air have weight and push at me. my skin flies.

synesthesia is the reward for a migraine survived.

pretty cool.

(http://www.baseboard.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=9357, July 25, 2003)

Pain-colour synaesthesia experienced during acute migraine attacks by a synaesthetic migraineur

"I have synaesthesia. Letters and numbers and whole words have colour. Some numbers have personality. Voices, music and noises in general have colour, movement and texture. Certain tastes have colour, texture and shape. Smell has colour and texture. Physical feelings - especially pain, has colour, movement, shape and texture.

I also get migraines, they are severe and I can honestly say that they are the bane of my existence. They are always on the right side of my head. The pain is intense. The colours of the pain vary according to the intensity of the pain and the movement and texture of the colours work in accordance to the throbbing. What I am interested to learn more about is if there is a connection between actual synaesthesia and migraines. (Please note that I have and have always had synaesthesia - it's present all the time regardless of my migraines but the colours and texture of some smells and sounds is more! 'there' during an attack. Due to the intense pain and sickly feeling of the attack, I am consumed by the colour, movement shape and texture of this as well. I feel the colours etc, from the pain inside me whereas that from the smell and noise feels external.)"

(Juliet, Email to Klaus Podoll, April 22, 2005)

"My migraines can be very colourful and full of shapes - they are usually the darker shades of green and purple which blend together, separate, overlap etc... like oil on water while the shapes form out of black and maroon on top of this - it is a very 3D experience hard to describe and no two migraines are ever the same. One thing I can say that they all have in common is that there are never colours like yellow, pink, white or any colour mixed with white."

(Juliet, Email to Klaus Podoll, April 25, 2005)

"As with all my other types of synaesthesia, it is simply to me something that was always there and I would probably have never acknowledged it as a 'phenomenon' if I hadn't happened upon a TV documentary about synaesthesia about 9 years ago.

You call it pain-colour synaesthesia but I experience synaesthesia sensation from physical feelings in general - not just pain. For example temperature. Right now I am in my office I feel warm except for my feet which feel a little cold. To me right now, my body is orange but my feet are a hazy grey/blue.

What I do find interesting is that I remember some painful experiences not so much by the pain but by the synaesthetic experience that was induced by the pain. For example, when I was 12 years old I had a gymnastics accident where I cut my shin badly - right down to the bone and had to have 18 stitches in my leg. I had to stay in bed for over 2 weeks with my leg raised, and during this time while the wound was healing, there was a day where the pain was particularly bad - I think it had something to do with the blood flow but every thirty seconds or so, it would throb and sting and I can see the colours of the pain so clearly still and can describe it as oily black and dark green space punctuated by neon purple tiny balls or sparks which would appear with the stinging prickly sensation. Still, to this day, whenever I think about that accident or if anyone questions me about the scar on my leg, these colours and shapes arise."

(Juliet, Email to Klaus Podoll, April 25, 2005)