2019-02-11 17:10:14

visual Schizophrenia, I see colors in my mind. My brain automatically assigns objects a color, and I live in color, but only in my mind, I can’t see anything for real. Schizophrenia makes people do things they would never do, although this isn’t a voice talking in my ear, this is a constant reminder that I don’t have sight, but I’m forced to live with the memories of living in it.
Sound synesthesia, every sound has a color, even every letter of the alphabet has a color. When my phone talks, every word appears in my head, with every letter having color. Every sound like VoiceOver sounds and app sounds have a color, even ringtones have a color. This synesthesia turns into the visual Schizophrenia that haunts me. At first, I was glad to have sight and glad to retain it, but now, it is a curse that I have to live without sight but have it shoved in my face forever, every second. And I’m had life threatening side effects because of it. I want to get rid of it all, I don’t want to remember color anymore. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing, and color has gone well over its limits!
How can I train my brain to stop automatically coloring everything? How can I hear sound without turning it into something visual? Sound is not suppose to be color! I know color helps social connections, but I would rather suffer socially more and have no idea what color is, than suffer more personally and know color in its full “glory”

2019-02-11 17:33:59 (edited by Dark 2019-02-11 17:35:11)

If you want to get rid of this Zarvox your probably best asking a professional, though from what I know its a pretty permanent part of how some people's brains work. As someone whose synaesthesic myself (though in my case its both colour and tactile), I'd not give it up for anything, it is too integral to the way I think about the world, about music, aroma, pretty much any pleasant experience but especially sensual ones, if I lost it it would be  going partly numb.

I'm also fairly sure my lady is synaesthesic too and experiences colour, though as she's never seen colour she can't say for certain, still its very much an extra dimension to her experience.

This is not to say "well sit back and enjoy it", just that you might want to think about what you'd be giving up before trying to get rid of it.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-02-11 17:45:24

You are unlikely to be able to get rid of it entirely, I'm afraid. However, you may find that in talking to a therapist, you may develop ways of reframing your experience such that it is no longer quite so overwhelming or negative. It's unlikely you're going to find a qualified expert here, so I think reaching out on your end is the way to go.

Best of luck.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2019-02-11 18:04:10

one solution for dampening the synesthesia is by listening to multiple sources and multitasking. My mind is simple, it does not multitask well, and it needs at least 85% of my attention on something to  really think about it. Maybe that number is higher. But say for example, 25 people talking in one room, and I am talking to a friend or listening to an article, since there is so much noise, my mind will be more focused on my friend’s part of the conversation or the article’s subject rather than the color of the friend or screen reader’s voice and it will also prevent words from coming into my head, which eliminates the slide show of color I would see there too. Multitasking such as writing while listening to something is good too, except I would be focused on writing which brings in more color every character I type. So perhaps multitasking with things that do not bring as much color would be better. But using color to eliminate color isn’t  going to help, only make worse, so I have to study how much color is in every activity I do.
If anyone has any tips for dampening color in any activity they do, please let me know, I would like to dampen both synesthesia and visual schizophrenia as much as possible.

2019-02-12 06:14:14

Facinating. I don't think you'll find many treatment options for synethesia available, at least not in conventional circles as its not considered a disease so much as a cognitive state.  Most things like that are often found in more eclectic occult or spiritualist sources, so i'd suggest trying meditation with a combination of conditioned association and mindfulness to try managing it. For example, find a state where you see the color black, and try to focus and hold on to that color while introducing a single sound over time. I'm quite curious how your current cognitive state would react to visual sonification with something like the vOICe though, with practice it could be beneficial for an improved sense of spacial processing.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2019-02-12 06:40:06

@post 5 can you explain the last part of your post? And what do you mean by the voice?

2019-02-12 07:03:37 (edited by magurp244 2019-02-12 07:05:32)

[The vOICe] is a program written by Peter Meijer that converts a visual image into sound. In many respects it tries to instill a sense of synethesia to "see with sound" as it were. How it works is each pixel of the image is represented as a tone, with the pitch determining how high or low each pixel is. The sound plays in stereo from left to right over time, and that stereo panning over time tells you each pixels horizontal position. The brightness of a pixel is also represented by how loud or quiet the sound is.

So for example, if you hear a high pitch on your left at the beginning of the sound, that would mean there's something in the upper left of the image, and if you hear a low pitch tone on the right near the end of the sound, that means there's something in the lower right of the image. There's a training guiide with examples [here] you can listen to, and ther software itself is free. There's been some ongoing research on building portable versions people can walk around with normally for some time, and so far there are two smart glass devices that can run the android version of the vOICe. One woman in particular even managed to regain a sense of depth perception while using it, which you can read about [here].

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2019-02-12 07:36:52

I have ignored it for 10 years, tried to ignore that I haven’t    accepted it. It is not that i haven’t tried, it is that I am ignoring that I haven’t accepted it yet.
I tried. I tried telling my dad, that I haven’t accepted it 10 years later. But he doesn’t understand. He first asked if this was a problem for a week, and then when I said, no, ever since it happened, he thought I was talking about an x girlfriend.
I was going to ask for videos of when I could see, so I would know what life was like. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t remember how much I was able to see, or how useful it was, I have an idea, but I just remember colors the most. I thought watching videos might give me a sense of how life was with my very limited vision. I was going to ask, but my dad doesn’t understand. And I know I wasn’t too clear, but I tried. I tried. It took me until 9th grade  to ask about my past, which he knew nothing about, and until now to ask for videos, and that didn’t work either. And my mom is dead! The person who would understand with a few words, the person who did know my past! She’s gone!

2019-02-12 07:40:22

@post7 I will take a deeper read of your post tomorrow. Right now I am very emotionally unstable and I want to sleep.

2019-02-12 16:10:31

I apologize if I post too much in this topic. If I get a spam warn, I understand why. The reason I have been ignoring that fact that I haven’t accepted blindness is because I’ve been holding on to the less than 1% chance of getting it back. My optic nerve is damaged, and glaucoma detached my retinas, so there is no hope in getting my sight back. But I have held on to that less than 1%, and that is causing my whole life to spiral out of control. I need to abandon it.
I have heard many stories of people who have lost their sight, and when the technology came available, they preferred not to have it. I always disagreed with them, because look at how many societal problems we face! BUt I never considered the personal damage they experienced. Maybe they held onto that 1%. Maybe they were afraid they would gain their vision and then lose it again, just to have the scale of damage double or triple. Maybe they could only get a tiny speck of sight back, which would probably be my case.
The question in the end is: is it really worth it to damage my whole personal life with a 1% dream that might only recover the smallest bit of light, not enough to make a difference? Maybe I would heal alll the way, but that is not likely with detached retinas and damage to the optic nerve. I have been trying to ignore everyone’s warnings.
But even after all of this, it feels wrong to give up the 1%. It has destroyed my life, but somehow it makes me feel like I gave up on getting sight back. How can I accept it, and live with that acceptance? Can I have everyone’s story please?