🌈 WHEN THE SENSES CROSS:

SYNESTHESIA IN NEURODIVERGENT MINDS

“Maybe the neurodivergent brain isn’t broken.
Maybe it’s just tuned to a different frequency of color.”

Jul 28 – On a quiet morning, a strange thought appeared:

Why do some people hear colors?
Or taste names?
Or feel the passage of time as a three-dimensional shape?

That’s called synesthesia a kind of sensory blending.
It’s real. It’s rare or rather it present in everyone just on different variations.
But here’s what’s more interesting:

It seems to show up more in people with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia.

Why?

And is that difference… a glitch?

Or a kind of gift?

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What Is Synesthesia, Really?

Imagine if your brain had no boundaries between the senses.
You hear a violin and see shimmering blue.
You read the number “5” and it’s always red or as the christian’s tie the number 5 to “GRACE”.
Wednesday feels like velvet.
The letter “J” is a bit jealous.

This isn’t imagination. It’s not metaphor.
It’s how some people literally experience the world.

Their brains link senses together
not because something’s wrong,
but because something’s wired differently.

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Neurodivergence: Not Less, Just Different

You’ve heard the term “neurodivergent,” right?

It includes conditions like:

• Autism

• ADHD

• Dyslexia

But maybe those are just labels for something deeper:

Brains that perceive and process the world differently.

Not better. Not worse. Just differently.

And here’s what’s beautiful:

Studies show that synesthesia is more common among people with these brains.

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The Science: What Do We Know?

• People with autism often report heightened sensory experiences sometimes overwhelmingly so. Many also describe colors linked to voices, or emotions that have shape. example here is a link sent by a fellow synesthe of a Toddler click to view: Toddler Synesthe

• People with ADHD often live in a whirl of motion, thoughts, and fast-switching attention. Some report cross-sensory moments where sound feels like texture, or time shifts color.

• People with dyslexia (Word blindness)while struggling with reading may also perceive letters and words with distinct colors, shapes, or even emotional tones.

Coincidence?
Or could synesthesia be a natural outcome of a brain that’s more interconnected?

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What’s the Difference Between Neurodivergent and Neurotypical Synesthesia?

So the experience itself may be similar…
But the meaning of it can be very different.

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A Philosophical Pause: What If All Brains Are Just... Variations?

Here’s a big question:

Is the neurodivergent brain really “other”?
Or is it just a part of the natural spectrum of human minds?

All babies begin life with cross-wired senses.
They slowly learn to separate them sight from sound, touch from time.

But maybe some people never fully separate.

And maybe that’s not a flaw.

Maybe the neurodivergent mind is a memory of unity.
A reminder of how connected everything used to be
before language divided, before time linearized, before "normal" was invented.

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The Gift and the Challenge

Synesthesia especially in neurodivergent people can be:

• Beautiful (seeing music as a moving painting)

• Confusing (feeling overwhelmed in loud, colorful spaces)

• Helpful (using color to understand letters or remember names)

• Exhausting (sensing everything, all the time)

It’s not magic.
But it’s not madness either.

It’s difference.
And difference doesn’t need fixing.
It needs understanding.

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REFLECTION

“If my mind paints days of the week in color, does that make me wrong?
Or does it make the calendar incomplete?”

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QUESTION:

Could it be that neurodivergent and neurotypical minds are not two categories…
but two instruments in the same orchestra?

One plays melody.
The other, harmony.
And synesthesia?
That’s when the music becomes visible.

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© [Easy Weezy] 2025 | Journal of a Curious Mind
“The world doesn’t come to us in pieces.Only our labels do.
Maybe the neurodivergent brain simply forgot to break the rainbow into parts.”