I’ve come to the realisation lately that I always have my phone on silent. Like 24/7.
This can bug people.
I miss texts and calls but I literally jump if my phone makes a noise and I never EVER EVER have been able to tolerate it on ‘vibrate’. I have an iPhone and have never had the vibrate feature on and always have ‘Do not disturb’ on. My phone is usually on me, either in my pocket or a bag so it’s not like I forget my phone I just don’t like the noises of notifications (but don’t want to turn them off and miss even more!).
Even if someone else’s phone vibrates on the table next to me its enough to send my heart crazy like a surge of adrenaline releases and I have to calm down without anyone realising by slowing my breathing. As I’ve said before, and I will say it again, I’m rubbish with surprises!
This leads me on to more phone and technology related stuff…
I came across a girl I follow on Twitter talking about how she has ‘hearing motion synaesthesia’. Now I didn’t realise that hearing motion could come under synaesthesia which was the first thing I found immediately interesting… (In case you don’t know according to dictonary.com synaesthesia is ‘A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualisation of a colour’.)
The girl tweeted about how she heard motion sounds when looking at GIFs on Twitter and could not control this. GIFs (if you aren’t already aware) are a type of image file that support animated image – without sound. I also struggle with this and have written in the past on this blog about how I can hear motion even from different distances. For example say I can see someone running but they are not near me they are across a park from me, I can hear a kind of pattern that relates to when their feet hit the floor.
This hearing motion type of synaesthesia can get very wearing on a person. Even if something isn’t making a noise like a GIF or people moving my brain substitutes that silence with a noise or sound that relates to any pattern it can find in the moving object. This is confusing to write about and even more confusing to try to explain to someone face-to-face…!
Do you hear motion? Or do you have synaesthesia? How do you cope? Let me know in the comments below…
21andsensory 
Hey, there!
I don’t have synaesthesia, but my phone’s usually silent too. If I could break my phone problem into pieces, I’d say I wouldn’t mind the sound or the vibration if it wasn’t for the surprise. I mean, If I am waiting for a call, If I already know someone is going to call and I know why they want to talk to me, it’s okay. The problem is whenever the phone rings or vibrates and someone wants to speak/text but I don’t know the subject. I kind of need to prepare to have conversations, so I can really focus on what’s being said, give proper answers and remember what was said. In the case of spoken conversations, it’s worse if I’m not prepared, because I might: 1. hear what the person said but not pay attention and give weird answers. 2. hear what the person said, pay attention and give weird answers anyway because of speech timing. Texting’s less threatening, but also challenging because of response timing. That’s why I prefer email. 😀
Another problem with the phone is that, when it is ringing/vibrating, it interrupts me, and that’s kind of painful most of the time.
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Hello! Thank you for commenting 🙂 Im not sure if I have synaesthesia either but I have some similar symptoms. Yes I feel exactly like that too! I hate the surprise unless I know or am expecting a call to come through. I always write notes beforehand otherwise I stumble on my words which does help. Texting is so much less threatening I totally agree with you – face to face is so scary! Ah yes email is just the best. I understand what you mean about being interrupted too…its nice to know someone else understands!
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I have the same experience with hearing GIFs, but I never really thought about how that could be a type of synaesthesia, so this is news to me too. In fact, I never even questioned whether other people dealt with this too. I guess I always thought it was just me?
What I hear is an unusual set of sounds, though — it’s really hard to articulate what it is exactly. It’s just some sort of sound in the very far back of my head that plays and repeats every time a GIF repeats. It makes my eyes feel really weird too, until I look away. Interesting. I’ll have to look into hearing motion synaesthesia more. Thanks for sharing!
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Hello 🙂 thank you for commenting. Yeah its interesting isn’t it? Im not sure how someone goes about being diagnosed or tested as having synaesthesia but it interesting someone else hears gifs too! I always thought it was me too…Yeah I totally get you its the repeating factor of it and my head seems to make the noise. No worries let me know if you find any interesting info!
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This was really the only page I could find a concrete answer about diagnosis and testing: http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-You-Have-Synesthesia#Getting_a_Professional_Diagnosis_sub
When I did research on synesthesia, I found that there are two different types: one being associative, where it takes place in your head or “mind’s eye,” and the other being projective, where it appears to literally be projected into your field of vision. It seems like associative synesthesia is closer to what I experience.
These were the pages I looked at for that info:
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-neuroscientists-guide-to-developing-synesthesia_us_55e4b004e4b0aec9f35429c9
• http://synaesthesia.com/en/Information/state-of-science/synesthesia-in-general/
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Oooooh okay thank you of sending me those links I will check them out now! Interesting that there are two different types of Synaesthesia…thanks again!
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