Synaesthesia

I studied this at uni briefly, but one of my brothers recently sent me a link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

One of the sentences really struck me: "In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise)."

If it says what it means, then I think I get that, but I thought that it was a normal way to view time - primarily I'm thinking months, years and decades which I see in my mind's eye as always being associated with set blocks within larger blocks, and interspersed with pictures and images, like photos, relative to that time timeframe - and they stretch away from me, becoming harder to see clearly as I look back, unless I 'travel' back in time in my mind's eye and land on a place from my past, then I see more clearly. I get it with days too, they appear truncated visually, with lines and boundaries between distinct portions of time.

I had another odd number thing when I small - when I was asked a maths problem, I created or had this man spontaneously appear in my head. He lived in a little cobwebby room with a bed and a wardrobe, and he would hold up a sign that showed the maths problem and the solution too. This no longer happens, but I do often see things visually in my mind's eye when people talk or when I think about things in a meditative manner.

I also see visual images in response to people's thoughts or feelings, especially when I am counselling clients. I am only now learning what to do with them e.g. one client appeared for a split second as a grotesque goblin and it emerged a few sessions later that she saw herself as ugly. It used to freak me out a little, but I decided that it was just a different way of seeing and processing information, that actually provides me with greater clarity and insight than otherwise.