‘We literally feel our patients’ pain’: Therapists with synesthesia

When CC Hart touches the patients that come to her for massage therapy, she feels their knots not just under her hand but in her own body.

CC has a rare neurological trait known as mirror-touch synesthesia, which means she ‘feels’ the emotional and physical experiences of others.  

The unusual sense even helps physicians like neurologist Dr Joel Salinas diagnose patients by feeling their symptoms – even when they can’t speak. 

Now, scientists have discovered that CC and people with various types of synesthesia share genetic traits that code for differences in their brains that make them feel what others do. 

Daily Mail Online spoke to mirror-touch synesthetes who use their unusual wiring to help people, sensing distress or locating pain just by touching, or even seeing, another human.

CC Hart is a mirror-touch synesthete, meaning she can feel the pains of the patients she gives massage therapy to when she touches them 

Like many synesthetes, CC had no idea what was happening in her mind and body for most of her life.

CC grew up in a family of nurses – three generations, including her mother. 

‘My mother wanted me to be physical therapist. She recognized there was something unusual about the way I moved, and I often mirrored other people’s movements,’ CC says. 

‘I was captivated watching the Olympics. I couldn’t sit still, I mirrored every one of the ice skaters movements,’ she recalls. 

But her close attention to others had a darker side. 

‘When I saw other people’s wounds or injuries or casts, I would get shocks of electricity down the backs of my legs that felt like I was getting stabbed with a cattle prod,’ CC says. 

The pain was very real to her, and impossible to ignore. 

‘By the time I was 11, I knew something was terribly wrong with me. I thought, “everybody has this feeling but I just can’t handle it because it was so overwhelming,”‘ says CC. 

That feeling of being overwhelmed is shared by many people with mirror-touch synesthesia (MTS), according to Dr Judith Orloff, a Los Angeles, California psychiatrist whose clients are all empaths – people who are more attuned to the emotions of others than most. 

Since discovering her own synesthesia, CC has published research and her own accounts of her experiences and presented them at conferences 

Since discovering her own synesthesia, CC has published research and her own accounts of her experiences and presented them at conferences 

For CC, others with MTS and empaths in general ‘their neural system is on hyper-alert,’ says Dr Orloff. 

‘They have a lot of care and compassion and tend to over-give, so they burn out and I have to teach them not to…they get over-involved and want to fix things and help but they go overboard,’ she says. 

The pain CC experiences when she sees others’ hurts was too much for her to be in the medical field. But then she discovered massage therapy when it was prescribed to her following a bad car accident in college. 

Her introduction to the practice made CC ‘realize there is a career in the world of therapy where I can touch people all day long and not be in a hospital where there are all kinds of triggers’ for her MTS for pain. 

Now, in her practice in San Francisco, California, ‘when [clients] tell me they get pain in their shoulders, I also get what feels like a cattle prod in my shoulder,’ CC says. 

CC discovered her MTS at age 40, when a massage client explained that when people touch her she sees colors – because she had synesthesia. 

The description rang true for CC. ‘I feel like I’ve found my neurological family,’ says CC, who has since had her own research and experiences with MTS published.

As it turns out, she may have literally done exactly that. 

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have identified genetic markers for differences between the brains of most people and those of synesthetes, according to a study published yesterday. 

Dr Judith Orloff is an empath and a psychiatrist who specializes in caring for people with synesthesia and empaths 

Dr Judith Orloff is an empath and a psychiatrist who specializes in caring for people with synesthesia and empaths 

They identified six genes in people who have various forms of synesthesia. 

The genes are also common in ‘people with autism spectrum disorder and savant abilities,’ the study authors wrote. 

Synesthetes tend to have more connectivity between certain parts parts of their brains responsible for processing sensory information. 

These areas of the brain are also larger, while other regions – the ones that help to establish the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other’ are smaller in synesthetes. 

Dr Joel Salinas, an assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience at Harvard University explained that these six genes are ‘expressed in the hearing and seeing parts of the brain, and are involved in the shape and way these brain cells connect to each other.

‘So there’s a lot of evidence that synesthetes don’t just report this experience, their brains are wired differently and that goes down to the level of genes.’ 

Dr Salinas knows this first hand. He has multiple forms of synesthesia – including MTS – himself. He experiences synesthesia constantly, has studied it, and has been studied. 

He first realized he had synesthesia in medical school, after a friend mentioned that some people who see colors with sounds or numbers could more easily enter a meditative state.

‘I wondered why he would mention anything so ordinary,’ Dr Salinas says. ‘Growing up, I assumed I was different, but just kind of chocked it up to being a weird kid.’ 

Soon it came apparent that Dr Salinas, now 34, had many forms of synesthesia, which may have been exacerbated by a benign tumor that was removed from his brain when he was in medical school. 

Dr Joel Salinas has MTS, among other forms of synesthesia. As a doctor and behavioral neurologist, Dr Salinas's brain wiring has helped him diagnose patients by feeling their pain

Dr Joel Salinas has MTS, among other forms of synesthesia. As a doctor and behavioral neurologist, Dr Salinas’s brain wiring has helped him diagnose patients by feeling their pain

But at that point, MTS was unknown. It wasn’t identified until 2005, when a professor was teaching a class about synesthesia and asked if anyone thought they had it. 

A student stood up and explained that when he saw people being touched, he felt touch on himself, and asked if that was synesthesia. 

Similarly, as researchers in San Diego were ‘poking and prodding me like a guinnea pig’ one of them asked him about MTS. 

Dr Salinas assumed he was talking about mirror neurons – brain cells, discovered in 2012, that fire both when we act and when we see others act, helping us to understand one another’s thoughts and feelings. 

The researcher raised his left finger and drew it down his own cheek, then asked what Dr Salinas felt. He felt the brush of a finger down his right cheek. 

‘Everybody has that, because everyone has mirror neurons,’ Dr Salinas told the researcher, who replied ‘that’s definitely not normal.’ 

The standard test to confirm MTS is called a visual tactile congruity test. It essentially shows the subject quick pictures of people touching one cheek, the other or both. 

People with MTS ‘often confuse the touch as if it is happening on them and end up making a lot of errors,’ Dr Salinas says. 

‘People that fall into this category, when you look at them under an MRI scanner, the parts of the brain that tie to vision and touch are larger as part of the mirroring system,’ he explains. 

Dr Salinas is now an associate professor at Harvard University

A vascular but benign tumor was removed from Dr Salinas's brain when he was in college (right), and he believes it may have exacerbated his MTS

Dr Salinas is now an associate professor at Harvard University. A vascular but benign tumor was removed from his brain when he was in college (right), and he believes it may have exacerbated his MTS 

We all have a mental mirroring system, in which ‘our brains are creating a 3D virtual reality like the situation we are in, we are just not aware of it. 

‘But about 1.6 percent of people are conscious of this all the time,’ Dr Salinas says. 

For those people, like Dr Salinas, ‘the boundary between themselves and other people is kind of blurred.’ 

Dr Salinas considers himself lucky, because he has been able to create his own ‘firm, yet thoughtful boundaries,’ so he can use his unusual sense in his medical practice. 

Due in part to his medical background, and the focus it takes just to cope with his multiple synesthesias, Dr Salinas believes he has ‘a better relationship with my brain,’ that allows him to cope with his MTS.   

Dr Salinas has learned to expect the sensations that accompany seeing others in pain – the same sensation that CC describes. 

One of his patients, who had turrets, developed a self-mutilating tic, in which he would force his cheek between his molars with his fist from the outside, grinding his own flesh there ‘until it was like shredded beef,’ Dr Salinas says. 

Watching him, ‘I started feeling a buzzing sensation in my left cheek, like a stun gun was pulsing there, Dr Salinas says. 

Sometimes, the shared sensations allow Dr Salinas to do more than just empathize. 

In one instance, he likely saved the life of a woman whose cerebral palsy had left unable to speak. 

‘One morning, she woke up angry and agitated. She was screaming and out of control,’ he remembers. 

Dr Salinas was called in to sedate the woman, but when he walked in the room ‘I felt the usual MTS feelings. I could feel her strands of sweat-covered hair on my forehead, the sensation of the rails of the bed on my body as if I was pushing against them.’ 

But there was more. He felt his chest and shoulders rising out of time with his own breathing. He suspected that they were in time with the patient’s body and ‘made the decision to trust my body.’ 

He ordered a test that revealed the woman had blood clots in lungs. 

‘She wasn’t agitated because she was angry, she was literally fighting to breath,’ Dr Salinas says. 

Every time he has an experience like one of these, Dr Salinas is reminded – and humbled – by ‘how the brain is so in control of my perception of reality.’ 

Some of his MTS moments are ‘borderline hallucinations,’ but fall just shy enough of that for people like Dr Salinas and CC to ‘lean into the intense experiences rather than turn from them,’ and use them to help people. 

‘When I have an experience, I don’t necessarily need to freak out, I have the experience to say “that’s just another creak in the house,”‘ Dr Salinas says.  

DO YOU FEEL WHAT OTHERS FEEL? TAKE DR ORLOFF’S EMPATH SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST 

 1. Have I’ve been labeled as “overly sensitive,” shy, or introverted?

2. Do I frequently get overwhelmed or anxious?

3. Do arguments or yelling make me ill?

4. Do I often feel like I don’t fit in?

5. Am I drained by crowds and need alone time to revive myself?

6. Am I over stimulated by noise, odors, or non-stop talkers?

7. Do I have chemical sensitivities or can’t tolerate scratchy clothes?

8. Do I prefer taking my own car places so I can leave early if I need to?

9. Do I overeat to cope with stress?

10. Am I afraid of becoming suffocated by intimate relationships?

11. Do I startle easily? 

 12. Do I react strongly to caffeine or medications?

13. Do I have a low pain threshold?

14. Do I tend to socially isolate?

15. Do I absorb other people’s stress, emotions, or symptoms?

16. Am I overwhelmed by multitasking and prefer doing one thing at a time?

17. Do I replenish myself in nature?

18. Do I need a long time to recuperate after being with difficult people or energy vampires?

19. Do I feel better in small cities or the country than large cities?

20. Do I prefer one-to-one interactions or small groups rather than large gatherings?

To calculate your results:

If you answered yes to one to five questions, you’re at least partially an empath. 

 Responding yes to six to ten questions means you have moderate empathic tendencies. Responding yes to eleven to fifteen means you have strong empathic tendencies. 

Answering yes to more than fifteen questions means that you are a full blown empath. 

Source: The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People, by Dr Judith Orloff



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