5 Ways ASMR Makes Life Better

…just take hold of my hand and listen to the sounds of the city melt away. You are with me, in this moment, where we are whole and at peace…

You might be wondering: What Is ASMR?

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a pleasant tingling sensation in response to certain sounds: whispering, eating food, tapping, etc.

If you want to experience ASMR, there is no guaranteed way to provoke the response, but many ASMRtists are doing their level best to let you in on the secret via their YouTube videos.

Here is one of the most popular ASMRtists, Gentle Whispers:

I admire what Gentle Whispers is doing and her intention to help people relax, but I am not one of the people that are lulled to sleep by her videos.

I go to this weird place in my mind where I start wondering if this is the future of human interaction — a bunch of super-alienated folks clustering online to experience the personal attention of a fake haircut — and then I am wide awake and looking for Philip K. Dick books to read, or watching Bladerunner, but I am not counting sheep … unless they’re electric ones.

I try to get to a peaceful, bliss-laden, tingly place but some of the ASMR videos provoke an entirely different response.

Apparently, I have misophonia.

The whispering videos, the food eating videos, and especially the attempts to recreate real-life experiences (like the haircut) made me annoyed and angry.

Misophonia is an irrational hatred of certain sounds and yes, I have it, but even I have found peace in ASMR videos.

There is something tingly about the sound of a pen scratching on paper or the crackle of a well-built fire to me. Everybody has their thing.

Now you might be wondering:

How Can ASMR Help Me?

1. ASMR Reduces Anxiety

“Almost as if somebody is pulling your hair slightly and then it just travels down your neck and into your shoulders, into your hands and legs. Some of the favorite of triggers for a majority of people are voices, a lot of people like the sounds of hair being brushed or clipping of scissors, crinkling sounds, tapping sounds, spraying … there’s really an unlimited amount of it.”~Maria (Gentle Whispers)

Do you remember your last haircut? The tingling sensation unleashed by someone else shampooing your hair is real-life ASMR — an almost full-body sigh.

ASMR causes your heart rate to slow down.

The interactive ASMR videos, like the haircut, make the viewer feel that they are receiving personal attention and care.

When we are anxious, our heart races and we feel all alone. ASMR videos counteract that.

But it gets better.

2. ASMR Helps Insomnia

There is a kind of hypnotic effect to the soft whispers of ASMR videos.

You feel yourself getting sleepy, very very sleepy…

And then there is the phenomenon known as unintentional ASMR.

3. Bob Ross Is ASMR & He Helps Everything

His voice is so gentle and you can hear the sound of brush meets canvas in the most delicious way. Bob Ross is the master of unintentional ASMR.

4. ASMR Lowers Your Heart Rate

As you become relaxed watching an ASMR video, your heart rate slows, your skin conductivity increases, and the parts of your brain involved in bonding with other humans light up.

There’s some powerful real-science kind of stuff going on.

Could provoking ASMR responses become part of the treatment for depression, insomnia, inflammation, high blood pressure, etc?

5. ASMR Treats Loneliness

“It’s a multisensory experience. If you take the example of mouth sounds, the sounds of people eating, when do you hear somebody’s mouth sounds? Well, you only really hear it when you’re very close to them. So, if you imagine a young child being cradled by its mother who’s eating a piece of toast, that’s the sort of time when that child would experience another persons mouth sounds. So if we think of mouth sounds as a trigger for that sort of sense of being comforted and warm, then that sort of makes sense.”~Professor Nick Davis, Manchester Metropolitan University — UK

ASMR can bring you back to a place where you felt safe, warm, loved and comforted.

If you don’t get the tingles from watching ASMR videos, it may be that you haven’t found the right trigger yet.

Here’s mine: