ASMR Therapy
Ever since middle school, I found that I enjoyed this tingling sensation whenever I heard a whisper with the right amount of softness to it. At first, it was when my English teacher was whispering to me, or a classmate, if he was close enough, about an assignment during a quiet study session. Sometimes, I even considered raising my hand just to ask him something I already knew, but I didn’t want to come across as some kind of idiot.
Anyways, that’s when it started. I thought, Hey, I get the tingles when I hear a whisper. Must be a new thing. I’ll just keep it to myself because people are gonna think I’m weird. Then, I was watching CSI and it was about three crazy people who thought they were actually FBI agents to the point where they solved cases and worked with the LVPD on the death of one of their guys. (It’s called “Disarmed & Dangerous”, for the record.) When it was OnDemand, I would rewind the scene with the whisper, just to repeat the whispered dialogue, even though it only lasted a minute. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was soothing…even though he was talking about how he was in hiding because some people were after him.
If I remember correctly, an episode of Three Rivers came after that (the show lasted just one season, but it was a very good show about organ donation — Hawaii Five-0’s Alex O’Loughlin was the male lead and I think he advocates for organ donation as well because of that). It was when Mandy Patinkin played a patient who already had ALS. I think it was an acting choice, to speak softly because his body is slowly deteriorating. At the time, all I could do was record things with my phone (or maybe I had the iPod Touch then). Obviously, I knew this wasn’t the right way to do things, but I’m not tech savvy, so it was the only way I could do it as long as I made sure the environment was really quiet. So I recorded most of the scenes with Mandy Patinkin in them, if they were worth it, tingly-wise. There are five recordings from that one episode which I still have.
So afterwards, my library started to grow. I gradually stopped caring about background noise, like the TV being heard from another room or my finger shifting while holding onto the phone, getting a better grip. One specific favorite was the visitation scene in “A Beautiful Mind”: Russell Crowe’s character (AKA the real-life John Nash) has schizophrenia, so he has these “government agents” who taunt him and make him question his own existence and everything he knows. They make him use mathematics to predict what Russian terrorists are doing or something? His wife knows what he’s been doing (which is essentially writing on old newspapers and leaving them in a secret mailbox, expecting someone to pick them up) and confronts him about it.
I don’t know why I’m going into detail about that since it’s already a well-known film that you probably know better than I. He is speaking to his wife about Russian spies and how they have mics everywhere, which is why he’s whispering. As crazy as that man was when he whispers (in that scene anyway), it’s still soothing…even though this dialogue is about his paranoia.
Sometimes, I would even fall asleep to them and they’d work! If I stroke my palms or give myself a scalp massage, it’d help me fall asleep real quickly. It was like magic or something. I didn’t do that often though, since my arms would get tired, but I remember as a child when I slept in my grandparents’ room, my grandma (before she got dementia, so she has long forgotten about this now) would use a Q-Tip and caress it all over my face and arms. She only spoke Korean, but we came up with a name for it: “딩동댕동”. (You’d pronounce it “dingdongdaengdong”, but that doesn’t mean squat.) I have no idea what it means in English, if there is any meaning, even in Korean, but that was our thing, which probably got its name because it just sounded funny. At night, I would even hand her the Q-Tip and she’d know what that means. She would often fall asleep first, so I deliberately moved around to let her know I was still awake, which caused her to wake up as well. I know. I was a bad kid, not letting grandma sleep once she was down.
Anyways, then I discovered that I could download stuff off of YouTube from this site called kibase.com (which I really hope is legal to say). I found out that I could just keep the videos for myself and use QuickTime to edit the lengths so I could cut out irrelevant parts. Now, I have, like, thirty “Home Videos” on iTunes and only two of them are actually home videos. Most of them are bootlegs since this Broadway baby doesn’t have access to Broadway.
I think what goes through my mind whenever each recording pops up is the scene and the situation, so I think that just sort of distracts me from everyday life and helps me focus on trying to fall asleep. Not sure if I’d use it for meditation purposes, since it doesn’t clear the mind or anything, but if I need those whispers, I’m pressing play.
For a while, I was sort of avoiding this whole thing (which I called “Bedtime Whispers” on my iTunes album), because at the time, I was using my iPad to listen to them. The next day, I was taking notes in my theatre history class and I also used my iPad to type notes. My finger accidentally swiped up from the bottom of the iPad and accidentally clicked on “play” and I hoped that the sound without headphones was on silent like it usually should have been, but it was on full blast, so I thought, Crapcrapcrapcrap as I lowered the volume. I know people heard what was playing on the CSI recording, so that’s why I was avoiding that one afterwards. Sort of a traumatic thing. Couldn’t really listen to it the same anymore.
But then one morning, I had to get ready for class and I had earbuds in overnight for “Bedtime Whispers” reasons and forgot to press pause as I took out the earbuds, and I was using my laptop this time, so the recording didn’t stop. (Yeah, by the way, Apple, what’s up with that? When you unhook your headphones on the iPhone or iPad, the music stops, but not for the MacBook? What gives?) So my roommate (who I didn’t know very well since we’ve never had an actual conversation except through Facebook Chat because we’re that awkward in person, or at least I am) heard it. It was a House, M.D. recording and I know she watches that show, so I think she safely assumed that I was just watching it in my sleep.
THEN, it took me a while (about a year) to realize that I shouldn’t be afraid of that playlist or the CSI incident any longer because a) it was a long time ago; b) people probably already forgot; c) even if they still remembered, they probably assumed that I accidentally went onto Netflix or something and forgot to quit.
It’s funny seeing my Top 25 playlist though. There’s always a bunch of “Bedtime Whispers” recordings on that list, so I have to reset the number of plays. Many times. Many, many, many times, because I always let it play overnight, repeating either one specific recording or the entire playlist. Right now, it has about an hour’s worth on there, so pretty good.
I’ve only told a couple of people this, but not even my best friend, whom I speak with everyday, knows. Well, she’s read the album name before when I was driving her around. And she was picking a song on my phone. I was going to explain it to her, but ended up mumbling with “yeah…” once she picked an actual song.
A couple nights ago, I was looking for whispered recordings of guided meditations (I took yoga for three terms, so I knew all about Shavasana, which is corpse pose). Then, I decided to go onto YouTube and look for them myself. Some of them were labelled “ASMR” and I thought it was a dirty thing like BDSM, so I avoided it, but then I looked it up: autonomous sensory meridian response. When I read the definition, I was like, “DUDE, THIS IS ME!!” These YouTube stars actually buy those double-mics (some of them shaped like actual ears) and pretend that those are your ears and whisper into them. Some of them just ramble about their lives, they say things that make you relax, and it’s actually called ASMR Therapy. Like, it’s an actual therapeutic thing.
They even do roleplay stuff, not sexually, but just pretending you’re a guest at a spa and they give you facials. My favorite gal is “MissASMR”. I really like her sleep therapy video where she “cleanses your aura” and uses a “magic brush” to help you relax (which is just a makeup brush). The summer spa and facial I really like is by “SensitiveTrigger Response”. The first twenty minutes are sort of boring because you don’t see her, just hear her opening packets and “making” the stuff. She whispers once in a while, so it’s not like you can skip, unless you’re me and you actually documented at which point she spoke and what she said. “WhispersRed ASMR” is British (all of these ladies have various semi-thick accents, by the way) and she looked really familiar. That’s when I realized that she looked like almost EXACTLY like Debra Messing. (Seriously. Look her up and tell me you don’t see the resemblance.)
One of my favorite roleplays is “GentleWhispering” where she is a librarian, setting you up for your own library card and giving you the introductions of their library and going through some of the books they have. Part of this video is when her long, manicured nails tap onto the keyboard as she fills out your general information. (One of the keys to making these ASMR videos is the nails because some people also get tingly when they tap certain surfaces.)
The problem with the facial one is since your eyes are closed, you need to use your imagination or at least your memory. I mean, they’re aware of this, which is why they tell you where they are applying pressure on your face, but you still need to figure out the sensation yourself. I overthink a lot of things though, since I’m more of a person who relies on literal things, so it probably still works in theory.
So, again, it’s called ASMR. If you get tingly when someone whispers in your ear, or were looking for a name for it, in case you were in the same boat I was, dig around for some of these videos on YouTube. They’re really relaxing and they always focus on you and getting you to peacefully fall asleep.
Update: Surprisingly, true crime is also a good way to relax. I have no idea where that logic lies, but if you’re hearing a whispered true crime story or those horror stories submitted by subscribers (i.e. Mr. Nightmare or Lets Read!), it’s like a typical storytime you’d hear as a child. Well, not as kid-friendly though.