The Bed, the Brain and the ASMR

I usually hate going to bed. Not because I hate sleeping, I happen to love sleeping and love it more when I can. But the problem is, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who faces this, is that instead of my brain winding down when I hop into my cosy bed, it kicks into FTL overdrive sending my thoughts cascading and colliding across the synaptic universe.

 

Sometimes I really hate you...

While I do enjoy having these sudden spurts of thoughts, ideas and I-shoulda-dun-that's, by a purely time based event...it's not very ideal. I'm a bit of a light sleeper so I have fairly broken sleeps during the night as it is, but for some reason my brain decides to wake up when I want to do the exact opposite. The result is taking an hour if not hours to fall asleep.


To try and remedy this scum-bag brain inconvenience I threw myself into the Google search engine once again, it never failed me before I'd be damned if it failed me now! Of course I tried all the usual results, lavender, reading, breathing exercises, soothing music and what not. Lavender would probably work nothing short of me snorting it, which wouldn't be good for my hay-fever allergies for sure and unfortunately all the other proposed solutions don't work as intended.

See, my brain functions in a way that if I'm thinking about breathing it brings a scene to mind (don't ask what kind of scene...), not from anything in particular but I'll instantly begin making a short film in my head and then the thoughts start firing up again preparing myself for productivity I just don't have the energy for. Reading... well if breathing makes me think up a film you can't IMAGINE what reading does, the same goes for music too. They're all variations of the same problem, my over active imagination. To boot, I'm trying to come up with ideas for a horror short lately and inadvertently thinking scary things does not help one sleep!

I can be ASMR if you want me to be baby

But then I came across something interesting. It's a little thing called ASMR which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. I'm pretty sure it's not something that people are widely aware of, but I think it's something we've all experienced. Say for example, someone with a soft voice; hypnotic and sleep inducing, it produces an oddly pleasurable and relaxing sensation that could make you drift off into pink and fluffy slumber-land, or a world full of obedient Velociraptors in my case. I won't give the Wikipedia explanation because it almost makes it sound like a pseudo-sexual cult since a lot of it involves role-playing, soft speaking and an overuse of the word "pleasurable".

Jokes aside, It's not only voices either that trigger it either, there's a lot of research gone into what causes this sensation but no one is quite sure from what I gathered since the experience is an inner emotion. It's different for everyone but it can be trigged by things as simple as someone folding a newspaper as they read, a person typing details on a keyboard or someone writing into a notebook with a scratchy pen. Naturally I was quite delighted that I found out the name of my mystery sensation so with a sure fire definition of it at hand I approached YouTube in a semi-sane state of exhaustion.

To my surprise, there is a very large community of "ASMR's" across YouTube. It has to be one of the more interesting sub categories to find as well. I won't lie, when you watch any of these videos for the first time, you'll most likely feel a little silly. More so because you're watching people role-playing, tapping, writing, typing for up to an hours' worth of video and they have no discernible meaning outside of the function of ASMR. Then the weird second reality hits you. Who the hell sits down and makes these? I won't lie, at the beginning I was wielding my sword of judgement; these people are weird and have no friends. But then I realised that I'm the one looking these people up and their videos are helping me sleep so who am I to judge? I'm also giant f'#@king weirdo all the time!

I'll give you all the ASMR you can DREAM of!!! (pun intended)

There's no denying though that there is definitely a large majority of this community that is eccentric and I don't think they would fit into the conformities of the social "norm" (whatever the frak that is, but you get mah point!). But hey, as I said, who am I to judge? These people are still spending their time making these videos and judging by the length some of them put enormous amounts of time into them. People will always make fun, as I have seen in the comments section before but honestly, they're the YouTuber's who deserve a lot of respect. It's not easy to post videos of yourself like that, let alone that a lot of them tell deeply personal stories about themselves. They're also a very supportive community as well, I don't think I have ever once seen a spat between any of them, which is a lot better than the stuff I can say about other sub categories of YouTube I've come across. Also the abusive people who came about them I call "closet-ASMR's", kinda self explanatory, you don't come across these videos on a whim!

Anyways, once I found a niche one to my tastes it has now changed the way I sleep. When you find your ASMR trigger there will be a WEALTH of videos for you to choose from. And trust me, even though it was weird at first, these things work like a charm. As it turns out, people just whispering or speaking softly does the job for me. Preferably I like when they ramble about their lives, it becomes enjoyable like listening to a strange tranquillising radio. Often you just drift off without even realising it. So try it out, give it a go! If you're having trouble sleeping I think you'll very quickly find something that is your ASMR trigger and hopefully that will be the last time you'll ever have to search for sleep rememdies!

SWEET DREAMS, PEACE OUT Biatchs!