The Value of ASMR Videos

I’ll start out by saying that a) I am an anxious person, and b) I am autistic. So essentially, I probably experience higher levels of anxiety and agitation than the average, you know, non-mentally-ill person. It can be especially hard for me to fall asleep at night. That’s where ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, comes into play.

I first discovered ASMR videos on YouTube almost ten years ago, back when they were pretty “lo-fi”, as insiders in the community describe it. I would watch soft-spoken videos of people painting their nails, making tea, or just generally rambling on about nothing. I didn’t know what the strange-yet-pleasant tingling sensation I was experiencing was called at the time, but I was very grateful that those videos existed – they were helping me to relax and unwind at night and ultimately, helped me get to sleep.

Some autistic people don’t seem to like ASMR videos, to which I always respond: “You have to look for the right ones for you!” Maybe that’s not necessarily true, but I’ve found, generally speaking, that I prefer soft-spoken narration to that of whispered videos (whispering sounds like bad static to my ears, and can be frankly kind of grating and distracting), rambling videos as opposed to roleplays (if there’s too much of a narrative in the video, my analytic side of my brain takes over and I can’t relax), and videos that are more on the “lo-fi” side of things, as compared to overproduced ones. I know the saying, “if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person”, but I did want to explain myself a bit and let other autistic (and neurotypical!) people know that maybe ASMR could be helpful for them.

If you’re interested in ASMR videos for relaxation and sleep, I have a few suggestions/favorites:

ASMR Party Planner Role Play with typing, crinkles, and tissue sounds by Springbok ASMR (sadly, she doesn’t create videos anymore, but she’s got a decent amount of older, lo-fi ones)

ASMR Tutorial about Tea (soft speaking, crinkling, rustling, pouring) by Temi ASMR (she doesn’t have a ton of videos, but god, her voice is like melting butter)

Amuse Asmr’s entire YouTube channel (this woman has a great soft-spoken voice and her videos are objectively pretty boring, which makes for great ASMR)

The above videos/channels are just a starting point for getting into ASMR. I think they’re a pretty good jumping-off point, and hope that I’ve introduced a new way of relaxing to someone who might need it.

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Louisa Schnaithmann is Consulting Editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry. She is the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press, 2021).