is it just me...

[sciatrix]

or is the venn diagram of "people who are really into asmr" and "people who are neurodiverse" a pretty overlapping one?

This observation brought to you by this breathless article on how ASMR became a sensation, which has me so, so confused: that sensation is something I've experienced for a long, long time, and is just... an everyday part of being, for me. The way he has to work at it so hard is just alien. I was talking about the sensation a long time before ASMR, the vocabulary staple, came up, in little bits and bobs of "yeah, you know that thing" (I used to call it a tuning-fork sensation), and as I remember it I was usually talking to people in communities with a lot of folks on the autism spectrum. The people I have run into who are way into ASMR have also pinged me in the same kind of way for other reasons.

Is this a thing anyone has bothered to look at or work out? It seems like such an obvious thing that I'm a little shy mentioning it.

Comments

[writerkit]

I always associated that feeling with the practice of Wicca and meditation and the energy pulses one experiences when working magic-- though I used the language of the Valdemar novels to describe it. The sensation being discussed seems not dissimilar.

[breathedout]

It's also a sensation I have always had, although I am (pretty sure) not on the autism spectrum. But I share your confusion about some people having to work hard at it!

[staranise]

Yep, it's like stimboard and stim videos--hugely neurodiverse.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

^ Agreed, ASMR and visual/audio stimming became popular in the mainstream around the same time, and they get conflated a ton.

[rushthatspeaks]

Yep, that sounds right from my anecdata. I got the autism diagnosis and found out that ASMR was a word for the things it's a word for at about the same time, actually.

[sylvaine]

Oh, interesting, I always thought that was, like, in-built into the original meaning of the term! (And then people glommed onto it, and I'm pretty sure most people watching ASMR things these days aren't actually feeling that ~jolt and just like it otherwise, but don't quote me on that.)

[unicornduke]

Oh geez, I get that and I'm autistic but I hate it! It's not pleasant for me because it's so strong that it makes me literally have to shake/move around to get through it. The only time I can deal with it is when it's something like someone brushing my hair where it's a slower buildup to it happening. It doesn't happen super frequently to me so it's not too bad.

[sciatrix]

Oh man--I actually get the unpleasant jolt-and-shake as well as the pleasant tingly feeling and they're two totally different sensations, but I can see how you'd confuse them. The jolt-and-shake is light-triggered, for me--a particular speed of light flashing will do it, generally light shining through trees while I'm a passenger in a moving vehicle--and the ASMR thing is not.

An epileptic (and autistic) friend of mine listened to me describe the sensation and told me it was probably a myoclonic jerk; the neurologist that I subsequently went to see about it told me some people just get them idiopathically, and as long as they weren't building up to a bigger seizure they were probably normal for me.

[unicornduke]

Oh well that's exciting I guess. Interesting. I can clearly remember the sensation with people petting my hair and it's pleasant mostly but not all the time. The shaking one, I guess I'm not sure what's causing it, I just assumed it was me feeling weird. Now I need to pay attention to it.

Oh I just looked up myoclonic jerk and I super duper get that going to sleep holy crap, I'd forgotten about that. Well, I learned something new today!

[codex8]

Every neurodiverse person I know ~hates~ ASMR and avoids it like the plague actually.

[viggorlijah]

I get full-body shivers from live classical music and people singing certain types of music. When I was little, it was much much easier to trigger the sensation in a variety of audio stimulations, but hypervigilence has blocked it so I have to be relaxed to get it.

I wanted to email you about what's a good book or article on autism for women? I'm leery of the Simon Baron-Cohen autism theory which seems very gendered and I'm curious about autism and neurodivergence when someone presents capable but it takes tremendous effort. Like, if I could I would eat basically the same meals for the rest of my life happily but I force myself to rotate different foods because that's What Is Good and Appropriate. And I'm seeing the same signs in my youngest child. We would like to wear PJs and have a fidget toy and live in the woods and arrange all our things by colour and just be left alone, okay. But we can act normal, it's just a considerable effort. Is it an effort for other people? I don't know! Other people seem to manage.

[archangelbeth]

My offspring would probably tell you that sounds like "masking," where autistic people work really hard to fake "normality." It's a huge stress and can cause some to hit a burnout state.

So, yeah, it's an effort for a lot of autistic people, and probably some other kinds of neuro-atypical, but the neurotypicals don't have to expend that effort, no...

If that helps!

[satsuma]

I mean, ASMR is a stim, and neurodivergent people are in general more into stimmig then the rest of the population, so it follows that it’d be more popular with us?

But personally I’m a neurodivergent person who hates ASMR bc it’s just the WORST sensation to me so maybe ‘is much more likely to have strong feelings about ASMR’ is a more accurate way of putting it haha