I used to think it might be some form of ASMR, but I’ve done a bit of research and I don’t think that’s likely. When I thought it might be ASMR, ASMR had only been described to me as “pleasurable tingles moving across your head and neck” and I thought, “Well … I get those weird tingles moving across my head and neck, but I don’t think it’s pleasurable. At all.” But looking into ASMR a bit … the tingles start in a different place and move in a different way.
With ASMR, the tingles usually start at the top of the head and move down. With … whatever the thing that happens to me is, the tingles start in roughly a ring shape all around my head near the hairline and quickly move up to meet at the crown. Sometimes it feels like my scalp is repeatedly tightening and relaxing on my skull almost like a hand squeezing a stress ball. Then I get lightheaded, but not dizzy if that makes sense. It only lasts a few minutes, and I spend those few minutes wishing it would stop sooner.
Where ASMR is often triggered by some sort of auditory stimulus, I’m usually alone in a quiet room when it happens. It seems to happen when I’m focusing intensely on something; Reading a book, playing a game (usually a puzzle game). Lately it’s been happening a lot while I’m working on one of my transcription jobs; listening hard, trying to make out a word that’s been mumbled, or obscured somehow, say by someone turning over a sheet of paper while it was being said.
I can’t be the only one who experiences this.