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Very Restrictive Interests?

Opia

Opia

Active Member
Hi guys,

For as long as I can remember, I've always put extreme restrictions on myself when it comes to interests. It's very strange. For instance, I go through phases of obsessing over each one of my interests, and while I'm obsessing over one thing, I can't allow myself to enjoy any of the other interests. I put pressure on myself to choose a favorite interest to focus on permanently because changing from one obsession to the next is emotionally draining and very stressful for me. I want to just settle on one interest and focus on it forever, but I just can't bring myself to choose one, and I'm simply unable to choose more than one. This is a very hard thing to explain, but is this common in people on the autism spectrum? Could it possibly be linked to OCD? I don't understand it, and it really bothers me.
Thanks in advance to anyone who reads/replies; any help is greatly appreciated.
 
I do have restrictive interests but i can get focused on one thing at a time,i recently went through a massive live action Beauty and the beast movie interest where all I did was talk about it and it got to a point where my husband had to tell that's enough talking about it,now my interest at the moment is The Crow movie and comic books,but my interests is mostly doll collecting,comic books,mythology,Disney princesses and even makeup and I do sometimes focus more on one than the other then it will change and I will focus on the other interests but usually my interests evolve around the ones I mentioned,my husband does say to me though "I'm wondering what the next obsession will be next month"
 
Absolutely. Intense, narrow interests. A classic high-functioning trait. Oddly enough this is one case I think is more related to ASD than OCD.

Hard to explain? Uh....not likely with this audience. ;)

It doesn't bother me. It's who we are. Especially a good thing if you can take such interests and transform them into paying careers. :cool:
 
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Thanks for the replies! Yeah, my interests vary like that - "Legend of Zelda" games, animals, mermaids, Harry Potter, anime.. While I'm going through an obsession, I'll do a lot of impulsive buying to decorate my entire room with stuff that relates to it, but then once my obsession changes, I get tired of everything I just bought and I'll want to replace it all with stuff that relates to only my new obsession. It sounds really irresponsible (because I guess it is) to be so impulsive, but that's an ASD thing too, isn't it? What a vicious cycle. :( Another reason why I want to just settle on one already. What makes it even more stressful is the fact that the change in interest can be triggered by pretty much anything - the scent of a candle that I associate with an interest, a song, a movie, my location, etc.
I knew that having intense interests was an ASD thing, but I'd never heard of anyone else going through the same phases repeatedly like I do and feeling distressed when the next obsession takes over. But yeah, everything seems hard to explain from my point of view, lol :D
Again, thanks for the replies! :cherryblossom:
 
Right now I'm obsessing over a video game (Hearthstone, an online card game) but I'm not sure if it's even a special interest. I play it every day and I don't play any other video games right now; I watch multiple streamers play it on YouTube, I talk about it to people all the time, I made over 30 online friends to play it with and talk to about it, and I always read up on the game's cards and people's opinions of them on sites like hearthpwn and icy-veins. I try to climb to legend rank but get extremely tilted whenever I enter a losing streak and go down in ranks. My username Tyrantus is in fact related to that game, it's the name of a powerful dinosaur card. The 1212 part is related to his stat distribution, 12 attack and 12 health.

As for the interests I've exhibited during my childhood and teenage years - those were actually all active at the same time. My biggest ones were streetlights, sprinklers and construction sites. I used to beg my parents to take me to the parks so that I could watch the sprinklers turn on and just pour that big water stream/do the famous "ratatatatatata" sound. At the same time I used to stop by every streetlight and observe it, looking at the shape of its lamp covering, waiting for it to light up, and even checking if it buzzed. Construction sites - just like with the sprinklers, I begged my mom and dad to just walk with me towards them so that I could observe. At home, I used to create model streetlights and construction sites. For the sites, I used toy machinery and constructed the buildings out of legos and cardboard. For the lights, I used a bent straw as the pole and a paper cutout as the actual light portion - and just stuck the straw into a piece of Styrofoam. One of the model sites I created, well...I used it to actually mimic a residential site that was located across the street. These have all been overlapping. I haven't been making model sprinklers, though - no water splashing allowed in the house.

Right now I'm still into construction sites, but I'm over sprinklers...and still a wee bit into streetlights. Special interests are very common in Asperger's. As for OCD connection, I'm not sure - maybe the way one might approach them. Like in my construction site mimicry example - I HAD to get every single moment mimicked EXACTLY the way I saw it in the real site, with absolutely nothing missed. In this case it was an Asperger's interest which I also happened to approach in an OCD type of manner.
 
I have the same problem, too many interests and it's impossible to love just one of them, or find the time for them all. It is normal for aspie's to have obsessions though, at least from what I've been informed.
 
Yes, restricted interested and obsessions is an Aspie trait I was told also. I've always had an obsession on rocks even as a child. Then later study and catagorizing them and collections. Also music. Metaphysics and astronomy. Reading scientific articles fitting my interests.
 
SusanLR said:
Yes, restricted interested and obsessions is an Aspie trait I was told also. I've always had an obsession on rocks even as a child. Then later study and catagorizing them and collections. Also music. Metaphysics and astronomy. Reading scientific articles fitting my interests.
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Metaphysics and stars, cooler than my interests. Start taking about verb conjugation and intonation and everybody starts running for the hills! Linguistics is uncool, obviously. Perhaps I should look into this star thing?
 
I find it fascinating. But, it depends on the individual. Black Holes, Pulsars, Quasars, Black Matter, how stars work, etc. if you want.
 
i DONT think your interest is uncool its just for those on the autism spectrum communication is exhausting
Momo said:
Metaphysics and stars, cooler than my interests. Start taking about verb conjugation and intonation and everybody starts running for the hills! Linguistics is uncool, obviously. Perhaps I should look into this star thing?
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Streetwise said:
i DONT think your interest is uncool its just for those on the autism spectrum communication is exhausting
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But your can't deny that big spacey words like quasars are uncool! And they sound so smart! No, what I really need to work on is a more obvious sense of humour... Sarcasm my friend, it gets you in all the wrong places. But yes, small talk, or talk in general, feels like bashing your head against a wall at times.
 
no we live in a gossip celeb culture ,what you and i are interested in is way down the list
Momo said:
But your can't deny that big spacey words like quasars are uncool! And they sound so smart! No, what I really need to work on is a more obvious sense of humour... Sarcasm my friend, it gets you in all the wrong places. But yes, small talk, or talk in general, feels like bashing your head against a wall at times.
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Opia said:
Could it possibly be linked to OCD?
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I would think it's an autism thing. OCD is an anxiety disorder therefore any obsession or compulsion must have anxiety as a underlying trigger to these things. OCD is not someone who just likes to be clean or neat, there is a genuine fear that 'if I don't perform this action, X is going to die in a violent car crash'. Like any mental illness, it's quite dark really.
 
Streetwise said:
no we live in a gossip celeb culture ,what you and i are interested in is way down the list
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Gossip and celebs? And we're considered the ones with difficulties functioning! What do people do with themselves these days!
 
OCD is a very 'focused' type of illness but it's fear driven. The fear response triggered when something isn't done in a very specific way.
What you're describing Opia sounds like an Aspie trait.
My husband has one hobby. He has had this hobby for the thirty years I've known him.
I've have had hundreds of different interests in the same amount of time. Literally hundreds and hundreds.
 
Same here, Tyrantus - I would beg my parents to take me to zoos, aquariums, anything to do with animals. When I played with my animal toys, I would separate them based on species and place them all in herds/prides/packs etc. and just look at them, never wanting the order to be disrupted.
I've only read a little about OCD, but I do know OCD is more than just liking to be tidy. I'm not sure if I have it, but I do have pretty severe anxiety and sometimes have horrific intrusive thoughts. The restrictions I place on my obsessions are bounded in these obsessive "connections" that I make in my head, where if one thing reminds me of something that happens to be related to one of the special interests that I'm not currently obsessing over, I'm not allowed to like that thing, even if it isn't clearly connected to that special interest. Does that make sense? I've heard someone else explain their OCD in a similar way, but maybe they were misinformed. Or maybe I don't have full-blown OCD, but still fall somewhere on the spectrum. I dunno, it probably is just an Aspie thing. I wish I could say it doesn't bother me, but I really hate switching from one obsession to another; it honestly depresses me. I just don't know how to stop since I'm overly sensitive to my surroundings and I overthink everything. I don't really like being medicated, but does it sound like maybe I should be, since it bothers me so much? Would maybe lowering my anxiety levels through exercise help me clear my head? I just want to stop thinking so deeply about things like this. It's getting ridiculous :confused:
 
Hey there Opia. :)

While I don't put much restriction on myself when it comes to hobbies, I did notice that I had to do so for other things if I want to accomplish something. Like, say, I want to finish a game. I had a tendecy to grind until my characters are at max level and then stop without seeing the ending. I had to restrict myself to that one game or I'll never be done with it.

Sometimes, it's the guilt of not finishing something I poured my time into that puts the pressure on me not to let it go to waste. Is it the same with you? Perhaps your mind is trying to remind you to commit to something but you're looking for the next high, so to speak?

When I was depressed, I clung onto any small thing that distracted me and triggered happy chemicals in my brain. If that meant buying something ober my budget, so be it. But then, the guilt hit and I'd feel like a failure at self control. We do have that tendency to feel overly guilty...then become depressed when we don't satisfy our perfectionism.
 
Some of you know about me collecting dolls. 5 days ago I found a site that have my type of interest. I decided to write an greeting introduction of myself and how I got interested in collecting. Never in my life until I join that site I been welcome by many people and so many people sharing much advice to me in a short period of time. I pretty much spend most of my day on that site every day. It like I found heaven. Joining that site made my obsession even more. Even though much of society is not understanding of an adult male into dolls, I don't care. If I have a choice dolls over people, I would choose dolls any day.
 
seems common among us aspies and auties....ny interest in science fiction writing is what sucked me down the rabbit hole into Astrophysics...Astrophysics drew me into atomics as I was trying to unravel the heart of a Black Hole...Atomics was not enough so I just kept right on into Sub-Atomics...now I am spiralling back up again picking off atomic applications left and right...and basically ruined my whole life...by asking one question too many!:confused:

I over do the interests a bit!:(

Messing with music now....deleted the rest...people freak out when I show how strong my aspie stuff is.
Am a Global Interest Aspie I unravel the Entire World...Hell to Heaven
 
I have a similar issue. I have a series of different interests, but I can only focus on one at a time. Nothing else interests me at that time, and if, for some reason, I am between interests, I get anxious and stressed.
 
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