Why do we Obsess?

[Divrom]

I started a post a while back on why it's thought we don't get sarcasm and this is kinda similar.

Why do we - or why is it assumed that we - obsess about things?


I seem to do 1 of 2 things:

a) I think about 46 things at once, or...
b) I think about one thing incessantly.

I'm wondering if we do b to avoid a. What do you think?

I don't know how your mind works, but I wonder if I get exhausted thinking about anything and everything and as a get-out I focus all of my energy and attention on one thing, to the exclusion of everything else.

 

[King_Oni]

Why exactly we do it, I have no idea... from what I've gathered, having obsessions in general is something that comes with ASD

However, the examples you state;

I think about 40 things at the same time as well, and mostly it's worries. In order to deal with that I end up obssessing over a single thing that I enjoy. Which in effect makes it unable for me to do what I have to do, hence I worry again if I'm not busy doing and thinking about that single thing ad infinitum.

This makes me thing that obsessing over a single thing is something akin stimming I think.

I don't believe that we're not capable of doing multiple things and thinking about multiple things, but having strong obsessions like most aspies I know, are far beyond what's "normal" (take that word with a grain of salt) and tend to be escapism as a way of stimming.

But beyond that I think you can also include the fact that every person has special interests, that's not autism related. One likes soccer, the other likes collecting stamps. It just happens that "we" probably are a bunch that need that escapism a bit more due to stress from the outside to deal with life in general.

But that's just my 2 cents, with no scientific back-up and just merely my mind wandering off and reasoning about it.

 

[Undiagnosed]

I obsess too. I will get "stuck" on one thing or topic it may be months or mabey longer depending on whenever I think I know everything I want to need to about it and then something else will catch my interest. But I also think of too many things at the same time....... just randome thoughts jumping around in my mind.

Why....? I wonder if we are sort of filling the blank spact in your head that would otherwise be filled with human related things,,,,,, such as chitchatting on the phone,,,,,, going out somewhere with poeple...........sitting around the house with a lot opf people around.........and mabey we are just not into or intersted in people so much so are minds don't focus on those types of things and has to have something else to think about

I don't know