How much control do you have over your special interest(s)?

[JuniperBug]

I'm interested in special interests and how they come about in our lives and how much control we have (or feel that we have) over them.

Personally, I feel like my interests come and go without my effort or control. But my interests are also not as strong or intense as other Aspies I've seen on this forum.

Please feel welcome to respond to the poll let it inspire you with ideas. I'm interested in your experiences and how your brain works regarding special interests.

For those more literally minded, here are some questions, which you make answer or ignore in favor of free writing.

Do your special interests change? how often? how much do you control that process?

Have you tried to purposefully add on or remove a special interest from your life? Were you successful?

What are you interested in? Do you feel that your special interests are 'typical' of people with AS/ASD?

Are you happy with your interests or do you ever wish you could change them and why or why not?



Thanks for sharing!

 

[King_Oni]

They change, but they all seem to change in much of an organic flow rather than abruptly into totally different territory.

I mean, as a kid I had a bit of a modelling interest, I just never was good at it. Nowadays, I still have that interest, but combine it with my interest in board games, hence I end up being more of a tabletop wargamer. And All things considering; I've always been into collectible card games, and in a sense that's how wargaming fits in there as well. They all seem to have some kind of connection to eachother in that regard.

And I suppose my interest in music and musicproduction ran it's course over years of exploring all kinds of other styles to where it is now.

So my interests aren't as much set in stone as they are evolving and expanding, at times focussing on a specific area for a moment.

I also feel a lot of interests of mine just happened for a reason somehow. A few years back I was working on a project and it required some more extensive use and knowledge of graphic software; that to me is where learning starts. I can't learn things without a reason or an intended goal. I didn't considering picking up the guitar until that point came about that I kicked a guitarist out of the band and pretty much went "do I have to do everything myself?". That's kinda how special interests fuel my learning ability as well I suppose; I'm more of an intuitive learner anyway, so any moment I have a goal in mind to expand any abilities seems a good moment to do so.

That all said; do I have control over them in that I rather not want some? Nah... I'll just go with; I think I can find some appeal in most things eventually, even if it's not the intended purpose of this very thing existing. More recently I've read up a bit about folklore and all these mythical creatures that come with it. That by itself is just some random knowledge one might gather, but it actually got me thinking about potential musicprojects that might or might not be slightly influenced by some things I've read in terms of imagery, just to use an example.

I rarely fight my sudden interest in something either; I'll just see where it goes. Usually I'll end up shifting somewhere I like it to go anyway.

 

[Kit Hunter]

I have an analogy to describe this:

Say there is a bull and his name is SID (for special interest drive). Now, SID is a really restless bull and loves to charge at things. If left unattended, he may charge at the most random thing and once that happens nothing short of a forklift can stop him. Often, he will even come back and charge at the same thing again and again. However, if you get to SID before that happens and manhandle his horns to point in a certain direction, maybe then you can guide the outcome.

This may be a poor analogy, but it helps me to compartmentalize the special interest discussion. Basically, some people's SID will latch onto one thing and pound it over and over (maybe eventually getting tired of it, but after a long while). With others, SID will drift around and never find anything to charge at, but rather poke around. Lastly, your SID could have "spurts" of all-consuming fixation on a single subject which then gravitates toward something else later on.

My special interests phase in and out usually... Sometimes they get moved to the 'back burner' and can resurface later. One such example is my fascination with personality theory. I literally spent two solid weeks doing nothing else but studying it. I remember trying to get some homework done, but I could not focus worth a penny on that because my brain was chock full of interesting stuff! Eventually I just gave up and did what my SID wanted. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts, right? (haha, not the best advice though)

That is still fizzling in my brain, but for now it isn't requiring all of my attention. As far as controlling the SID, I guess I can do that sometimes. Though that usually depends if I'm already attached to something. If I got through a wave of SID, and my mind is now free-ish, then I try and set it to a particular thing such as work or school or an art project.

 

[AsheSkyler]

Do your special interests change? how often? how much do you control that process?
Some of my interests are just an innate part of who I am, not much different than my physical attributes. Some I have purposely cultivated and worked on because I liked them.

Have you tried to purposefully add on or remove a special interest from your life? Were you successful?
If I like it, I can usually run with it. If I don't like it, it doesn't have a shot at getting called an interest.

What are you interested in? Do you feel that your special interests are 'typical' of people with AS/ASD?
Oi da molly, quite a bit! From their main branches on down to the subcatergories I work in and some of them intermingle. At their most basic roots, I'm into art, music, technology, food, philosophy, and a handful of other things.

Are you happy with your interests or do you ever wish you could change them and why or why not?
Nah, wouldn't change any of them.

 

[Judge]

Suddenly I find this question quite intriguing. I suppose mainly because I have OCD. Some of my most pressing OCD concerns are relative to past traumas, whereas the origins of my special interests cannot be so easily determined.

Yet OCD is just that. Behaviors and rituals based on obsessions and/or compulsions. While in the case of my special interests, I don't view them in the same way. For me those tend to "ebb and flow". They don't likely leave my orbit, but I don't focus on them to the extreme 24/7 either. And unlike OCD, I enjoy such interests. I never regard them as any kind of annoyance as I do with my OCD.

My most honest answer to the initial question above was to check all the boxes.

 

[clg114]

My main special interest is machines. This never changes, I spend a lot of time researching and working with machines of all kinds. It is how I have always made a living. I do have other special interests and they do come and go. I chose these interests but do not always chose when they go. Sometimes I have to give them up because of ageing. I am not capable of doing a lot of the things that I could do as a young man. With the exception of my main interest, I have always picked my special interests and I picked them because I liked them. As far as my main obsession is concerned, I have liked machines as long as I can remember. Give me a large, complex machine and I can entertain myself for hours, just examining it.

 

[Harrison]

I've always been in charge of my special interests, fortunately they 'came together' to form the basis of my business decades ago. Over the years I have added to the mix but never removed the principle ingredients as they still fascinate me today.

 

[Suiseiseki]

I never ever talk about them, sometimes I have interests and no one knows about them.
One of the best bits of advice I learned in my life was that nobody cares, and that really helped me when I was younger.

 

[Limited_Moon]

acquiring special interests is a lot like falling in love for me. I know in general what I want and am looking for in a special interest, but sometimes something happens across my path quite by accident and suddenly I'm smack-bang in love and don't really know why.

 

[JuniperBug]

I love all these different perspectives. The quiz has nearly equal votes and that makes me think that each of us is affected by AS very differently.

The SID analogy was interesting and I think I agree with it was well as the falling in love analogy. Sometimes I'll just suddenly love something.

Sometimes I even get hyper focused on someONE, which I have to try to stifle immediately because people find it very strange when you suddenly want to talk only to them and ask a million (probably "too personal") questions and simply know everything about them. It also hurts more when they do something unfriendly and you are forced to cut ties.

So I guess I know I CAN turn off my own SID, but it's hard and i don't like it. Better to go with the flow as many of you have said.

I've also been scared that I'd follow a special interest in a serious committed way (like seeking a masters degree) and then that interest will suddenly drop off before I'm finished. Anyone else have this fear?

 

[Limited_Moon]

Yeah, I have. Choosing a degree is hard! And like you say, what if I'm 'just not that into' my course of study anymore afterwards? I wish I was really rich, so that I could just study everything I like, one by one, and not have to worry about a whopping great big student loan or how I'm supposed to make money off of them.

 

[shakeitup94]

I don't have control over what becomes one and what doesn't but I can to a degree get rid of them. I can't however get them back if they go away.

 

[Spiller]

I like Limited_Moon's falling in love analogy as it's like that for me - I suddenly realise I'm obsessed with something and have been focused exclusively on it for some time, usually to the exclusion of everything and everyone around me.

This is terrible when the source is a person - that, I've learned, I do have to eliminate as quickly as possible. It's not good for me for the reasons you cite JuniperBug.. very painful indeed.

I can stop an obsession with great effort, other people have forced me to do so on many occasions, so I've had to learn to. Otherwise, I find my obsessions pick me - sci-fi, films, books, DIY, mechanics, computing, art, philosophy, psychology.. a seemingly broad, loosely connected range, some of which I come back to, others I never revisit.. though, with some of the latter, I think it's because I've been hurt by the force used to tear me away from them.

I wish I'd stayed interested in at least one thing long enough to get a serious qualification in it, whether for interest or money, though this seems irrelevant as one of my interests resulted in my career anyway.

 

[Slithytoves]

Some of my special interests come and go, while others have been fixed since childhood or whatever other relatively early point of discovery. The ones that fade do so because I've burned them out in one way or another. Something can stop being interesting to me very suddenly.

When I first take a special interest in something I have little to no control. I can become so immersed that time, bodily demands and external factors go unheeded. I used to worry that this was mania since bipolar disorder runs in my family, so it was a relief to rule that out for good with my diagnosis of Asperger's.

I've discussed my interests elsewhere on these forums. They mostly center on the social sciences, psychology, human sexuality and religion/spirituality. Had I not joined AC, I might have suspected that they were atypical, but here I've found a healthy number of others who share some or all of them. Today I'd say the idea of "typical" Aspie special interests is an illusion, maybe perpetuated by those of us whose interests conform to common Aspie stereotypes. In reality, the passions and obsessions of people here are all over the map.

I'm happy with an interest as long as I'm interested in it.

 

[Etzelaire]

None. One thing comes to my mind and becomes my world until I get attracted by another thing, but mostly when I know enough to be satisfied.

 

[BIMOG]

My interests choose me, I don't choose them. I always feel as thought they are like banks of switches in an electric substation inside my head. A switch flicks to the "On" position and I'm suddenly fixated by something until one day, just as suddenly, the switch flicks to the off position and then I lose all interest in the thing. My current BIG fixation is the character "Ben" in the 2003 Michael Haneke movie "Le Temps Du Loup" (Time Of The Wolf). I own the DVD, I'd watched it before and thought that it was an unusual and interesting movie. Recently I watched it again and inside my brain one of those little switches flicked to the on position and completely out of the blue I've become obsessed by the character "Ben." While I admire the acting ability of Lucas Biscombe, who played the role in the movie, it's the character Ben who I'm fixated on, not Lucas the actor. So Now I'm compiling a collection of everything that I can find that is connected to Ben the character. I've bought English, French and German posters for the movie. I've bought French and German movie programs, several different DVD releases from different countries and I'm continually looking for new inputs to feed my fixation. At some point the little switch inside my head will flick to "Off" and the DVDs etc. will sit forgotten on a shelf. Then a different switch will flick "On" and I'll obsess about something else instead. It's a little sad to have the foreknowledge of what will inevitably happen but it doesn't in any way diminish the intensity of my current obsession, which is currently running at maximum intensity.

 

[Jacoby]

it changes and does so for many different reasons, I think I have some control over it as most my interests are usually things I feel like I can talk to other people about(sports, politics, current events)

 

[hiraeth]

This is a great topic, I think about it quite often. I'm very certain that none of my special interests ever were actively chosen. Interests can be chosen, but special interests aren't. Those are the ones that just happen. I guess that's part of what makes them "special", to me. They carry an energy with them that transcends rational preferences. Something larger than myself, the limits of my own mental and emotional energy. It makes it such that they're able to sustain me through difficulties and times when my intrinsic energy is exceptionally low.

They come in their own time, and they also depart in their own time. I've tried to keep some past their expiry date, and it didn't work either. That's the sad part. However, in the time that they're here with me, how much I get out of it does depend on how much, and how skillfully, I put into it. In some way you can say that is what guides the foundation of my actions in life, and what being "successful" in life means to me - having the most fulfilling and energizing relationship possible with my special interests.

 

[Myway]

I have some control, but sometimes I don't. It all depends.

 

[Adora]

My interests have been the same for many years,I have a been a collector of dolls like barbie and my little pony for as far I can remember,but I also collect a lot of monster high dolls and 80s doll like strawberry shortcake aswell,I also been collecting comics since the age of 14 but have slowed down a bit due to not liking the new comics at the moment,I am also been interested in mythology and fantasy novels for a long time.