Struggles with changing special interests

[AutisticAstronaut]

So I've been thinking a lot about special interests. My special interests change often. Sometimes they change after a few years, and other times they change after a few months, weeks, or even days.

Often, I've felt embarrassed and kind of ashamed about losing old special interests. I never understood how I could be really into something and then just lose interest in it for no reason. I've spent a lot of time beating myself up over this, and sometimes I even forced myself to continue with a special interest I no longer enjoyed because I felt it was wrong/weird to drop it.

I think this has had a negative impact on my friendships, too. I've always had a hard time maintaining friendships, and I've usually made friends through shared interests. It's hard to maintain an interest-based friendship if I move on from that interest.

Now that I understand autistic special interests, I'm trying to be kinder to myself about this, but there's always a gap between knowing it's okay and feeling it's okay.

Can anyone else relate to this?

 

[Au Naturel]

The loss of novelty has a lot to do with losing special interests.

There's also the sense that you've seen or done everything you can do. Having mastered the field as far as you feel necessary, it is time to move on. Or maybe your brain gets tired, firing those same neurons over and over. Sometimes you just outgrow something. In any event, what you are doing doesn't deliver a ping of happy juice while you're doing it anymore. Your situation sounds perfectly normal to me. Nothing wrong with losing interest.

People who spend their entire lifetime in one subject are usually engrossed with it from early childhood. It is almost like their brains are hard-wired for that subject. Often they become superstars. Not many people are so lucky.

And there can also be lifetime interests one might prefer not to have but cannot get rid of it.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

What I dislike about losing special interests, is all that wealth of knowledge that I amassed about a certain topic suddenly disappears as if I never learned it at all. It takes months of struggle, or longer, to remember even the basics of what I learned before.

 

[Streetwise]

So I've been thinking a lot about special interests. My special interests change often. Sometimes they change after a few years, and other times they change after a few months, weeks, or even days.

Often, I've felt embarrassed and kind of ashamed about losing old special interests. I never understood how I could be really into something and then just lose interest in it for no reason. I've spent a lot of time beating myself up over this, and sometimes I even forced myself to continue with a special interest I no longer enjoyed because I felt it was wrong/weird to drop it.

I think this has had a negative impact on my friendships, too. I've always had a hard time maintaining friendships, and I've usually made friends through shared interests. It's hard to maintain an interest-based friendship if I move on from that interest.

Now that I understand autistic special interests, I'm trying to be kinder to myself about this, but there's always a gap between knowing it's okay and feeling it's okay.

Can anyone else relate to this?

It can happen to NTs it's depression or stress ,I've had it for about a year but I'm guilty that I'm wasting money not using craft supplies but I just can't do everything I want to do G-d physically stopped me two nights ago I might end up paralysed which I fear greatly

 

[Streetwise]

What I dislike about losing special interests, is all that wealth of knowledge that I amassed about a certain topic suddenly disappears as if I never learned it at all. It takes months of struggle, or longer, to remember even the basics of what I learned before.

Ask ha shem to bring back to your conscious mind

 

[Hylian]

My special interests change kind of a lot, in the sense that I have a few of them and the one I'm mainly focusing on shifts from time to time. I kind of cycle through them and it's annoying, especially regarding a career, as it's hard to figure out what I want to do with my life when one month I'm interested in one thing and the next month I'm interested in something entirely different. I don't want to end up going into a particular field of work and then be bored of it half the time until my main special interest shifts to it.

 

[Hylian]

What I dislike about losing special interests, is all that wealth of knowledge that I amassed about a certain topic suddenly disappears as if I never learned it at all. It takes months of struggle, or longer, to remember even the basics of what I learned before.

I get this with my special interests, even though I keep them and cycle through them. When I stop focusing on one of them my brain just kind of archives that information and refuses to properly recall most of it, until it cycles back and then it's like it drug all of that info out of storage. lol

 

[Au Naturel]

I don't lose the expertise I pick up from my interests. I follow something until it is no longer interesting. Whether that's a month or a decade, I've probably picked up more knowledge than most other people in that time frame would because I'll be so focused. It stays in my brain. I become a minor expert in things nobody else close to me seems to give a fart about.

I am getting older. Short term memory isn't so good. The stuff I learned long ago still remains fresh while the stuff I picked up yesterday evaporates like water in the desert.

 

[AutisticAstronaut]

The loss of novelty has a lot to do with losing special interests.

There's also the sense that you've seen or done everything you can do. Having mastered the field as far as you feel necessary, it is time to move on. Or maybe your brain gets tired, firing those same neurons over and over. Sometimes you just outgrow something. In any event, what you are doing doesn't deliver a ping of happy juice while you're doing it anymore. Your situation sounds perfectly normal to me. Nothing wrong with losing interest.

People who spend their entire lifetime in one subject are usually engrossed with it from early childhood. It is almost like their brains are hard-wired for that subject. Often they become superstars. Not many people are so lucky.

And there can also be lifetime interests one might prefer not to have but cannot get rid of it.

Definitely true. I think lack of novelty is a big reason.

But reflecting on it more, I think part of what bothers me about changing special interests is lack of control. Sometimes, things I have no control over will be the reason why my interests change. Like I'll see something random online, and it sparks an obsessive special interest that kills whatever other interests I had. Maybe I would feel differently about this if I had more control over my special interests.

What I dislike about losing special interests, is all that wealth of knowledge that I amassed about a certain topic suddenly disappears as if I never learned it at all. It takes months of struggle, or longer, to remember even the basics of what I learned before.

Agreed. It can feel like wasted time if I don't retain most of what I learn. Especially for some hobbies, like learning languages, where you can lose everything very quickly.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Definitely true. I think lack of novelty is a big reason.

But reflecting on it more, I think part of what bothers me about changing special interests is lack of control. Sometimes, things I have no control over will be the reason why my interests change. Like I'll see something random online, and it sparks an obsessive special interest that kills whatever other interests I had. Maybe I would feel differently about this if I had more control over my special interests.


Agreed. It can feel like wasted time if I don't retain most of what I learn. Especially for some hobbies, like learning languages, where you can lose everything very quickly.

YES!!!! I have attempted to learn so many languages over the years, dove in deep, and really learned a lot, and a few months later, I can't remember a thing!

 

[SDRSpark]

I shift special interests over the course of weeks, months, or years. I have a few longer term ones and some that I move on from quickly.

What bothers me most about this, is all the money that I spend on things that I lose interest in quickly!!! I've dumped thousands into special interests that I sort of...lost interest in. Or at least, lost passion for. I don't lose the knowledge, and I still use what I've learned, but the passion is gone. This means that I can pull random facts and skills seemingly out of nowhere and I imagine it must completely baffle people who had no idea that, for instance, I once worked as a blacksmith's apprentice and can explain forge welding technique, and could probably still demonstrate it successfully, having actually done it before.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

It makes it very hard to pursue higher education, because I get all gung ho about a major and then a few months later, I'm bored and uninterested. I've started and stopped college many times. I found that a short "trade school" option was the best for me.

 

[dragonfire42]

I feel so weird when a special interest I’ve been so deeply into for long enough that it has become a part of me changes. Even those long-term, in-depth things that really go past “special interest” and right on into “obsession” change, and it feels strange to no longer get the same thrill from them, sometimes after years. But for me a special interest is never truly gone, not even the ones that only last for a week and are things I actually dislike, once one has surfaced for even a moment, it’s added to the rotation and can come up again at any time in the future. So I guess that probably helps me, that it’s never really goodbye for good to anything.

I absolutely have that lack of control going on, though, it’s really not me that chooses my interests at all, at least not consciously. Like I mentioned, I sometimes even become obsessed with things I don’t even like, for example not actually liking a band at all but feeling compelled to listen to their music for a week or two anyway, or find out absolutely everything I can about a movie I never want to watch, ever (including one that seems to make Body Melt look like Star Wars ).

Sometimes I think special interests and the nature of how they work has become a special interest for me. And the fact that I just rambled off on a tangent about them seems to support that