Are my obsessions' timescales normal?

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I have two special interests, creatures and art, that have persisted for as long as I can remember. But I also pick up what I consider "hyperfixations", which last anywhere from a month to a few years, and usually are at least a bit related to my two special interests (for example, I got really into neopets because I liked collecting creatures and making art of them)

I've talked about this in another thread, but my hyperfixations are usually intense and hard to control, and can get in the way of my life and wellbeing. My special interests though are more manageable. They feel less "urgent" to my brain, because they've always been there and I know they always will. I find them fulfilling to think about and engage with.

Wording it the way people refer to romantic relationships, my special interests and like my soul mates, and my hyperfixations are like flings

That's a good way to put it!

I think I am the same. I was assessed during the pandemic via Zoom- how can people assess me when they've never met me in person? And compared to my daughter, who is obviously autistic, I don't have many traits.

I wonder if I was kind of 'trained' to be autistic. I was brought up by a very dominant, overbearing mother who trained me never to show or talk about my emotions, or she'd get very angry. We never talked about emotions at home so I never learned anything about them. I didn't have a dad or siblings to counterbalance my mother. I was trained to do exactly what she said immediately, or she'd get very angry. She constantly told me I was not feeling the way I felt, I was far too sensitive and emotional, I should always be different to how I was, whatever I did was wrong, and she got me very confused and untrusting of my own feelings and thoughts.

When I left home in my 20s, it was a great relief and my husband had to help me a lot with trusting my own feelings and even knowing what they were. Because he was brought up normally by loving parents.

When I was younger and maybe less reconstructed, my special interests were fairly constant things that I would only stop doing when the world wouldn't allow me the time. But these days I get less pleasure out of my interests and I'm less fixated on them than I used to be. My attention can easily go down a rabbit-hole about anything that captures my imagination, but I have an internalised awareness of the time I'm using up, and I'm usually looking for a way of surfacing as quickly as possible. So I might typically spend an hour or two on a subject, and then move on. I think we often learn that long-lived obsessions make us neglect the rest of our lives, and so we adjust. And in my case I just don't feel as strongly fascinated by things as I used to, so it's easier for me to abandon pursuits that are starting to cost too much time and resources.

Possibly, although that is a bit like what I had growing up and I'm pretty definitely autistic, even though it's been a struggle to get any diagnosing clinician to acknowledge that that's a more reasonable possibility than that I have this laundry list of psychiatric and psychosomatic conditions that all mysteriously center around autistic traits.

Unfortunately, developmental problems from trauma aren't always easily distinguished from neurodevelopmental ones that would come regardless of upbringing if both are potentially at play.

The thing I don't understand is- I was a normal, if quirky, child, teenager, young woman. I think people thought I was a bit of an oddball but I always had a nice group of friends. I did well in some of my jobs if not all. I got married, had a baby. I've done all the 'normal' things and never stood out as particularly different. No one ever said 'hey I think you're autistic, get a test.'

It was just after years of living in this small, cliquey, unfriendly village that I realised I was struggling to make friends and even connect with people. So I asked the doctor for an autism test, and after about 3 years I got it. Of course it landed during the pandemic so it was all via video call, which surely can't show a complete picture of a person. What about body language, walking etc?

So I still don't know- was I trained to be unemotional, suppress myself, not know how to express feelings or connect with people authentically, and then moved to a strange Stepford-like area?

I got on fine when we lived in London, I had friends and jobs, lived normally. It's just this little village where I don't seem to connect with anyone. Everyone here is either rich and posh, or was born here and interrelated. I am neither.

I thought I was normal, but in preparing for my evaluation I looked back over my childhood letters and saw that the feedback was overwhelming --- "you are sweet and you are strange". Although I had lots of friends and acquaintances, I wasn't part of a clique and I recall feeling like the outsider. I normalized that for myself: I am the type of human who is friendly to all and it's kept at that. I had a neighbor I super clicked with at age 5, but she moved away and I didn't find another BFF until 20. Now I have close friends through shared life experiences. Still my only groups are ND ones. You are a part of NT groups? Stunning.

I thought the same thing. I'm definitely not saying you are, but I'm also not saying you're not. Unfortunately, there's more it less zero consideration paid to those that lack obvious external traits that can be easily observed. Simply not having enough social interactions to use as a gauge can be enough to scuttle the diagnosis.

Hopefully in the future the researchers care providers will start to actually care about those that are more internal than external.

This is another weird thing. When I was young in the 1970s and 80s, my parents were very sociable. They had lots of parties and social events, as everyone did back then, before the internet. I got LOTS of social practice and knew how to talk to people, how to hold a conversation etc.

But since the 21st century started, I've had less and less social interaction and therefore less practice. And I suspect people generally don't interact socially face to face as much anymore. 'Social life' now generally means online social media or gaming or similar. People just don't interact face to face much anymore- except at work perhaps?

So there seems to be a general decline of social interaction of humans, maybe I'm just a victim of that.

All will be revealed when we move house next year. We are moving to totally different area, which will reveal if it is just the area I live in which is narrow minded and cliquey, or some social deficiency of mine. Or even if it is the world and humanity which have changed their social habits.