Do you think Aspies/Auties develop obsessions...

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Actually, being around people usually makes me feel isolated from my obsessions.

There's multiple reasons for me. It's mostly a sense of inner peace / comfort / centeredness I only ever achieve when I'm in that mode existence. Other times it's a source of excitement and positive energy.

Theres also an aesthetic aspect to rituals. When I was as young as 4 I can remember some rituals having a sort of spiritual feeling. I always found beauty in things that have symmetry and structure or a definite order. I had a sort of aesthetic fascination with paths and labyrinths as well. I delighted myself in strange solitary activities that NT children would find pointless and boring. I've lost some of that feeling with age though.

Yes, that describes it so well for me too. My obsessions make me feel more 'alive'.

My major obsession started around the age of 5, well before I realised I had problems with social stuff. It would be useful if they were an 'escape/comfort' but they come and go as they please not necessarily in times of stress.

It's not true for me. I hardly ever get lonely, and my obsessions were there before I knew that I was meant to interact with the people around me (besides my family and a few others). My obsessions feed my unsocialness, as I deliberately isolate myself to give myself more time with them.

I don't know what made me develop my obsessions. They are just phases and they just seem to...appear...no idea why. Sometimes if they are about films I recently enjoyed then the stimulus is obvious but otherwise they just seem to be spontaneous and I have no control. I also have a small group of loyal friends who I spend time with so I'm not ALWAYS lonely, even though I guess most of the time I am.

No. I had obsessions before I even started grade school, and I wasn't lonely or isolated then since I have a brother who's the same age as me. It wasn't until I started school and found that I couldn't really form friendships that I actually started feeling lonely and isolated. The lonelier I became, the more depressed I felt, and actually started pursuing interests less.

Of course, I'm not diagnosed, so there's still a possibility that my experiences mean nothing.

I'm not sure now, but when I was a teenager, in deed, I did use the internet, and before that other obsessions, to substitute for interaction with friends.

I voted no. There woudls ure be circumstance sin which I would *want* to spit in someone's food (eg. if that person had abused me or my boyfriend), but even then, I wouldn't actually do it.

My "obsessions" came first, although I always wanted someone with whom I could share them.

(I was raised as an only child by an overprotective mother who hated to be alone so I probably would have been socially isolated anyway even if I'd been born "normal".)

My passion for my obsessions marked me out as eccentric when I went to school. I had some fellow school nerd acquaintences (not meant offensively...I am still an artsy nerd) with whom I never got close because we were competing academically.

Until puberty started hitting the class and rumors came out about my mother, I was mostly tolerated by the other students except during gym class the years I was made to attend it.

Whitetiger, you always seem to make a lot of sense. And once again, I am in agreement---at least for how autism is in my life. I do believe that my autism came with special intense interests/obsessions. You said they cause us to be alienated from others---yes---I agree. Mom use to get upset with me because I would be at home in the summer with my special intense interests rather than going out with classmates. I found the social scene to be too awkward. Now for me, I didn't really feel the pain of isolation because I preferred my special intense interests, but at the same time, I did realize that my classmates were out there doing things. What it was they were doing? I didn't really know. I do know that what they were doing at dances, parties, cruising, etc. I didn't understand how to do. At the dances I did go to (when I began dating the girl that became my wife), I cannot tell you how awkward I was. She quickly realized how awkward I was at social things---and she never understood this in me until I got diagnosed with Asperger's. Now, after she has talked with my therapist, she understands me and accepts this in me. She now understands my special intense interests---I think .

I find I go into my reading stuff after things that exhaust me, like housework, or being forced to organise, or do physical things. I remember school sports days where I longed to be away from it and somewhere with a book. It is sort of a natural reaction to trying to do something that feels unnatural, and then sort of like an elastic band pulling you back into the interest again.

Same here. I can have people around me, not feel lonely at all, but still be so absorbed in my interest that I don't pay attention to what else is going on around me.

The obsessiveness of it... I think it's just something I do to fill my time in a way... a way to keep a routine going, or fill a gap when nothing else I'm interested in is going on. It comes and goes. Sometimes I can be okay doing nothing, while other times... like the other night I stayed up until 5 a.m. drawing a picture because I absolutely HAD to get it done once it started.

I think that could be the case with some Aspies, but I agree with Rain_Bird. I had my first special interest start around 18 months of age, long before I knew what isolation or "being different" meant. For some Aspies, I think that special interests are just an integral part of their being, and that they start regardless of social status. Plus, I'm never "lonely." And even when I finally got real friends a few years ago, the special interests never went away. I'll be an obsessive Aspie for life.
-OddDuckNash99-

Sensory overload, empathy overload, obsession overload.

This makes me think that it is just another part of being human. Obsessions are in-built for whatever reason, probably something to do with survival of the species and it gives us a reason to exist.