Managing Obsessions

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How ? Is it possible ? I've spent £200 on one of my obsessions over the past 2 weeks. I can't stop thinking about doctor who! What do I do ? I mean I don't really mind but when you can't stop thinking about it and spending money on it I find it impossible to cope.

It drives me mad!

And then I get down about being a failure.

And it makes me even more frustrated.

Just want to do something, like smash something.

AAAAAAARGH

Try making a budget so you plan what you will spend your money on

One thing to do is try to channel some of the obsession into finding awesome deals on the stuff. Like I've been totally obsessed with sewing and fabric lately, so I've been scouting around for crazy deals. (And I have no freaking clue what I'm going to DO with the dupioni silk that I got for $2.00/yard.. but seriously, two dollars a yard for pure silk!! I'll find something to do with it!)
And Kris is the same way with electronics. He's crazy obsessive about it, but he has to get the ridiculously amazing deals as well as just getting the stuff.

Aaah electronics is another one of mine as well. 4 coffee makers, 6 iPods, ice cream maker, mini fridge, loads of fans, TVs, laptops, desktops. ANYTHING electronic really. Oh and Hornby '00' Gauge as well

This is a good idea. Also! Trying to channel some of it into just purely not spending money at all. XD; Like, that's actually become one of my obsessions now, because I was spending too much so I turned it around and now it's like I "earn points" for every thing that I talk myself out of buying, and for every useless item I DON'T have in my room. Sort of a minimalism obsession I guess, but not TOO minimalist.
Just imagine yourself having a thing and most of the time you'll go "naw, I don't need that, it won't really be that great". Sometimes it WILL be great though, and that's when you start looking for a good deal. :B

I can better that. I've just spent £500 on Game Gear games from North America and Japan. It started with a £6 copy of Road Rash and from there I got completely sucked in.

For me, these obsessions help me cope with more harmful obsessions. If I'm spending money on video games, I'm not thinking about women I haven't seen for eight years.

Plus I love my collection of GG games and they mean a lot more to me than money in the bank.

That's why looking for the deals is so important-- not only because you pay less for what you get, but also because you spend all that time thinking about it and looking for the good deals, so it stretches it out even more. It gives you the chance to spend more time shopping and finding the best deal, so you can get the same satisfaction without spending nearly as much. You can't always stop yourself from giving in to obsessions, but you can make it less impulsive and more rational. Since you can't stop thinking about it, you decrease money spent by thinking about more different things about it.

I'd have spent much more if I had the money...I went overdrawn on a debit account trying to fund the obsession, about £6.50 overdrawn and I got charged £60.00 by the bank.

My £500 was spent in bits and bobs over the space of a few weeks. Last year, I maxed out my arranged overdraft of £600 and it took me until November to pay it back. I went past the £100 overdraft limit on my main account a couple of times and got charged £28 each time.

Yes it can be tough. I cant wait until May. I get some birthday money then. I will be spending it ALL on Doctor Who. I cannot wait

Tell me about it, I can't stop buying Doctor Who DVDs and watching them over and over and over and over and over and over.......

In fact, I'm watching Doctor Who right now!

Yes, i think i do have trouble with obsessions. I enjoy my special interests very much, but there are some negative things about them sometimes. Like, sometimes i focus on one small aspect of it, or a question related to it, so much that it will start to cause me anxiety over not being sure what to think about it, so it just keeps on looping around and around in my head. I think this is worse whenever i've had interests that involve anything hard to label or categorize. One example that's probably the easiest to explain is from when i had an obsession with Goth Rock/Got subculture. This probably seems really insignificant, and i'm almost embarassed to admit that this is the sort of thing i'd obsess over, but i would actually get stuck on how to categorize a particular band and whether or not they were relevant to the Goth music/subculture.. Also whether or not "cybergoth" was really "goth" or something else, and whether or not anything that veered away from the original 80s style of music should be considered "goth rock" at all(getting more complicated since "goth" is now loosely applied to lots of music, like Marilyn Manson, that aren't considered part of the genre at all). So, yeah.. Whenever i've had a special interest that can involve anything very abstract in it, that seems to happen. Occasionally i'll do that kind of thing with something that isn't a special interest too, but not for as long. My reptile interest now is much more scientific, and has less to do with people and ideas, so that sort of thing doesn't happen as much with that. Although, since getting a little obsessive about autism/asperger's lately, i did briefly get into one of those obsessive mind-loops over whether or not "autism" was an appropriate word to use when referring to asperger's. I wonder if anyone else does this, my brain just gets stuck on things and it won't stop until i feel i've somehow resolved it, made sense of it, or found a mental category for it.

My current obsession is playing runescape whenever I get the chance. Really sad. A couple of years ago I went through this thing with runescape, playing it like 8 hours a day (or more if I had the chance), and just trying to get my character's levels in firemaking up as high as possible, but then one day I woke up and didn't want to do that any more... and instead got interested in something else, can't remember now. But I don't dare tell anyone I know because no one understands and thinks it's just laziness.
I've had so many intense obsessions it's not funny. Last year it was reading on particular topics - I'd take home the max amount of books from the library two times a week (like 20) and read them all. Yes, read them all!! ! I always wondered why they didn't ban me from borrowing more than one or two from one particular section, as I thought I'd probably be depriving other people from being able to read on that given topic... but the library staff said to me one day that I was doing them a service by borrowing so many books and that they wished that more people would go book crazy like me. I still have a book obsession, but at the moment it has taken a back seat to my runescape thing I have going.

I find it hard to be moderate, like to remember to wash the dishes and my clothes etc... when I am in the grips of whatever! I have to keep lists (which I do every day otherwise I feel lost and don't know how to get through the day and depressed) and tick them off and forbid myself to do "whatever" my obsession is until I have done the basics of what I am suppossed to do in life like keeping my house basically clean, take care of my kids basic needs, educational needs, read to them twice daily, spent quality time with them twice daily, completed my study for university for the day etc... and then I allow myself to do "whatever" it is I'm into at the time... and have to set a bed time for myself which doesn't always work because I get carried away and forget what I'm doing...
When I don't get to satisfy my obsession I tend to become very emotional and feeling like the world is unstable or something. Wierd I know, it sounds so strange, but that's how I feel, like if I don't fulfill my obsession that I am slowly dying on the inside. But when I am fulfilling an obsession I find it hard to not allow it from overtaking my whole life.
I probably sound like a bad and stupid person because of that, but I've been able to find a cure and I know most people think it's just dumb and that I should be able to grow out of it, but I've tried really hard and I've not managed to stop my obsessions at all - the only thing I've managed to do to try to temper it is the list thing - I even list out what I need to do in my obsession - like write down every chapter of a book, or list the levels of my runescape character that I plan on completing/ reading/ whatever...

I know this doesn't work for all obsessions, but it's also helpful to go at it from an assembly-required angle. Like Kris doesn't buy computers, he buys computer parts. He gets the incredible deal on the Xeon processor, then later on the amazing graphics board, etc, and then even after he's gotten them, he has to put together the computer, so it's like a double-bang. Same with me and the fabric. So that the excitement and satisfaction of getting the thing extends past the time you actually get it.

I think I discovered a cure for obsessions that threaten to take over my life - I just don't start. It works for me because I have to get my teeth into a project before it begins to take over my life, whereas if I haven't started then my inertia problem serves as a good inhibitor. Even interests that I've been fully immersed in, once I've left them alone for a while they no longer tempt me very much. The downside is that life gets boring.

I'm lucky enough to be prone to obsession about living frugally, which stops me from spending too much money on the other obsessions. There's usually a cheaper way of getting whatever it is I want, though of course that way takes up more time.

I think I've learned the hard way that a lot of the work I used to put into my special interests turned out to be wasted, so I have some kind of aversion to getting sucked into anything that might prove futile. The whole thing just kind of happened to me, I didn't design it as a deliberate coping strategy, in fact I thought it might just be mild depression at first (which it might be).