Are people aware of/do you share your special interests?

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When I was a child, I strongly met criteria I.c

(C) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g.. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)


As a result, my parents tended to not be aware of my "special interests" and I think clinicians need to be more vigilant of this criteria when questioning parents, as further lack of inquiry may erroneously exclude someone from a diagnosis of AS.

People are very aware of my special interests. It's not the 19th Century. I don't have to keep them a secret in fear of being locked up in an asylum.

Were they when you were a child?

When I was younger I didn't know about AS and I talked about it relentlessly.

Now I try to avoid it, but still everyone I regularly deal with does know.

I'm similar I used to talk about computer programming non-stop to pretty much everyone up until maybe my 2nd year of college--hard to remember quite when--but I guess I just kind of realized at some point that people didn't really care all that much. After I realized that I kind of stopped talking about my interests (or anything really) to much of anyone.

I now have a few people that I talk about my interests with online and that's about it. I really don't even want to talk about my interest in computer programming in 'real life' anymore.

I've noticed a contradiction in the common descriptions of AS. They always say that people with AS rarely share their interests, but they also say that people with AS tend to ramble on and on about their favorite subjects without noticing that the person they're talking to is bored. Maybe they mean that we won't typically bring up our interests, but there's no stopping us if it happens to come up.

Depends on the interest and the person I'm talking to

I can talk about baseball for hours and hours if I'm talking to a fellow fan. Chess, on the other hand, has a lot fewer people for me to talk with!

I'm more than willing to talk about my interests. Unfortunately, because I'm quiet and socially awkward, 99% of people talk over me, so after 37 years of that, I normally just stay quiet and pretend to be interested in what they're saying, getting some sort of interaction by asking them questions (everyone likes talking about themselves!). People have known me all my life and are amazed that I make corsets for fun, or that I have an extensive Sindy collection, or that I'm quite knowledgeable about SF/F books. But mostly, they just talk over me, and because I'm sensitive to noise I allow it because I don't want the volume to get any louder .

Basically, most people are only interested in their own thing, and if you are socially awkward, you get steamrollered .

Yes I think I've always been OK about sharing my special interests, more or less.

Mostly it's been music, which is a relatively easy thing to share. People have been imprssed by what I can do. What they usually aren't interested in is the way I get my results......they like the final product but not the details of how I got there. They don't want to know about the machine code I wrote to enhance the obscure add-on music module I got. They don't want to know about tape head bias oscillators or how a transistor works. They don't want the geeky part, they just want the result. Trouble is, the geeky part is 90% of what I've done.

I used to talk people to death about the technical details, because I thought I was doing them a favour. Now I just give them a few dummied-down soundbites...they seem more content with that. I'm not content with it but nobody wants to share the other stuff with me.

When I'm trying to collaborate with music (rather than being a solo artist), it becomes more of a problem, because then I have to share the "how to" part of it. I worked with a guy for a few years, and we got some good music recorded, but ultimately he couldn't stand my perfectionism and I couldn't stand his low standards. These days I don't really try to share my own music with collaborators. I work with them, but I just more or less go along with their ideas, I add a few of my own but I don't really engage like I used to, because I expect that to lead to conflict. What we get is worthwhile, but it feels less valuable than it did in the old days when I was more committed and more of a pain in the butt. I know a musician who has Aspie traits.....I guess he's as near to my way of doing music as I'm likely to see, and we do seem very similar with our geeky way of doing things, but my geeky ways and his geeky ways are very different so it doesn't really bring us together.

My family is aware of 3 of my 4 special interest. They see me watching Family Guy sometimes, They hear me put on pop music whenever I have control of the radio when I'm in the car with em. Most of the physical CDs I buy online that come in the mail are comedy music & I tell my parents what it is when they ask about the package. If someone ask me what TV shows I like; I tell em Family Guy & I can talk about it a while it if they are fans. I tell people I like pop & comedy music when they ask what music I like. The 4th interest that I don't share offline is my crush obsession with the iCarly star Miranda Cosgrove. It's not something that would be really relevant to most conversations & things I have with people offline. I talk about it a lot online to make up for it thou

I admit, one interest I've learned not to share is my theory that serial killer methodology is affected by geography.

For some reason, even though it's really interesting, people get really uncomfortable that I can reel off information about historic murderers. For a while, my mum took to hiding the knives, which I thought was a little rude, frankly!

ps - I've proved that geography bears no relation, which is a pity, but de rien.

I do now, didn't always.