Feeling Embarrassed after obsession has past

Post Reply New Topic

Have any of you felt embarrassed about your obsession of choice looking back after time has passed?
One big example for me is my obsession with the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Basically it is a self-help book written in the 1930s. Of course I purchased every book Hill ever wrote and almost visited the man's gravesite even though he has been dead for 30+ years.
When I was in college I read this book and listened to the audio tapes over and over and over again. I would walk around a track near my college room up until 4 am in the morning listening to it. Every person that I had a small conversation with would turn into me preaching them "facts" about the book. I was talking at them. Literally I would talk about this book to family, roommates, coworkers. I sensed sort of that they would get board, but I convinced myself that they just didn't get it yet. I had to keep talking about it. I had this obsession for at least 3+ years.
I can't believe I wasted so much of my life thinking about this book. I feel almost sick thinking about it. The worst part is I feel very embarrassed. Anyone else experience this?

Yeah. Everything obsesses me, and I look back at my life and it was just a series of obsessions.

i was also obssesed with "think and grow rich" for some time. I still like the book, and i like the ideas in general, but im hardly obssesed with it now. I still wonder what was the word Hill said it was 100 times in the book..i have an idea, but have never found a definite answer to this.

I'm, rather embarrassed about my obsession with airport security because I talked about security holes as much as I talked about the other aspects of my grade 11 trip to Europe.

I'm embarrassed all of the time. When somebody asks me what I am doing on the weekend, my response is always one of three things: working on writing a book of some sort, sorting thousands of beads, or making hemp necklaces.

But then I wonder if others get as much enjoyment out of small things like this as I do, and I realize it isn't something to be embarrassed about at all.

I feel embarrassed about one of my past obsessions, serial killers.

I used to talk about them so much and didn't realise that no one was interested until they told me to talk about something else.
Now I feel stupid about having that obsession because everyone must have thought I was a psycho!! !

i see what your saying dog. and hopefully you'll come to a point in your life where your like me and dont let it get to you.

goodluck

I have a few doozies that still give me a twinge once in a while. It's part of life to do stuff when you don't know better that looks silly when you do know better. Be glad the silly things look silly because you've learned something. Be glad you feel silly because you won't do them again. And be glad not all of your obsessions were embarrassing.

Yeah, after 14 or so I learned to keep quiet about my obsessions, and by 18 I was actually ashamed of them to a degree. I had convinced myself by the end of high school that I'd become "normal", so I didn't want anyone to know that my thoughts were almost constantly occupied with the Final Fantasy video games. In college, I was constantly clearing my browser cache so that my roommate wouldn't accidentally see how often I visited sites about birth control methods and statistics, or later feminist blogs and weightlifting forums. I got very good at not talking about my obsessions in normal circumstances, but then I started going to bars with my boyfriend and some of his friends. I'd slam down a few drinks to take the edge off of the social anxiety, and pretty soon I'd find myself giving lectures about differing feminist viewpoints on the burqa or proper squat form. I was mortified at the time, but I feel better about it since I've learned about AS. I also go much easier on the sauce now .

lol, those are my others-serial killers and court TV. I've noticed I'm better about talking about the weird things that I've seen and am interested in... but they still crop up in regular conversation once in a while, just like this forum, lol. If someone asks if I've done anything interesting recently, it's almost always "Well, I watched the Ted Bundy movie..." "I saw this really weird story on court TV the other night..." or "Do you ever get to thinking about how many of your neighbors could easily become the next serial killer if they just had the drive?" lol... doesn't go over well, but I've learned over time to talk about my other interests-now they just hear about how I sorted 1000 beads last night, by color, shape, texture, and size... and how it only took me 4 hours non-stop to do it. They don't hear about the blood and guts story I was watching while I was doing it...

I'm embarrassed if I find out that the person I liked turned out to be a complete idiot or committed an act of betrayal, such as adultery. As long as I know the person is nice, I'm not embarrassed about it.

xenu, that is hilarious that you were also obsessed with Think and Grow Rich. What an unusual thing to be obsessed with. The word (secret) that Hill mentions in the book more than a 100 times is "thought" or "think". That is the secret and the so called Secret that was stolen by this new author that is making a fortune recently. What you think about you become. The mind attracts the thing the mind dwells upon.

This is a scary thought,given that two of the above members mention obsessing about serial killers... Actually ,I went through a little phase with seriel killer books,not because I wanted to "be one", but to try and learn how to avoid dating one.(So far,so good ).


As far as my other obsessions,the only ones I am embarassed about are a few "people obsessions" with guys who ended up being jerks and I'm sure I will be embarassed about my "aspie nation and aspie magazine" obsessions in a few years.(Unless we can make them work..... )

lol, yeah its funny i bet there are a lot of people that have had an obssesion with it. I always thought the word was "believe". But it you think about it, theyre practically the same in these context. When you believe you are thinking, you are thinking that it's already real, so it's mostly the same. Though i dont like rhonda byrne, i do still like hill.

I've had some embarrassing romantic interests. Gotta remind myself to keep my desperation levels in check..

TheBladeRoden wrote...
'I've had some embarrassing romantic interests. Gotta remind myself to keep my desperation levels in check..'

LOL - same, when I was younger I was a right dick, now I am just a sad spoon, lol.
peace j