Missing/wanting the emotional high of a new obsession

Post Reply New Topic

The short version - I have a love/hate relationship with my special interest. Whenever I'm going through one of my "hate" phases, I start to miss the way I felt whenever I discovered a new special interest - emotionally high/euphoric. So I try to find something that could ignite that feeling in me once again. This does not mean that I get to "choose" whatever special interest I want; it just means that I'm trying out a bunch of new things and seeing if anything "clicks" with me. Can anyone relate to this?

The long version - Over the past several months (or the past year, I'm terrible at keeping track of time) I have made multiple topics regarding my love-hate relationship with my special interest, the movies of director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp. Whenever I bring it up, I always mention that during the low points of my obsession, I fruitlessly try to find something else to become obsessed with.

Without fail, someone in the topic will inevitably quote that one bit of information and say some variation of: "oh, I didn't think people could choose their own obsessions/special interests".

Whenever people say this to me, it makes me extremely frustrated, because that's not what I mean. At all. Just like everybody else on the spectrum, my special interests come naturally to me. What I really mean is that during the low points of the special interest I already have, I start feeling bored and uninspired with it and I start to miss the feeling of euphoria/emotional high that comes with having a new special interest, and so I try to find something new to provide me with that emotional high.

As an analogy, you can't make yourself fall in love with someone - it comes naturally - but there's nothing wrong with going out and looking for someone who you could potentially develop feelings for. After all, love doesn't always come waltzing right up to you when you least expect it; sometimes you have to know where to look.

Does anyone else go through this (longing for/missing that emotional high from having a new special interest), or at least understand where I'm coming from?

I'm going through that right now too. I'm hoping a new obsession--a good one--will hit me soon.

I've had many situations where old obsessions have died out and been replaced by a new one, and sometimes when the new one dies out, after a while, an older one can come back. I have been in situations where suddenly the ones I had just seemed to die out and... I didn't have an obsession with anything! I tried watching a show I once got obsessed with a while back. I watched one episode hoping to trigger an obsession, and even though it was a good episode, it just didn't do what I wanted it to do.

I took a good look through my computer and found some of the pictures I had collected of Stargate and this particular interest had been dormant for a while and just looking through all of the pictures made it come to life again. Having an old obsession come back to life is a really awesome feeling and finding a new one feels just as awesome.

It's strange, I didn't really start developing special interests until I was about ten or eleven. Since then, I haven't been without one. I came close last year; my Charlie Brown obsession was on its last legs and starting to peter out, I was going into freefall, but a few months later, Star Trek appeared and caught me. Knowing how enjoyable my special interests are to me though, I can imagine that being without one for any period of time would be quite agonising (that's one thing I've never understood about NT's; how they're able to go through life without things to obsess over). I never really realised that I didn't choose my interests, they chose me, until the day I decided to start searching for a more intellectual interest to focus on alongside Star Trek, to keep my factual knowledge base up. I thought I'd try birds and started memorising facts about them and what they looked like, taking the standard approach I start with in all my obsessions. Trying to get obsessed with birds though, was like striking a match in the rain; the flame was there for a second, then it was gone. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't force myself to be interested in them. It was a very bizarre experience.

I never realized that I don't pick them, either. I don't recall any time when I didn't have a special interest (though it might have happened at some point.) Normally a new one happens while I'm still into an old one, and the old one just fades away (sometimes coming back days, months, or years later.)

I recall times in school when I spurred myself to get really engaged for the sake of doing well in particular classes. They weren't true obsessions, as I only really cared about them when I needed to (during class time, mostly), but I did end up bringing in the curiosity and ability to memorize as I had with my special interests. I think it was because I knew how focused I could be when it came to special interests that I was able to even do that. I will be beginning flight school in a few months (after taking several years off school because I couldn't figure out what I'd wanted to do.) People are telling me, "Oh, I had no idea you dreamed of being a pilot!" Well, I didn't. I just realized it would be a very good job for me, it has high demand, good pay, and of course, it's really freakin' cool. Right now it's just an "interest", and I'm planning on applying myself the way I used to in classes, to at least bring my focus on it up to the level of a "special interest", regardless of whether it becomes one or not.

I do not choose mine, they find me. Seriously. Anyway, right now, I am sort of bouncing around with some of the old ones. I can choose to renew inteest in a subject. Some topics like dinosaurs or Roswell obviously because new information comes to light. New discoveries really excite me. One of my newer ones is Extra-solar planets.
Also, stuff I turned into hobbies. though right now, my Reeftank/SW Fish hobby is lagging. it happens every now & then..

Sincerely,
Matthew