Special Intrests: Lifelong obsessions or passing fads?

Post Reply New Topic

Dear all, I am undiagnosed with possible Aspergers. I have a question about obsessions. In the literature I have reviewed, "special interests" are frequently mentioned. In order to fit with the Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, do these obsessions have to:

* Be lifelong, or can people with Aspergers go from one topic to another?
* Be completely all-consuming?
* Be fairly broad, e.g. "public transport", as opposed to "bus routes and number plates"
* Can a person have more than one?

The reason that I ask is that I have had several special interests over the course of my life. As a child I was obsessed with dinosaurs, and I was really into fishing and gardening as a teenager. Learning about the latter two topics was as pleasurable to me as actually doing them. In addition to these, I have had short, fairly intense interests in passionflowers, lilies and fly tying. As an adult, my main interests have been Agriculture and my religion, but I have also had short, intense delves into earthworms, the biology and pharmacology and cultivation (theory only) of cannabis and the role of psychoactives in culture. Recently I have become very interested in chilli peppers. When I am caught up in an interest, I do tend to think about it an awful lot, and spend a lot more time researching it than I should (can eat into time I should be spending doing chores), but I can still get on with my job. Does this pattern of behaviour sound like it could be characteristic of Asperger Syndrome, or is it within the realms of normal curiosity?

Thankyou,

R_mc

dude, i have a passing fad every week. i will actually order books of amazon and then move onto another fad.....i spend loads of moey on unread books and yes on different subjects.......cant say if your aspie or not but if you are then there will be always obsession, some time consuming, some passing, some girlfriends can also be passing fads....it somes across as not being really in love to them, just an interest and then moe on to the next one.

Hi r_mc!

I'm also undiagnosed but 99% certain I'm aspie. I can tell you that the pattern of obsessions you describe is very similar to my own.

* Obsesions can definitely be lifelong; or they may lead into each other, or they may appear from nowhere at all. For instance, I've had a lifelong interest in both mineral collecting and in plants; over the years I've become interested in various types of quartz; fossils, African succulents and caudiciforms. The main area of interest is still there, but it keeps getting refocused or refined.

* Completely all-consuming? Yes, I think so. Would you define 'all-consuming' as pursuing an interest day in and day out, from the time you wake until you're too tired to do it anymore, for months? Because I've had interests (mostly involving skills or crafts) that I've immersed myself in like that.

* "fairly broad" - I think so, see above.

* More than one? Definitely. Anything that interests me, I will explore in what others describe as an obsessive fashion.

I will be interested to see what others have to say about this. Curious, enlightened minds want to know!

I've had a number of obsessions over the years.

Cartoons and computer stuff (videogames and hardware) are my largest ones, and they have been lifelong so far.

Lesser interests have come and gone, so only a few have been permanent.

It can be both. When I was a kid, my obessions were anatomy, astronomy, and a few other things. Then it was trains. Then it was Middle Eastern history and politics. Throughout my entire life, I always liked computers, ever since I got my hands one my first one at the age of 7. While my other obsessions passed into history, the computer one became a career.

I'm undignosed as such but i too have both lifelong and changing 'special interests' my lifelong interest is in worlbuilding and fantasy, this may be a bit of a strange one because the world i have invented and work on for much of my life, in different ways, is essentially made up. This means that as a child i infact was involved almost entirly in imaginative play, or rather imaginative worlds. i don't remember but my sister swears that we used to act stories and plays out and i would get really angry if they weren't 'right' and strict with reference to the rules of my imaginaery world.
I never played games like tea parties, or dressing up in the cenvential sense, doctors adn nurses anything like that, it was always, dragons and fairies and advantures.
Although my imaginary world is not 'real' it has to follow real rules, it has to be realistic, well thought out and detailed. I have leaver arch files full of info on my world and alot of stuff i'm interested in is research i then include in the info about my world.
Worldbuilding, reading and writing, which are all interconnected are my primary interests and always have been, ever since i can remember.
Other interest come and go, i find my obsession aren't very often factual. Like the two years i spent watching TV, the TV watching was obsessive, as was my knowlegde about what was one any channel at any given time. BUt i had no interest in any information about TV itself.
I do think about my obsessions almost constantly, with every spare moment of my time. And i clearly spend enough time on them for other people to notice and to describe them as obsessive.

Yep another one similar here.

I have a couple of lifelong broad interest areas and I will switch inbetween niche topics regularly within those areas as well as other completely unrelated interests that come and go as they please.

It depends on intensity.

I have primary and secondary interests, at least that's how I see myself. Primary interests for me have an emotional connection, and can act as a companion. Secondary interests are interests that I'm deeply involved with, and these usually have to do with a need to collect something. I will go for days researching certain things, and then the emotional connection backs off, and then it comes back again.

With me, these interests tend to be transient, though there has been one that has stuck in the background for a very long time. When I was young, they seemed to be much more intense, and now ... they're still intense, but I can do without them from time to time.

- Ray M -

I have two specail obessions that I've had since I was real young. Tigers has always been my favorite most number one for a whole long of time. My second obession started at 6th grade when I learned that writing novels is my passion and it back number two obession. Final Fantasy and soundtracks are taking up the lower ranks.

And apparently "Cardboard Tube Samurai" is the current interest?

/me loves PennyArcade.

FWIW, I have some interests that have been obsessions since I was in diapers, and others that come and go almost overnight. What makes them similar is their intensity. As Aeturnus said, an obsessive interest is almost like a human companion. I simply don't miss people when I'm sitting at a computer, looking at airplanes or scrutinizing maps. My ex used to complain that I loved computers more than people....

I've been obsessed with Routemasters, RTs and Damlier Double Deckers, since I was Five. I get turned on by looking at anything that has an Engine at the Front and a Pole at the Back.

I've also been a Beatles Fan, since I was Twelve. I'm almost 32.

I've also been obsessed with Slim-Fast commercials, since I was in High School.

Please delete all my posts.

I've had a bunch of strong interests, though typically they last for years rather than months or weeks, and their breadth has increased over the course of my life. For instance, at one time when i was really little I was obsessed with bottles. Whenever my went to the store I would want my parents to buy as many bottled items as possible so that I could collect the empty bottles, and I was even a bottle for Halloween one year (I don't remember all this but have plenty of pictures to prove it). I was also really into construction equipment at one point (but how many boys aren't?). At one point I was very much into model railroads. Later (from early elementary school through middle school) I was really into taking things apart. First it was mechanical things, and then I got into electronics when I realized not everything can be explained by physically moving parts. Also in middle school I started to get interested in math, and then I got into chemistry in late middle school. At this point I like complex systems in general, whether in chemistry, biology, whatever.

The only really short-term interest I think I had was that for one winter I was very much into those fruit baskets that they sell at the grocery store, with the different types of fruit and nuts arranged in a decorative fashion. It's too long ago to remember anything about why I liked them, but I assume that the arrangements appealed to my sense of pattern. I also went through an origami period that lasted a few months at most.

However, I guess you could count certain passing interests in commercials I had as a kid as "mini-obsessions", though they often connected to other interests. For instance, my mom says that at one point I always had to watch the commercials for a particular gardening tool with rotating gears on it. I also remember from the origami period that I really liked one public service announcement telling people to conserve water, and it showed a lawn where the sprinkler system (that was also an interest of mine for awhile by the way) was left on so long that it formed a little creek in the little ditch on the side of the road. The camera followed the flow of the water, and there was a frog and maybe some other animals living in the overflow from this guy's lawn. I think I liked the way that the "creek" flowed through different "mini-worlds" complete with plant and animal life as it made its way down the street. After seeing that I had to make an origami frog to place among some origami plants.

Like some others have said, there are some common threads to my interests, one of which is the idea of networks of components producing more complex behavior (what I now know are called "emergent properties"). For instance, I liked train layouts because of the complexity of how the different segments of track were linked together and the number of different paths a train car could take through the layout as I stared and followed it. In organic chemistry, much of the focus is on how groups of atoms are linked together to produce molecules with a given reactivity, and in electronics the question is how to wire various components like transistors and resistors together to get a certain output. I have also always been intrigued by the way hiking trails link up (though my interest in hiking derives from other reasons as well).

If they were VERY narrow, could only be one, all consuming, and lifelong, you would be a clear "idiot savant". So that obviously isn't the case.

1. Mine tend to be fairly broad. I have had about 5 that whole CAREERS could be built on. In fact, I DID build a career on one.
2. I HAVE had perhaps as many as 4 at a time.
3. Obviously, they weren't ALL consuming, but I would say they were almost like a stim, etc.... I wanted to take books around, etc... I guess they were almost like a security blanket.
4. The longest one I have had so far, that was at the level I think qualifies as a REAL AS type interest, was perhaps 15 years. That was probably my first. I DID have one that lasted about 11. BTW they were concurrent. They kind of fed off of one another. The first was electronics, and the second was aircraft. today I spend an inordinate amount of time with languages, but it requires abilities that I have lost to a degree, and time I feel I don't have, and I am a bit worn out by everything, so I don't really know if they qualify.

Oh yeah, about the one I built a career in? I would say it lasted about 16 years, who knows, MAYBE as long as 35 years! It depends what you think would qualify. You see, I FIRST started studing them at a level that qualified when they became really feasible for the average person. That was in 1971! THEN, in 1979 or so I started really working with them. I got a job around 1980/1981. I got burned out around 1987.

I always said my boss did NOT know what he had. MAN did I have that right. I was in at 6am, left around 8pm(official hours were 8am-5pm), wrote LOTS of interesting programs. One was almost like M/S access in functionality and I wrote that around 1983 or so. I did that on my own time without them being suggested, but they were ALL worthwhile! When he really pushed having MORE, etc... The deal kind of wore off. I started trying to work 8-5. I EVEN pleaded with him to let me work LESS, I told him my best time was 9am-3pm and that he could get TWICE the work out of me and I would be happier. He didn't understand the concept, and didn't take it.

I WONDERED why I knew so much, etc.... Most people going against me on trivia or general knowledge FLUNK! And that includes people that have DOCTORATES in the subject! Anyway, NOW I would say it is maybe a hobby. Primarily because of my obsession with forums like this. The career? COMPUTERS! What else?

Steve

I've had many different obsessions but my special interests have usually been the same; my main special interests are drawing, (drawing cartoon characters from different cartoons, drawing my own cartoon characters, drawing animals, drawing "Beanie Babies") writing episodes for my own cartoons, reading, "DragonBall Z" villains, and many different characters from different cartoons, movies, and TV shows, such as "Lord of the Rings", "Farscape", "Harry Potter", "Leprechaun", "Halloweentown", and much more. Most of my obsessions with characters from TV shows, cartoons, and movies have been passing fads, such as when I was obsessed with Mew, Pikachu, and Charmander from "Pokemon" when I was little, so much so, that if there were parodies of them, I would be obsessed with those, or any character similar to them! I don't think that obsessions that are passing fads are required for a diagnosis of Asperger's but just having obsessions probably is.