Why do so many of us get obsessions?

Post Reply New Topic

I just think that the obsessions symptom is really strange. Why do so many of us get obsessions... :-/

It gives the brain something to focus on and do, so it distracts from repeating (often negative) thoughts, or what some might even describe as voices in their head. In doing so it gives relief from chronic anxiety.

I think it is simply something that intrigues us at first (maybe unusual, maybe systematically appealing). After learning a little about it, we become more enthralled. Then, it is off to the races with a new special interest. Yay!

Because aspies pay attention to small details.

What if it's something you don't even want to be interested in and is detrimental to your life. Sometimes you can't just choose something better I think... its fixed

Because for many of us our brain naturally does well hyperfocusing on one thing instead of "multitasking" which stresses and exhausts us.

Alternative opinion here!

I'd question how many of us truly have obsessions and how many of us are just told we do. No doubt there's a link between autism and 'obsession' but I think it's often the case that we simply express our legitimate interests differently to other people, so it's seen as "weird".

Coincidentally, this subject is literally my most recent blog post!
It has dinosaurs, chess and Sonic the Hedgehog.

http://autisticnotweird.com/2015/04/24/autistic-obsessions/

I agree about the obsessions and special interests being things that keep our minds occupied. Better to spend one's time reading or studying about anything from the taxonomy of carnivores and the evolution of the domestic dog to the finer points of the workings of internal combustion engines, than to be left alone with the demons within. I get that all too well.

Does anyone remember the movie "Spinal Tap," where the guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, had Marshall amplifiers that went up to 11? That was probably the most memorable part of the movie. - "This one's better. It goes up to 11."

When one's sensory input level is always on 11, sometimes you end up using all that extra mental stimuli as white noise- something to keep moving, keep occupied, and oddly enough, keep calm.

Prayer and meditation helps at times, but I've even found myself with periodic obsessions with theology.

Hmm thank you guys for replying

With me it's usually some goal or other that I get welded to. I've read that Aspie special interests are generally not very practical, appearing to be done just for the sake of it, but mine have always been strongly related to fairly normal human goals, although the paths I took were generally eccentric, long, and extremely absorbing.

For example, as soon as I got into pop music, I wanted to create it myself, and I spent the next few decades working on that. I soon realised that the limiting factor was that there was only one of me so I couldn't play all the instruments at once. I didn't have much pull with the other kids, so I couldn't easily form a band, but managed a compromise by dragging one other kid into the project. By using his tape recorder and my sister's tape recorder, we managed to make a couple of tape-to-tape multi-track recordings, though by the end of it he was furious with me for being so self-centred and ignoring his preferences. Luckily I found another tape recorder owner who was more flexible, and I carried on refining the process (learning to play guitar and sing almost as a side issue), and very gradually inched forward until after a few years I had a 4-piece band and a load of home-made studio gear that allowed me to make 4-track recordings. I sussed the need for sharing when playing in a band, but found it too limiting, so I recorded a lot on my own on 4-track as well as doing the band. As time went by I even managed to get some fairly good results, and these days it's more like a normal hobby, using computers for recording and playing in various bands. I spend a lot less time on it in total, but when I get started on a song, I'm very dedicated to getting the best result I can.

I don't know why we get locked onto special interests so strongly. I think perfectionism comes into it, collections always have to be 100% complete etc. We tend to try to find out everything we can about a subject of interest, and perhaps executive disfunction stops us from stepping back and asking "is this the best use of my time?" and abandoning approaches that have become inefficient. I find it very difficult to stop once I've started, until I reach the goal, the thought of a task being incomplete upsets me. Advice such as "don't sweat it" falls on deaf ears.

I'm not sure that obsession is quite the right word for what we have. It's close, and it looks from the outside like OCD, but it doesn't have much of the negativity and anxiety that I think is associated with OCD. It's more like a passion. The look and feel of doing some real craftsmanship, pushing the envelope, going the extra (million) mile(s) for a first-class result, those things really float my boat, and the only thing that mars it is that I've come to realise the danger of unwittingly committing massive amounts of time and effort to a randomly-acquired goal at the expense of the rest of my life, so these days I worry when I'm getting sucked into anything that's likely to become so demanding. I control it like I'd control an alcohol addiction - I know it won't be a case of "just one won't hurt," I'll have downed 10 bottles before I know it, so the only way to control it is not to start unless I really have a good slice of free time. While I was young and not really living independently, I had little need to be aware of those things, but once I had full responsibility for supporting myself, I began to see how they were clashing with the fascinating stuff. Not being able to get on with a special interest never worries me like the thought of forgetting the important, boring stuff does. It's just frustrating and dull.

I do get compulsions to watch all the episodes of this or that TV show back to back, which often gives me very little pleasure when it's not very good material, and I often wonder why I'm bothering to collect every possible song by some musician or other when I don't even like half of them, so I don't think it's entirely a passion thing, apart from the feeling that I've completed the job 100%. I think overall it's just the way our brains function - the brakes don't work. There must be psychological factors too. I think a lot of my self-esteem comes from my ability to turn out high-quality work, and perhaps the reason I'm not afraid of all the tedious, repetitive tasks that I end up taking on is that the repetition makes me feel secure, both because of the rhythm of the repetition and the reassurance I get when I see how smartly I perform a step after the first couple of hundred repeats. I love seeing my skills grow like that. I also agree with the idea that focussing on a special interest can stop the mind from wandering onto scary thoughts about the "real world," though like I say, in my case realism has broken through and spoiled a lot of the fun.

My psych said its a coping mechanism, as an autistic person, I cannot understand social rules and world, but things like sonic and video games and movies are easy to understand and I can find comfort in that

So far, thankfully, I've never had an obsession that I didn't enjoy. I'm currently into a new obsession that has been building up for several months now.