very strong interests for a very short time

Post Reply New Topic

hi.
right now i am interested in politic (italian Radical party). well, i am sure before tuesday i will forget that. it is not one of the strongest, but when i was 8-10 i didn't sleep, sometime i didn't eat for about 2 days because i focused on my interests. now i alternate one week of absolute boredom and 2-3 days of absolute isolation with my interests.
the question is, when we talk about "special interests" we mean that or something more long (i had this too, animals. years of documentaries and books)?
when i say "special" i mean VERY special, someting so strong that make you forget all the world except it...
does it usually happen to people with ASD?

sorry about my english

I think it's normal for people with asd, I do it too, I have very intense interests for a short period of time and then I drop them completely and move onto something else. Here are examples of some interests I've had in the past two years alone: France, coats (yes lol), crystal healing, yoga, korean skincare, feminism, fashion in general, minimalism. I went within 6 months from being someone who does a ten step skincare routine to someone who barely bothers to wash their face...I look back now like 'what was I thinking?'..but at the time it was all encompassing and I couldn't think of anything else. I spoke to a therapist who worked with people with aspergers about this, I was complaining that other people have long lasting useful special interests they can make a career out of whereas I just have these useless intense fads...she said it's not uncommon and lots of people have no money left from buying things for all their different hobbies that they don't do anymore!

I think you could be describing hyperfocus, which is more short-term than a special interest. It's most commonly associated with ADHD, but it does happen in people with autism as well.

does it?
i have ADHD, that might be a explanation.

thank you too, curlywurlycat

I'm diagnosed with comorbid adhd and I have short-lived obsessive special interest. Sometimes they only last a season, and sometimes only a couple of weeks. As a result, I have knowledge on multiple subjects, but only particular areas of a subject. Therefore I don't have a deep knowledge on any single subject as a whole. The autism causes me to obsess, and the adhd causes me to jump from one thing to the next, it's very weird.

I have had hyperfocus too. I've always been really into vintage technology but recently I hyperfixated on Sinclair products for about a week.

i was like that when i was younger, watching documentaries, searching and searching about it for weeks. which kinda make me stop with that(i do once in a while but not often was used to) it was a podcast or a friend, i dont remember very well, that said, that you can live your life knowing and learning about everything or just focus on what really matter. so if i work, lets say with electricity, why i should waste time learning about fishes? i should use my free time better or with things that i really like or will make me richer, smarter or better with myself like a self-help book.

I have adhd too so this definitely makes sense but I'd never heard of people with adhd alone being described as having special interests so I guess I just assumed they hyperfocused on 'normal' things..like if task happens to interest them or is urgent, e.g. they really need to study for an exam, they can focus on it alone. But it seems you can have 'special interests' without necessarily having many other autistic traits:

https://actuallyadhd.tumblr.com/post/13 ... ation-is-a

So for those of us with both it could be attributed to either condition I guess...both of them reinforcing each other? Like getting a special (maybe considered unusual by society standards) interest is an asd thing and being able to hyperfocus on it but maybe getting bored with it quickly is the adhd playing its part.

I do this as well. (Crap, could I possibly have gone this long with undiagnosed add as well?) I will fixate on new interests until a new one begins to creep in and wins over my attention. I've been through bird watching, Revolutionary era American history, biblical apocrypha and pseudopigrapha, Victorian era post-mortem photography, microscopy, conspiracy theories...

Amazon is no help either. I have religious texts, replicas of founding documents and letters written by founding fathers, stacks of pictures of nicely dressed dead people, expensive microscopes, etc.

I tell people I know about a lot of things, I just don't know a lot about anything.

Yep internet shopping is the devil. I hate real life shopping so I wouldn't be able to indulge my fads if it weren't for it. You're not alone with the clutter. I had two wardrobes full of coats, trendy unworn clothes I wouldn't be seen dead in, aromatherapy equipment, yoga equipment, every yoga and mindfulness book ever written, feminist books, enough skincare for ten faces, perfumes etc (God my interests sound shallow compared to yours). I got the Marie Kondo- The Life Changing Magic of Tidying book and cleared everything out- there's some really good advice, like to keep only those things that 'spark joy' and not to feel bad about getting rid of things- even if you didn't wear it or use it much, it probably made you happy when you bought it and served a purpose and you can gratefully pass it on for someone else to use.