has anyone made you feel guilty about your special interests

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My mum is great at this. My special interests (literature, theater, opera and film) came from her, as she would always take me and my sister to cultural events when we were kids. Usually she's totally supportive of my special interests in that she urges me to go to see plays etc and often also pays for my tickets. But god help if my special interest is not something considered "high culture". My biggest special interests right now are anything related to the japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli and the musicals Rent and Hair. My mum makes fun about my love for studio Ghibli and somehow tolerates Hair but when it comes to Rent.... Maybe it's because the bold themes (homosexuality, aids, drugs) but she always makes me feel bad about my love for it. It plays here in Helsinki right now and I've seen it twice. Yesterday when I told her I was going to see it again a second time, she started yelling at me about money. The tickets are rather expensive (50 euros) but I paid it myself the second time. The first time was a gift from my parents. I just feel really guilty right now about spending so much time and money on my special interests.

I know exactly what you mean. My special interests are fairy tales and concepts of identity through philosophy and psychology, and I spend way too much time reading/researching them, and too much money on books etc. I'm now doing a part-time PhD in Creative Writing (rewriting fairy tales focussing on concepts of identity) and an MSc in Psychology, and am trying to balance the 'selfishness' by having two voluntary jobs and two paid jobs and it's exhausting. I feel really guilty telling people about it because I feel so selfish. I'm thinking of trying to follow a career in Jungian psychoanalysis though so might end up being 'useful' in the distant future... I know most people think I'm really selfish though and should just get a 'proper job'.

People with the same interest as me have made me feel bad. When I talk about my interests, I apparently sound like I'm forcing the World to join it. I'm not, I don't think anyone has to join it.

People also just stop listening after about 2 sentences because they think I'm going on too much, but they expect me to listen to 6 sentences about subjects just as obscure :/.

Apparently your mother wants to "control" your special interests. I know that kind of mom. Mine wanted to control even my thoughts and who I related to. Since I was big enough to think I stopped paying attention to her. We always argued because I would not tolerate her control issues. I did not wanted her trying to dictate my life. You will have to stand and fight for what you love. Do not let her interfere. Studio Ghibli is the best animation studio in the planet (I collect their movies), and Rent is a very renown musical. If you are paying for your own tickets you have nothing to feel guilty about. Go watch your play and continue doing what you love to do and ignore her. It is your life after all, not hers.

I have been made to feel guilty about my obsessions when I was a teenager. My cousins all in turn lectured me for ''talking too much about them'', and my friends even made up lies about my obsessions to see if that might help me become less obsessed, and they got everyone to play along. This then made me believe that it's a ''social crime'' to not have obsessions, so now I try to keep them to myself a bit more, and only talk about them in small doses where it does not become obvious to other people than I am as obsessed as I am.

My wife accuses me of being 'obsessed'.

Not sure if its a legitimate criticism or not.

My special interest has been Asia and Japanese/Chinese for many years now. I studied Japanese with Chinese at university. My mum can't understand why I would want to live in asia when I'm from the UK. She says I should want to stay in the UK!! !

Mom used to make me feel bad for mine when I was a kid. I don't really want to talk about it.

My mom tried to take my Calvin and Hobbes books away when I was a kid, and my stepfather made fun of how I would watch shows like "Dragontales" and collected Gen 1 My Little Ponies. My mom and a school counselor I had when I was younger tried to "wean" me away from sleeping with a stuffed animal (something that helped me feel less anxious and fall asleep quicker) when I was nine by making me sleep with a heart-shaped pillow. I worked around this by hiding one of my stuffed animals under my pillow at night. What she didn't know didn't hurt her.

Yeah, my mom wants me to share her special interests--messianic Judaism and natural food. She doesn't seem to understand that I'm not as fascinated with those things as she is. One of these days, I'm going to just start lecturing at her about statistics or child development as relentlessly as she lectures at me. See how she likes it.

It's funny, you'd think I'd be the one who didn't understand that other people get bored if I go on and on about special interests. But no, it's her, with her more than three decades more life experience than me. Go figure.

Several people here on WP have tried to make me feel bad about my My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic special interest. Someone also started an argument with me over my one of my other special interests, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, by saying it was a bad movie. They kept the argument going even when it was clear that I was getting upset.

Yup. My parents relentlessly criticized me as a child for my automotive obsession. They didn't get why I had no interest in sports, the music of my generation, parties or trying to get a girlfriend. All I wanted was to hang out in junkyards, machine shops and my parent's garage. With tools in my hands and parts to play with, I was content.

I think I make myself feel guilty about them. Sometimes after a while I lose interest in one, and then I start wondering why I was so obsessed with it in the first place. I look at it with a different perspective when I'm no longer obsessed, and I feel embarrassed about how much I was into it and how much time I spent on it. After this happend a couple of times, I try to tone it down with my current interests, because I'm aware they won't always seem this special. I do think my interests are overall a positive thing - I'd be quite lost without them and I get bored if I'm lacking a really intense interest for a time. They're always harmless and I've never gone too overboard - never to the point that it interferes too much with my life or anything, so I think it's ok.

I've had some gentle teasing about some of my obsessions but no one's ever really criticised. There are probably some people who'd find high culture obsessions harder to appreciate than, for example, pop culture - it depends on the tastes of the person doing the criticising! I can imagine it must be difficult if you're mum views some of your interests as more worthwhile than others. It's hard to make someone understand the appeal of something if it just doesn't do anything for them, but you'd hope she'd accept it's important to you.