'Special interests' interfering with life?

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Have you ever found your 'special interests'/obsessions to be so strong or alluring that they interfere with other areas of your life?

I struggle with this often, and especially when I was younger. I've learned that it helps to try new things and have a bunch of interests at once, and to make an effort to not get caught up on one thing. If you're prone to hyperfocusing, you can set a timer and give yourself an hour or two at a time to indulge in your interests.

Yes, sometimes. Especially with YouTube, I get sucked into watching more and more videos than I originally meant to.

I tend to perseverate on anything, not just special interests. I have always found that when I need to focus on something, I end up focusing so much that I neglect everything else.

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31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

Yes.

My main, lifelong special interest does interfere with my life but... Never in a destructive way. And it almost never got out of hand thanks to limited resources.

My special interest is Crafting... Too conventional to be perceived as weird, but unique enough to be uncommon. When it's too repetitive, it was to be 'admired for diligence' and repetitive enough to become my discrete form of stim. And said stim is 'productive', enough to sell it's finished product.

I don't know, my case is one of those rare positive effect special interest. Crafting made me popular at school, got me connected to other people, gave me relief AND profit, etc.


The times my special interest interfered negatively with my life would be uncommon -- because I almost never talked about it.
But yes, I do have issues with too much focus whether it involves any special interest, obsession, or not.

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I did before my OCD was treated

I did before I started taking a med for my OCD. I'm not saying that people with this problem have OCD but it's something to look into if you have other OCD symptoms like I did.