whats a hyperfixation like?

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i never had one b4

Example from my past a few months before I joined this site.

Around april 2017 was when I had started dating a lovely lady from Yorkshire (Near Hull), I took the online autism test because she was on the spectrum diagnosed with aspergers syndrome and her son was diagnosed with autism (Under the old diagnosing system) and and I naturally wanted to know what it was and how it effects her, and as she tried to explain, everything she said apart from one thing seemed "Normal" to me. She was doing her best to try and explain, but the more she tried to explain, the more things she was saying that I knew I did or experienced. (I knew I was "Different". Very different! But I had associated this to my different upbringing. It never occurred to me that my introverted semi-loner style character was anything to do with autism, as I had only really known about autism through the severe cases seen in newspapers and the news on TV.).
Now the background I write above where I tried that online test was over two years before I joined this site but read on...

(I am having day jar vous while writing this!) But on taking that basic online test it said to see a psycologist, a psyciatrist, or a health professional. Now the doctors I had been with in the past there was no way I could even suggest it! They would have told me off for wasting their time!
But I had changed doctors surgeries and these new doctors were wonderful! So when I made the change, Several times I had booked doctors appointments spread over a year and a half but every time Inhad the appointment to ask about autism I had mindblank and had to talk about something else to free my mind soI could speak.
I ended up soo frustrated with myself I decided to have NOTHING to do with autism and let it drop.
Now that is the background to what I will write next about an example of hyperfixation.

Fast forward to the first week or two in april 2019 and I wasn't thinking about autism as I wanted nothing more to do with it! But I was exploring Youtube and I "Latched onto" the subject of prosopragnosia. Faceblindness! A condition that both I and my Mum has. (Is a type of condicion that we may not know when it happens, as some people we can recognise. Yet others...)
I had started watching everything I could find about prosopragnosia on Youtube. I went into a hyperfixation on it and over three whole days I had spent almost every hour I was not asleep or on the toilet or I suddenly realized I needed to eat all watching youtube about this certain subject for three whole days before I exhausted every single thing I could find on the subject! I watched them ALL!
Now during that three days a faceblindness video kept coming up in a Youtube loop called "Ask An Autistic" and I was totally ignoring it! BUT right at the end of the three days it was the only single youtube video on the subject I had not seen, so I saw this last, and what a revelation! She said that something like 80% (Can't remember the figure except it was high) of those with facdblindness were one the autism spectrum! I went for the next two days and watched every "Ask An Autistic" video she had put on! I also had a renewed determination to ask my doctor as I had reached that "Do-or-die" situation where I had been struggling so much due to past repeating burnouts/breakdowns that I really thought I was going to die. I brought my Mum in with me and instructed her to ask if I couldn't and she did have to speak up when I hit mindblank, but then my mind freed up so I could speak. I then found mysrlf on a list to be assessed back inearly may 2019. Then I had tried going back to work a temporary part time job again as I needed to work to survive. Three days of 4 or 5 hours a day spread through the week in a profession I knew backwards, and yet by the time the job ended just before september that year, I was so hard hit by burnout of breakdown I was experiencing symptoms that scared me! I had forgotton how to walk and had to re-learn how on the spot! I was in a mess!
Fortunately the autism team where I was had an open day the very day after my last day in work, and I made my way to them, and it was the first time ever that I found other humans that actually understood and knew what I was actually going through! It was like a DAM had burst inside!
Well before that around june, I joined this site after finding myself on the waiting list as I felt guilty and wanted to know if I should stay on the list. (This was before the last most serious burnout/breakdown but I had already been through several before). I also knew that somehow there was a conection with meltdowns and what I had experienced, which I had kept going back and fore to doctors for 25-30 years to try and foind out what it was as it was seriously effecting my life. Found out while asking what it was. Shutdowns. Someone gave a link to a description that I scrolled right up to the top to check I hadn't written it! It was soo accurate that it was spot on! So I knew I was then on the right track. Was all those years of frustration of no doctor from my past being able to diagnose them as shutdowns. I had had so many blood tests that were torture as they guaranteed a bad shutdown exprerience while at the hospital (I didn't know a shutdown trigger was hospital smells and the hospital "Long corridor" experience which amplified with the bleech and other hospital smells guaranteed horrible repeat shutdowns while going to have my blood tested. The repeat shutdowns (Which are fwr more horrible than just the one shutdown as one ends up soo energy drained ad "Shaky" were caused by nurses following their training assuming that the shutdown was a faint, so they would try to force me to speak and answer questions as I started pulling out of a shutdown which for a shutdown is the worst thing to do, as I would imediately go into a repeat shutdown!)
So all those years... 25 to 30 years or more of trying to find out what they were with no one able to tell me! Was on this site I found it out! This site I joined in my late 40's! If only I had known before!

Buy hyperfixations... Where I would mentally "Latch onto" something which could be researching something or building something, and I would spend so much time I would not be going to bed until I fell asleep due to overtiredness, and I would be missing meals until I started feeling faint or Mum would remind me. Hyperfixations I know! Sadly it is rarely ever a subject that I can earn money from doing the research! If it was I'd be rich!! ! Haha! I couldn't plan it. What I mean is if I knew what the next hyperfixation would be, I would take a job involving the hyperfixation! BUT with hyperfixations, in my experience, is that they are different from special interests where I can relax in. I have indeed had hyperfixations whithin the realms of my special interests, but normally I find hyperfixations will start, and I will explore everything I can at great depth and once I come out with a conclusion, that would be it. I may not look at the subject again for years as I had already explored it. So it is not something I could do in employment. I couldn't stay doing it. As hyperfixations are (One explored) exhausted, and once exhausted I walk away. Why even within my lifelong special interests I have what I call "Seasons".

Another example. Computer car racing games.
In the past about a year or two after most people were uying Playstation 3, I bought a Playstation 2, and I bought Grand Tourismo 4. I played and played and played that game so often that I even had three of the ultra rare "Black cars". But then several years of playing just that I suddenly stopped. The hyperfixation ended. (Also had a similar hyperfixation with Delta Force Black Hawk Down with the M240B machine gun. I was no good at precision BUT I could compensate with the machine gun. I got onto first place on the leader board three times. Three times becwuse when one reaches first placethegame kicks access to ones player, so I made two other new accounts and ended up reaching the top spot each time out of thousands of players. I was hyperfocussed on gaming specificslly with that game or another game (Perfer racing car games.
Now I am hyperfocussed on Asphalt 9 Legends on the Nintendo Switch and am level 100 with garage level 18 in just a few years. Others take five or more years! A few are even more hyperfocussed then I am so do it quicker. I also have a second player which it too is garwge level 12 as nephew wanted me to start again so he could compete with me. My nephew isn't hyper focussed. He played on and off for a few weeks but then thatcwas it and he went to other games. He has lots of games. For me, I stay on the one game. Hope that makes sense?

Hyperfixation is like the reply above! Though it could be "Infodumping". Haha! Better not write any more!

Like when this girl started watching Marimite.

Or when I watched Lucky Star.