Special interests born out of anxiety

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on page 191 in Tony Attwoods's Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, I came across something that intrigued me. Apparently, medications to treat anxiety, depression, and anger management tend to mitigate special interests. I'm sure I have read somewhere else about this as well, it may have been in a post or a thread in this forum. I have anxiety problems that are fairly severe.

The strange thing is that on occasion when I get anxious about something, and my heart starts pumping, I start to get excited about it, a feeling of euphoria and anxiety mixed. The next thing I know, I am fascinated by the subject that stimulated me, and it's the only thing I can think about, examples of these kinds of obsessions can be certain people who have made me feel anxious.

This is how I believe many of my interests started out, in fact I am sure some of them did. My fear of huge open spaces, and the unknown is what got me very excited about space. When I was looking up at the stars I really felt a sense of looking into the abyss, The feeling of looking at planets so far away and unexplored made everything seem just epic. I got that way about the ocean too.

What's funny though is that when I was young I was not a fan of romantic relationships at all. The whole idea sort of made me sick to my stomach and the anxiety of being that close with someone and being part of something that sickly syrupy made me feel uncomfortable. Now I am obsessed with that sort of thing. I cannot stop reading romance novels and I cannot stop thinking about how incredibly beautiful and sweet romance is.

The more I thought about my antipathy towards these things the more excited I felt about them.

Does anyone else have that reaction to anxiety sometimes? I think this is fascinating.

Uh..YES!!!You hit the nail right on the head, so to speak! A person place or thing will make me nervous, so I'll obsess over it for days and days! Thank you for posting this!

Nothing wrong with it. Gaining knowledge about things that unnerve us seems a perfectly logical reaction. Healthier than pathological avoidance, methinks. Probably why I developed such an intense interest in social interaction, cultures, psychology, stuff like that. It's about feeling like I have a modicum of control or the ability to mitigate anxiety-inducing situations.

Yes. I was deathly afraid of a certian cartoon as a kid and I would have horrible panic attacks whenever I saw anything related to it. At school I often had to sit next to boy who had lunchboxes related to the cartoon. My saint of a first grade teacher probably would have understood if I explained it to her but I didn't want to take a chance of other teachers knowing about it so I had to teach myself to cope. I think I made it become a special intrest. It was a short lived one but hey, it helped me tremendiously. It was a cartoon meant for boys but I was already labled a tomboy. At the time I was lucky to have two best friends and they played along with me in related games. I was actualy quite popular at that age but than I had a saint of a teacher who encouraged the other kids to be nice to me. The ocassionaly taunting I did get was nothing compared to the sheer terror I expirenced whenever presented with anything related to it. I was a weird kid and as an adult I realise it was very silly to be afraid of a silly cartoon about space rodents riding motorcycles but at the time, it scared me to death...litteraly. Oddly enough it was something that was said on the cartoon that scared me. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of "I'll cut you open and look at your brain." It wasn't even an animal or living creature that was told that but one of the motorcycles of the main characters. For some reason that REALLY creeped me out as a kid and made me afraid of anything related to this weird cartoon. Yeah, I was a VERY strange kid.

I use to be terrified of squirrels but now I think they`re so cute and I wanna raise a baby squirrel!

Now I know a whole lot about spiders because I used to be afraid of them

Actually, no, I don't believe I've ever done that. I usually tend to avoid things I'm anxious about, instead of researching about them. But, I don't think it would be a bad idea. It's always good to learn about things.

Anxiety helps fuel my success at work. Because I'm paranoid about doing something wrong, failing, forgetting something, (basically an expert in "what if") it makes me do a better job.

Its very stressful though, and I can't get the worry out of my head unless I'm doing a special interest (Eg. being with my horse)

I don't think I've ever had this happen.

I've gotten interested with things that scare me, for example I used to read a lot of Stephen King novels and I wouldn't be able to sleep afterward. There have been a few scary TV programs that I liked too, for that reason. But I don't know if that counts.

I had a kitten like that.

When we first got him he was terrified of our basement. For awhile he refused to go down there, and then he started going down there obsessively, and then he was fine with it. He did this with numerous other fears, such as our territorial older cat (his pestering her finally got her to tolerate him and even like him, but he got his nose scratched several times).

Myself, about the only obsession I have that remotely sounds like this is my interest in psychopaths and other criminals, since I was sexually abused. But I think it has more to do with people treating me like I'm evil, leading me to want to hear the perspectives of people everyone else condemns as evil. I don't think it's overcoming my fear at all - I've never felt afraid of reading about these people, and I'd still be terrified if I met one in person.

That's the story of my life. With one topic anyway - probably good evidence that I was AS as a kid. I had a really happy childhood - oblivious to those around me. Then at the age of nine I discovered that people are starving, being tortured, and generally Very Bad Things Happen all the time. I spent the rest of my life obsessing over it, and I find it hard to take anything else seriously. When I discovered that most people genuinely do not care (when measured by how they choose to use their time) I concluded that the whole world is evil and I just have to somehow hide from them and try and fit into the cracks until I die. It would make a good sci fi story I think - trying to survive as the only sane person in a mad and evil world. Except it's real, which isn't any fun at all.

Yes. Some of my special interests have been things that scared me; things that I have been both frightened of and fascinated with at the same time. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense as a coping strategy. When we really look at something that scares us we often find it isn't so frightening after all. And the more we learn about the thing that scares us and the better we understand it the less menacing it might seem. I know that doesn't always work, but to me it does make sense as a way of trying to deal with fear. Another reason we might become fascinated with things that unnerve us is simply because people like being a bit scared. That is why so many people love horror movies and things like that.

Two of the things that I used to be very scared of but that I also became obsesssively interested in are ghosts and the london underground (tube). And I feel that by being naturally drawn towards those things, it wasn't something that I did deliberately, and by becoming very interested in them it has helped me a lot to be less scared by them. With the tube the fear was mainly because of sensory issues, especially noise sensitivity which has become less severe anyway as I have grown up. But as a child it was so overwhelming to me that being taken down to the deep level platforms actually felt like a threat to my life.

A lot of the people who I have ended up really obsessing over and who have become obsessive interests for me have been people who I have felt very unnerved by, and again, that has been a way for me to have nicer feelings and thoughts about them and so find them less scary.