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special interest

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orion82
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28 Jun 2012, 11:11 pm

is having a special obsessive interest a requirement for aspergers diagnosis? as a young child and teenager i was obsessive about scientific experiments (used to spend whole days doing them) and general knowledge and fact collecting. but now (i am 29 yrs old) i don't really think i have an obsessive interest. what goes?



chessimprov
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28 Jun 2012, 11:25 pm

orion82, it's very characteristic, but not an absolute requirement. You could just be very not adept with social skills with many misinterpretations.



vanhalenkurtz
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29 Jun 2012, 1:53 am

Good question. Can "oneself" be a special interest? It's like plugging a jack from the output into the headphone hole.


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questor
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29 Jun 2012, 1:54 am

I've never had any real intensive special interests. I have always been into reading, and my daydream universes, and I like animals, but nothing else, really. My reading covers a wide range of topics, with mysteries and sci fi being the main ones, but I am into many other reading topics, too.

- Mysteries
- Sci fi
- History
- Historical fiction
- Humor
- Tech thrillers
- Science
- Some biographies
- War stories
- Westerns
- Animal stories
- Adventure stories

I may have missed a few. I did go through a phase when I was young, where I was into mythology, and horror stories, but I passed out of that phase after a few years.

I guess my interests are reading and my daydream universes.


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orion82
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29 Jun 2012, 6:18 am

thanks for the replies. sometimes i do miss having a special interest - something that will keep me busy in my free time. perhaps i should go and find one again! :-)



Ilka
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29 Jun 2012, 7:46 am

My husband and child both have AS (he self-diagnosed, she was diagnosed 4 years sgo) and I would not say they have a "special obsessive" interest. I mean, my husband is a programmer. He loves what he does and he carries his computer with him all the time, but I would ot call it obsessive. He sometimes gets obsessed when he finds a problem he cannot solve and cannot let go until he solves it, but I think thats natural. I am NT (or so I think) and I get obsessed when I have something to do and I NEED to finish it. My daughter loves rocks, and when she goes somewhere she carries rocks home, but I would not say she is obsessed. She devotes little of her time (if at all) to her "interest".



NeueZiel
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29 Jun 2012, 7:49 am

No, asperger symptoms vary greatly on an individual basis.



CyborgUprising
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29 Jun 2012, 8:36 am

Ilka wrote:
My husband and child both have AS (he self-diagnosed, she was diagnosed 4 years sgo) and I would not say they have a "special obsessive" interest. I mean, my husband is a programmer. He loves what he does and he carries his computer with him all the time, but I would ot call it obsessive. He sometimes gets obsessed when he finds a problem he cannot solve and cannot let go until he solves it, but I think thats natural. I am NT (or so I think) and I get obsessed when I have something to do and I NEED to finish it. My daughter loves rocks, and when she goes somewhere she carries rocks home, but I would not say she is obsessed. She devotes little of her time (if at all) to her "interest".


I used to pick up rocks and carry them around when I was a child, though it was unclear as to why. I'm also that way about problem solving.

An interest is only an obsession when it interferes with daily life and consumes an unusual amount of one's time/focus.



Alfonso12345
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29 Jun 2012, 6:03 pm

For a diagnosis, you need to have a combination of a lot of different Asperger's traits. Just having one or two traits doesn't count, but if you have obsessive interests and a lot of other Asperger's traits, then you very well could get a diagnosis.



Ilka
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02 Jul 2012, 10:02 am

CyborgUprising wrote:
I used to pick up rocks and carry them around when I was a child, though it was unclear as to why. I'm also that way about problem solving.


Well, GA does know why. She loves rocks. When she sees one she likes, she wants to collect it. She has boxes and boxes full of rocks of all sizes in her bedroom. Rocks, and shells. She loves rocks so much that his best friend brought her a quartz from his vacations because he found it and he knew she would love it. She did.