Can you control what you're interested in?

Post Reply New Topic

I have trouble staying interested in things, even when I want to. I get bored very easily with an interest and have to move on to something else.

But obsessions?? Yeah those go out of control. Like when I'm obsessively checking on ebay for some item I want to buy. I wouldn't call that an interest but an obsession.

I can control what I get interested in and even control the intensity of it... for first a few minutes.
As long as something is new and potentially useful I will read about it and focus on it easily but not obsessively.
Then I either get bored, my interests level stays constant or I get utterly obsessed.

So I guess in fact I don't have control after all. I just can give myself potential interests to try out. What happens next is out of my control.

Hmm, interesting. I don't think I am very much in control of my interests. I've tried to cultivate interest in things without success, I can devote time and attention to things if compelled (work, household chores, etc.) but it is usually hard to find something that interests me about those things. (though I like a good clean floor and sink)

When I am into something I am usually consumed by it, think about it much of the day, would talk about it a lot if I was comfortable with that. Not sure, but I think most of those things just struck me as interesting. I was drawn to them.

If the interest passes, it drops like a hot potato. I would struggle to continue my involvement.

This made me think that these things we call special interests would simply be hobbies to others. I have tried to normalize my intense interest in things by calling them hobbies, as if they are something I do with "spare time", but they are really much more than that.

I had a therapist before I was diagnosed HFA who was always trying to get me to try something new. At the time I was depressed, anxious, and stressed out and not really interested in much. He would ask about things that I used to like to do, I'd say "I used to draw all the time, from life, from imagination". So he suggested getting a sketch pad and just taking some time during the day to go sit somewhere and draw.

Should work, right? It was an intense interest of mine before. For most of my life it was a major way in which I made sense of the world around me, but I just couldn't get into it again. I still can't. I like to draw, but I can take it or leave it. I have other interests taking up my time.

Mine have always been in a narrow range, astrology, behavioral sciences, painting, and computers. They differ on their intensity and compulsion to engage in them, as well I may be writing code to create a program to help me keep track of my paint, while thinking about why someone/something behaved the way they/it did; so they do "bleed" over into one another.

Can I control them, I don't see any reason to try other than if I want to provoke myself into being miserable.