Emotional attachment to objects - an AS thing?

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I'm not especially attached to objects, (I prefer to throw out things that no longer serve a purpose), but I do hate change and don't adapt well to new things. I guess this could seem like an attachment to objects, when really it is more reluctance to change what works and what I'm comfortable with.

I do love books though. As another poster wrote, the most important books occupy the top shelf, in the hierarchy of the bookcase. My NT best friend and I haven't spoken since January, and even though I know I might actually be sad about that and just can't confront it, what I feel the most disturbed by is that she has one of my books, a book I got from a convention that is not easily replaceable. I know if I were to suddenly contact her and ask for my book, it would just make me seem like a jerk. It really bugs me because I'd just brought it home and hadn't even started it yet before she saw it and asked to borrow it. :/

I tend to get emotionally attached to objects.

Once, not that long ago, when I was moving I had to pack my plush animals into a plastic bag and I felt horrible because I felt like they would suffocate, even though I knew they weren't alive. Then when I didn't have enough space for them anymore I felt really bad about keeping them in a bag in the attic. I felt like I was betraying them.

I cried when my husband tried to talk me into getting rid of my duvet and buying a new one instead.

I cried when I realized I had forgotten my favorite winter cap on a train.

I hate when my things get damaged, destroyed or lost or when someone wants me to get rid of them. I like to keep my things in good condition and if I'm emotionally attached to them then I don't want to throw them away and certainly don't want to be pushed into it by someone who doesn't understand that attachment. If something gets lost, damaged or destroyed unexpectedly, I tend to get very upset and I may cry about it. People think I'm childish for crying over small things like that, but I don't think they realize the emotional attachment I have with some objects.

Yensid or Yen Sid is the wizard from Fantasia. His name is not actually mentioned in the film. So it is an obscure reference to an obscure character whose name is an in joke.



We now return you to your normally scheduled thread, in progress.

My things are quite important to me, though the one that I would take out of a burning building with me would be my laptop. I have something close to a meltdown if my computer (or any other sort of electronic device) breaks or gets damaged. I scrounge around trying to fix it. When it becomes hopeless and I realize I can't fix it, I'm really upset. It's like finding out that a relative has a terminal illness or that my best friend died. xD I mourn the loss.

I don't remember being crazily attached to things growing up, but I do remember certain incidents... My mom gave away my old NES and SNES one day when I was at school. I flipped out. I also remember coming home one time and she'd put my entire rock collection into the fish tank. I was pretty pissed about that too. I loved my stuffed animals and I'd still have them around if I could. They ended up in storage a long time back and I was sad. I think the loss that I remember the most was losing this beautiful blue pillow of mine. It was fluffy and pretty and it was mine. But I left it in a hotel when my parents and I were on vacation. I remember being sad the entire flight home.

I came across an article about a Swedish woman who "married" the Berlin Wall and now has a strange fascination with guillotines
http://dalje.com/tv/en/index.php?id=5067r08048a9c5630

I have this obsessions with certain rings of mine. I also have some odd bit and ends - a toy pumpkin, a locket, something I took out from a necklace, etc - that I like to hold. It comforts me and I'd feel terrible if I lost them.
It's an aspie trait. Sometimes I'd just latch on to something.

I'm not sure if he was just a bad psychiatrist or if the field of psychiatry was so primitive back then (back when Carter was president).

I'm sure since I didn't exhibit any classic learning disabilities or show any obvious neurological symptoms, they figured the issue was lack of motivation, but you would think that the first think a child psychiatrist should KNOW is that kids won't just open up and tell you what's going on.

My life at school was hell. I knew the doctor would tell anything I said to him to my mom. If I was comfortable talking to my parents about what I was going through, I would have done so. Hence, I told him nothing. He either needed to gain my trust so I could open up about what was being done to me at school or he needed to be able to come to my school and observe (as a teacher's aide) how other kids treated me. I really believe if he saw what was going on at school...he would have immediately figured out why I was having problems in school.

Nowadays, they make a bid deal out of bullying in schools. I should be more sympathetic, but I'm not. Nobody stepped in to help me....I either took the abuse or learned to fight the bullies. Nowadays, if you teach your kid to stand up for themselves (the only way to deal with bullies), the school will just expel your kid for fighting. They still don't do squat against the bully who's causing the problem.

Digital photography is my special interest and my wife often comments that my camera having a place of its own on the couch, but I feel grounded when I'm holding my camera like its a coping tool.

When I was a kid, I use to have the old 90s Red Power Ranger. My god I loved that toy. It was semi larger than a doll and I'd take Red Ranger with me everywhere. I use to sleep with him because he'd protect me.
One day, he had a tore in his legs and my parents wanted to throw him away. They succeeded, but I quickly squirreled him out of the trash. When they got mad at me for it, I cried. And fought pretty hard to keep.

I have always felt a connect to objects and other animals besides humans. Humans were never a connection to me.

I think it is an AS thing, because I seem to be the only one out of my family who is always ''feeling sorry'' for objects. It's like my mind turns objects into innocent people, and I suddenly get an attack of empathy or sympathy for them when someone is mis-using them, just like I do when a human or animal is being mis-treated. I've got to stop this though because it's making me look insane. Like when I'm eating an apple, I ''feel sorry'' for the apple, and I start worrying that it might have nerves inside it that are making it feel pain each bite I take....but then I would ''feel sorry'' for it more if I let it rot, because apples are for to be eaten.

Before I knew about ASD or had an AS diagnosis, I remember hugging a banana. It was so bright and yellow and well formed it was just beautiful. And it clearly deserved a hug. lol. Weird but makes a bit more sense now I know about AS.

Even when doing grocery shopping I will just stop and stare at the patterns in some things-- for example Wegman's always have these incredible green vegetables that look like artist sculptures (huge artichokes?), they're incredible!

I don't get emotionally attached to things, but I do get attached to ideas I have for them.

I sometimes feel sorry for objects if they are going to be thrown out, but I more feel sorry for the person who MADE them, I feel as sometime went to all the work making the thing, maybe for an extremely low wage, and then it's just going to be thrown out. For some reason, I don't mind it when objects are recycled or given away though or if I take a picture of them before I throw them away.

I hate people burning old objects, or chopping them up. Once there was an old wicker chair that my mum and dad didn't want any more, and there wasn't any room in the house for it, and nobody else seemed to want it, and it was an awkward shape to fit into the back of a car, so my mum said that my dad will chop it up. God knows how he had the guts to chop a lovely old-fashioned wicker chair up, that had actually been in his childhood and my childhood.

I get emotionally attached to certain objects if 'special' people have given them to me. For example, I have kept a seemingly ordinary pen which was given to me by a woman who worked at my college. She used to let me sit in her office on the floor if my classes became too much for me. She taught me how to recognise sarcasm in conversations, how to control my anger, helped me deal with bullies, and gave me rides home if I needed them. She was one of the few non-family members who I trusted and allowed to hug me. Because of my virtually non-existent relationship with my mum, she became the closest thing I had to such. I kept everything she ever gave me, letters, Birthday/Christmas cards and gifts everything.

I still have attachment to objects. If I can't find them, I get very upset and feel disoriented.