Indulge me in your special interest.

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Me too. In due time I will talk about my special interest.

Thank you! I'm also interested in eastern cultures and foreign languages! Been thinking about being a freelance translator, hope it'll work out!

I have a bunch of interconnected special interests in this sort of web in my mind:

- math and physics were my very intense special interests for the past 6 or so years, but my interest in them has been fading recently although I will always remain a math and physics "prodigy" and hope to pursue a career in them
- I love Doctor Who, the TV show, and my obsession with a few of the characters has reached special interest or near special interest level
- I'm really interested in morality, ethics, and philosophy
- I had a short fascination with Communism, the Red Scare, and the Soviet Union
- Recently I have been getting into the X Men, specifically the Phoenix Saga, as well as the general phoenix mythology

What I love about the internet is that I can read about all my special interests online to my heart's content without having to leave the house or anything!

X-men! I love the X-men, I used to read the comics all the time, when I had money to spare for comics. They were my favorite by far. They introduced me to a new way of thinking, and affected I grew up. Wolvie was my favorite. I am guessing you're a Jean Gray fan yes?

I am certainly interested in Communism, and Morality and ethics. But I never seen Dr. Who, though I know a little about the show, and it's fitting that a physics prodigy would be into it.

Hey what do you know about General relativity?

I wonder if I might have indicators of NVLD as well as Asperger syndrome. My verbal intelligence is strong while my spatial skills are rather weak.

It wasn't hard.

My employment/living situation is somewhat unique, and the people here encourage entrepreneurship, so they're allowing me to create an ornament with the city logo and sell it in our little store

If they do well, I'd like to create more.

Then I'm working on another product which requires a provisional patent, and I've been procrastinating on that one cause once you file and pay your fee, you have a year to make it happen. And the idea is also out for the public to see and copy.

Thank you for asking.

Well if you turn out to have NVLD we'll have to create a special handshake.

I hope so too

Hey if you don't mind me asking, do you per chance have NVLD?

I've always been told I have an interesting romantic personality
My special interest is a high-quality romantic relaitionship

How the heck do you manage to pull those off? I've managed only one. (with my wife)

I don't mind at all! I don't know tbh, i've read about it a bit, but i'm not sure about the difference between it and aspergers. My therapist also didn't mention anything about it so i really can't say for sure..

That's one of the the things that I'm interested in finding out! I suspect that autism can create a vulnerability to remaining more fragmented (which can be good, bad, or neutral depending on the situation), partially due to differences in development directly associated with autism and partially due to increased rates of trauma and an increased risk of being stressed by even daily life situations. However, there's no actual research on this topic. Right now, I'm studying the overlap between autism and dissociation as a whole, but I'd love to one day focus in on identity fragmentation specifically. I appreciate hearing about your experiences with it! I think it's all really interesting, and I wish more researchers were interested in topics like this instead of talking about socialization and theory of mind ad nauseam.


Yes, feel free to PM me!

Yes, I totally agree. My own impression of living with autism is that the sensory, perceptual and cognitive differences, which are so underplayed, are the seed from which poor socialisation and ToM are grown.

A simple example would be the behavioural approach to eye-contact and stimming. They are often treated as if the only problem is that we haven't absorbed, or are inattentive to, appropriate forms of social behaviour, and that doing them less is assumed the only measure that interventions have improvement our quality of life. It is almost completely ignored that, for us, they can perform a therapeutic function (e.g. stimming to reduce stress or cope with sensory/emotional overstimulation), or are innate techniques to cope with perceptual difficulties (e.g. excessive cognitive load from trying to mimic social norms interfering with language comprehension.)

Simply cramming our heads with more and more social examples to learn will never be a complete solution for many of us, because it takes conscious attention to be able to apply that knowledge, and our assessment of a situation is limited by the effectiveness of our sensory and perceptual processing. Trying to intellectually apply these social skills is, ironically, one of the most common reasons that I drift out of a conversation - I simply miss huge chunks of what is being said while my attention is focused on analysing what was said seconds or even minutes ago.

Yes, exactly! There's an intense focus on how we present to and interact with others, but very little attention is paid to our internal experiences. That someone with autism might avoid eye contact because it's overwhelming and interferes with speech processing is seen as unimportant to many people. The same applies to stimming as a form of sensory or emotional regulation or a unique form of nonverbal communication. When it comes to topics such as how sensory processing abnormalities affect us instead of their underlying mechanisms, how consistent our body language is when compared with each other instead of allistics, or what can predict and influence individual autism symptom levels as opposed to seeing it as a static singular spectrum, forget it! There's just barely research on face blindness in autism, almost no studies look at PTSD comorbidities or the effects of trauma, and most physical health studies are stuck on looking at prevalences for physiological comorbidities instead of looking at subgroups and trying to find patterns. So many important topics are so understudied.

I do know an autistic medical anthropologist who's doing interesting work looking at autism communities and how we discuss ourselves as well as topics like non-native accents in autistic people. However, expecting similarly interesting studies from allistics so rarely pays off!

What are you having in mind referring to "pull those off" and "managed only one"?

I have lots of special interests of varying intensities, but I have three that truly define who I am and are all-encompassing. Those are I Love Lucy, Cedar Point and their roller coasters (and, to a lesser extent, roller coasters in general), and science (my favorite area being neuropsychiatric disorder, particularly psychotic mania). I find special interests to be the most fascinating aspect of ASDs, and I wish there were more research done on them. I've only read a handful of studies about them. I just think it's so neat how each person's special interests are individualized and have their own story.

And because NVLD has been mentioned, I thought I'd say how I have both Asperger's and NVLD. That's another area of research that is woefully limited.