forcibly losing a special intrest

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I am devistated at the moment. I have a special intrest in reading, specifically crime novels and old (the more antique the better) recipe books. My mom recently (last weekend) gave me a nook, after which I spent the past few days downloading anything I could find. Today my absentmindedness caused the destruction/complete loss of my nook. (Genius me left it on top of the car while we were rushing out. D': ) I've had a meltdown already and I'm feeling absolutely empty now. Logically I know I can either get a new one (but I'm broke so thats unlikely) or just jot over to the library- but I'm crushed. All those books right at my fingertips and now they're gone. It feels so rediculous to be so upset over, but I can't help it. Its like I'm in mourning. Anyone else hit rock bottom when a special intrest is taken away like that? *Goes off to stomp a little*

Yes, when I was a child my mother threw away my baseball cards collection, plastic army men from the 40s and 50s collection, and comic book collection. She felt that I was too focused on these things and the only way to get me to socialize is to get rid of them. You would think that after I put about 30 holes in the walls, destroyed the TV, pushed her down to the ground, over turned book cases, cussed like a drunk sailor, and threw a typewriter through the sliding glass doors she would think something is wrong. Especially considering I was around 8 years old when she did it the 1st time. Back then the way parents dealt with AS is "tough love", big mistake with AS. 30 years later I'm still pissed off about it.

Sorry to hear about that :/ I have a Kindle and I know how much of a pain it is to get books onto e-readers...definitely not a drag and drop deal, especially with a handpicked selection. I've felt like that a few times...most recently, discovering that an important piece of my childhood obsession (fossils/Megalodon tooth) had somehow been dropped, and snapped in half. Total emotional destruction.

My mother also got rid of virtually everything I owned. Now she regrets it but only because many of the things are worth a decent amount now. I didn't get mad at her or "go off", though I was (and still am) less than enthused about it. Personally, the best way to get their child to "lose" an interest is to simply let it run its course (though for me, I have retained all my interests ).

My fossils they were thrown out on me.

my special interest became a friend of mine and a girl that i pretty much fell in love with to top things off. we were making a band and had been for 6 months when she says shes made a band with our other friends instead. i flipped out and had a problem with explosive anger, and since then we fell out and stopped talking in december - at which point i wanted to kill myself because all of the feelings i had for her mixed with the fact that i was stuck thinking about her brought me down to a level i've never been to before.

I think that forcibly losing a special interest is where you find out what kind of person you are beneath the AS. do you pick yourself back up and fight, or sit and mourn?

I think that - again - for each person losing a special interest gives off a different reaction. some get upset, some get angry, etc.

Mom never tossed anything of mine out and she hid them instead or made them off limits. I never went into meltdown mode or mourned. They were all in my head and I found ways. She never took it all away completely. But when she took the computer away for three weeks when I was in high school, I got depressed and felt lost and I paced more and was more short tempered. She kept her tough love. But thanks to that, I realized I had a computer problem and had to find a way to fix it so it was not taking over my life at home.

Fortunately I've never experienced anything like that, but I can imagine how bad it would be if I did lose everything in regards to a special interest. If my parents had ever thrown out stuff like what happened to you Rascal77, I would have hated my parents for years and every time they tried to talk to me, I would ignore them.

You know I think the part they don't understand is that it's not just getting rid of some object, it's taking away everything you have. What I mean by that is when a person is THAT focused on something, where they think of it all day then dream about it at night, that object is everything they have. So to an NT it's getting rid of a small portion of what you own but, to the person with a fixation nothing matters but that one object or interest so the loss of that interest is devastating. Then every time they didn't explain why they did it made things even worse. To a kid with AS "because we're adults and we know what's best for you" sounds just like "OK dear it's time for your meltdown now".

Thanks for all the replies. My parents left most of my intrests alone, though when my most intense (choral singing) was disrupted during my teen years by my dad, it was not pretty. I think the worst of all of this is that it's entirely my fault. It would probably be easier to deal with if I could project the anger anywhere, but it doesn't help to be mad at myself. >.> Theres not even anything I could pretend to blame it on. (Logically knowing 'x' wasn't at fault, but 'x' being a scapegoat of sorts) lol im rambling. Thank you for replying

I used to play classical music on the piano. It was my everything. Performance related injuries starteed to surface right around the time I was 15/16. By the time I was 19 I was done attempting to perform music of significant technical difficulty. I have spent the past 13 years slowly dying cognitively and physically. In fact, the three years after I left college for good I gained 150 lbs. There is no substitute for this interest; It was my voice, my art, my passion, my ammo, my future, my only basket.

I am sorry to hear about your Nook.
I have one too and it was a gift when NookColor first came out. At the time it was not what I wanted at all, but it grew to be a favorite tool very quickly.
If it is any consolation, all of your Nookbooks are archived online at your account with Barnes and Noble. You can get a Nook App to read them on any computer, and many phones. Not as handy as the Nook I know, but all of your stuff is still there just waiting in your account. Just because you lost your Nook doesn't mean you lost the information you purchased. Make sure you write down your account information so you can enter it into the next Nook, and everything will be there for you.

This losing special interest subject apparently hit a major chord with me. I have had to give up a few special interests as a personal choice for my own best interest over the years, and I'm one of those people who usually holds on to interests. Mine don't come and go like whimsies. Every time the moment comes when I realize that's it...that was the last time I ever get to do that...oh yeah that's a rock bottom moment. I'm not sure anybody around me would notice. I've never been a person who handled strong emotions very well. I just don't know what to do with them or how to express them appropriately...feels wierd. So I have a tendancy to just turn it off and jump into another interest, as I have developed a rather nice collection of them, and most of them are interconnected in some way. I have some favorites and I hate to give them up, or go through phases where I am simply unable to do them for awhile. I think maybe it's getting to me more than I realized, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

That's mind blowingly awful. I understand how that feels to some degree.

Something similar happened to me- I used to enjoy online gaming for the challenge of it, it was a big part of my life. Then I lost a major part of my reaction time due to chemical imbalances and I felt like a slug.. I still do and I can't go back because of the shame it causes.

Its the same in any activity, like sports. It makes me feel helpless.

You can always buy a new tablet..

Nobody's ever managed to force me off my special interests. But I know how much damage they can do to the rest of my life, so I have to be quite self-disciplined, which is very unpleasant sometimes. It's very hard to just "let it go" if I'm engrossed in an activity. There are times when I can't, and then I watch horrified as important things get sidelined. That act of dragging myself away from the obsession is nasty. But at least it's self-inflicted. If somebody else dictated it, it would probably feel a lot worse. I hate it when somebody else's behaviour makes me suffer.

I haven't been able to knit at all since February. Since I have a small autistic child at home, I don't have the time/place to do it there, so I was sneaking it into work. I got caught, so now no knitting at all. Maybe I'll try to replace it with something more socially acceptable--like smoking.

When I was a kid, my mom took my Calvin and Hobbes books away, forbade me from watching certain animated movies I liked (like A Goofy Movie and The Prince of Egypt) and would sometimes come in my room and put some of my stuffed animals in a big trash bag to give to "poor kids." My stepfather would also ridicule me for being 12 years old and still watching "Dragontales" whenever it came on...once he told me that he wanted me to stop watching it by the time I turned 13, so I made a special point to still be watching it long past the age limit.

...But seriously, it got to the point where they managed to convince me that anything I liked was "bad"...that if I liked, say, the Jonas Brothers, anime, or Pirates of the Carribean like other girls my age did, that would be more acceptable.

Fortunately as I got older, I think people developed the good sense to leave what I loved absolutely alone. Now that I'm an adult, I can have as much of my special interests as I please.