Others upset by special interest

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I love my special interest. I really really do. I love doing it and talking about it. But, I don't talk about it much anymore. In fact, nowadays I am starting to get afraid of talking about it. This is because I have repeatedly had people respond very negatively to my passion for my special interest. They seem to be offended, like they think I am bragging or trying to make them feel stupid or trying to show how smart I am. Maybe somehow my actions are causing me to appear to be this way, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Can anyone else relate?

What is your special interest?

I think it's safe for most of us to assume that silence is golden where our SI's are concerned. It seems that even if our SI's are topical and relevant, the way we think/process/talk about them would drive most people batty. I almost never mention any of mine, sometimes a sentence if someone is talking about them, but nothing beyond that.

I can't relate to this because I hate talking, but I can give you some tips.

You can find an online community around any topic you can possibly think of. Find one which suits your interest, join, and talk with those instead. They're more willing to listen and will find what you have to say interesting.
You could even find a person or a group close to where you live and meet up in real life.

wozeree: Afraid to say Honestly, I was starting to get very discouraged by the negative feedback I was receiving, to the point of feeling like I shouldn't be so interested in it so much. This was a recipe for depression... But, now I have re-realized just how special it is to me. But, I am still very afraid to talk about it, even here. Discouragement can be really damaging.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. It makes me realize that I am not the only one who has to do this. It also makes me realize that I must be on the right track by keeping a lid on it. Unfortunately, I think I must have made an arse of myself at work and around family by talking about it so enthusiastically in recent times...

Stormtrooper: I can't say that I hate talking, but usually when I do it these days, I get the sense that I am not pleasing my listener. Not that that pleasing listeners is my only reason for talking. The rare good conversation is very valuable to me. Sorry, I am off on a tangent.

Thanks for the reminder. I do know of such communities for my main SI, and some of my less-S I's. I am making a note to self to get more involved with them. I would really, really like to find a person or group to meet up with in real life. I have looked on Meetup. Will keep looking. Maybe I can take an evening class next fall.

Thanks for the advice!

Since I do not know the interest I can not answer conclusively, I'm but I think it is more likely they are bored that you are talking again about something they have no interest in, rather then being offended by the interest itself.

As mentioned online specialty forums can of great help with that issue. It makes for a better conversation when talking with people who are both knowledgeable and highly interested in a topic then those who are bored with the topic.

Imagine an NT talking to you constantly about socializing, that should help.

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Unapologetically, Norny.
-chronically drunk

Mine was embalming and just basically what happens to your body at the funeral home when you die for a while back when I was maybe 26. I did the only logical thing I could do. I went and got a job at a funeral home. I also went to a college bookstore and bought books on topics from the Funeral Directors program that I just wanted to keep around and read.

You wanna talk about disturbing people, imagine what all I did with THAT special interest. Remember, I'll say damn near anything if I think somebody will be interested in it, or if I dislike the person (my mother in law) and want to shock and disrupt dinner by talking about something they might disapprove of. I was into that for years and years, even after I quit work at the funeral home and decided that I didn't want to go through all the trouble to actually be an Undertaker - yes they are called funeral directors, but I think "Undertaker" has a certain cachet to it that funeral director can't hold a candle to. I'm still interested in it, and still remember most of it. I got to help out in the prep room and do all kinds of stuff that I wasn't strictly supposed to do. The two guys on the crew I worked with, an ex cop who eventually got banned from ever working with the dead again and an ex chiropractor who got sick of cracking backs for a living weren't all that much older than me and were both pleased as a hog in slop that a girl wanted to join that field. Down here, it's not actually proper for ladies to do much of anything at a funeral except sing or cry, so it was a very unusual idea and they loved it to death - no pun intended - because both those boys were kind of strange to begin with but the ex chiro was harmless strange and not sick perverted strange like the ex cop. But at the time I only got a creepy vibe from the ex cop and I put it aside and learned and did stuff there with them. I know it sounds strange, but I really enjoyed it and now kind of wish I had pursued it.

Sometimes though, something will come up and I'll have a reason to talk about embalming and everything that goes with it, and I usually try and watch myself so I don't say something just wrong to somebody who has recently dead family. When my second best friend shot herself in the head and killed herself, I was talking to my first best friend about it. I was all bitching that they didn't let them do wax work and fix her face and have an open casket. Then I started explaining to my best friend how they do those severely damaged people when it's a closed casket and an an autopsy and I was saying how I wished better than that for her. Then I looked over at my friend, cause I had been looking at FB while I was talking and she was pale as could be. Thats when I remembered that several years before this, her husband had shot himself in the head and died and had to have a closed casket.


Come on, tell me your interest. Please? it can't be worse than mine. Is it taxidermy? Cause some folks think that's gross, but I think it might be kind of cool.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

I don't share my special interests much at all any more. I suppose that when I did, my listeners felt the same as I would if an ordinary bloke started taking to me about football.

I don't see much help for it, except to find people who really like the subject, or to choose your words very carefully, so instead of an hour-long rant about the fine details, you just give them a headline. It's unsatisfactory, but probably no worse than trying to share it all and ending up just boring people and making them feel trapped.

This is why there exist special interest groups and even professional societies. Not everybody you come across is interested in your interests or my interests, particularly not in the encompassing and detailed way that we like to talk about them.

OliveOilMom: My special interest is definitely not as interesting as yours. Well, it is to me, but I don't think other people would be very interested. Yours is very interesting.

I sometimes feel like I'm the only aspie who has no desire to talk about my interests to other people. Not that I particularly have a 'special interest' as such anyway: I just get stuck on one thing, like the internet or a particular game. Hell it bores even me sometimes, let alone other people.

But even if I was into something non-moronic like astrophysics, or whatever, I still can't see myself having a burning desire to go on and on and on about it. I don't see the point, unless you're talking to fellow astrophysicists who share your passion. That's the one aspect of being an aspie which truly baffles me, and I thought I was an egocentric.

I have been through something similar. My mom would get mad at me about it because she didn't want to listen to it over and over and she had heard enough of it and didn't want to hear anything about it ever again. She has tried stopping them by making them off limits thinking I will just stop it but it never worked because I found other ways and it stayed on in my head and I just went to other people instead who didn't make fun of me about how I talked and didn't think anything negative of me.

Then by 6th grade I hated my obsession I had since 5th grade and I wanted it out of my head because it was pissing my mom off and causing problems for me in school so I got diagnosed with OCD because of it. That was one of the symptoms I had. I did want to stop it and get it out of my head but couldn't so it was seen as OCD and as part of my AS and I have read how autism can cause OCD and this is one example of it. Just make someone with it feel bad about their special interest and make them wish they can just get rid of it and stop it and bam it's OCD now because it is ow giving them distress. but then someone told me at the autism group this is how OCD gets misdiagnosed so now I am confused. Was this a mistake my psychiatrist made?

Now I don't feel comfortable talking about mine so I don't. I do have a few selective people online I talk to about. I also don't feel comfortable going on and on about something so I don't.

I just write about mine, that way I can't annoy anybody but myself.

League_Girl: Man, that sounds rough. I guess I am lucky. I didn't really start having this problem until a few years ago, and I am living on my own now. People just don't seem to understand. I'm sorry to hear about what a hard time you had.

All: I have realized how much my SI means to me. It is something I genuinely just enjoy doing. I bet most others with a special interest feel that way too. Mine got me through some really hard times, too. When I seemed to be making mistakes at every step in other parts of my life, despite trying my best, I at least could do my SI and feel like I was capable and pretty good at something. And, it is something that doesn't hurt anyone or anything. For me, the ability to get such satisfaction from something non-destructive is one of the gifts of being the way I always have been.

I don't think I like to go on and on about it, but maybe I do and just haven't realized it. Probably.

My parents were horrible about my special interests. My mum always got annoyed at me for talking about my interests over and over. I thought they added personality. She thought they made me sound and look like a freak. My dad had no empathy for me and disregarded my special interests. My dad was stupid enough to tell my sister that he wasn't interested in the way that she dressed up her Jem dolls and he had the nerve to be a cold prickly and say, "Kind of when CR shows me maps and flags....I'm just not interested!" First the bastard shames me for having an accent and than he states that he has no interest in my happiness. 1987 and 1988 were not good years for me. 1985 was also a nightmare with me being chastised for being overly eager to share my interest in the USA. I guess that I was upset when the 1984 Summer Olympics came to an end, but I was clueless on how to express those feelings in a normal way. I guess that's what the whole thing about America was about.

That was back in the 1980s and there weren't many enlightened books on how to raise autistic children.