I want my Asperger's obsession to be over!! !

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Ever since I found out about Asperger's and realized I had it I've been completely obsessed. If I'm going to be obsessed with something why can't it be fun? Why can't I have an obsession with amusement parks or jigsaw puzzles? Is anyone else going through this? How do you change interests? Is it even possible?

Yup, I have it too. Unfortunately, in my experience, you just have to weather these things, they'll pass in their own time.

First reaction -- why would you want to? Surf the net, hang out at WP, collect useful information that can improve your quality of life... At 33 posts, you're just getting started.

Now that you mention it, I've never tried. This is a new one, off the top of my head. I suppose I'll be pondering on it for a while.

Looking back through my life at my various phases (I'm 53) I think I see a pattern. For each obsession, there was an intense part at the beginning, then a settling in, then a time when it was just a habit. Like an identity thing. Then something happened (job change, move, whatever) that made it inconvenient and I realized that I didn't really want it any more anyway. For a lot of them, I think it was about two years before the just-a-habit part started.

The only exception I can think of was an obsession over a guy who was only marginally interested. The intense part lasted a few months. Then I decided that it wasn't fun at all and chose to get over it. It was surprisingly easy. He had some major personality flaws that I focused on but, now that I think of it, that probably wasn't the whole story. We remained friends for a while and could hang out and I had no interest at all in going back to dating him.

Other than that, I never tried to get over an obsession.

Looking at it this way, I wouldn't try to get rid of it during the more intense part. Maybe if you just dive in, it will wear out sooner?

I'm just thinking out-loud here.

Believe me, I understand. And I'm almost at 2000 posts!! ! Yes, it will pass, but you just have to weather it until it does. There's not really much you can do about it to change the obsession (believe me, I've tried), but it will pass. Normally my obsessions last a year to three years, and this one's been going about a year now, so hopefully it's drawing to a close soon.

Dustintorch,

Congratulations! You are now a card-carrying member of the "obsessed about AS" club. We'll teach you the secret handshake the next time we meet in person.

Seriously, though... many of us can certainly relate. For me, it's almost a "dirty little secret" how often I am on here. It seems to fill the cracks of my day. Like my other obsessions, though, I agree with folks that it will settle in and calm down.

Perhaps when my hobby computer project picks up again it will be a little less intense.

<joke>Do us a favour, PM me with details of the secret handshake.

I also would like some sticks of chalk and details of how to set up a dead letter box.</joke>

i like to be involved in my "obsessions". it only looks like an "obsession" to others. never to me.

the reason i get single minded about things is that i like to explore every idea i can imagine about things that are the subject of my interest.

it is very relaxing, and it soaks up my energy in a nice productive way, and it leaves me pleasantly "spent" after a marathon of single minded attention.

i would not ever want to be deprived of my interests, or my interest in them.
i think that mental obsessions in autistic people are a higher dimension of "stimming"

if i could not have my interests to be unilaterally engaged with, i would have too much untethered energy that i can not imagine how i would spend otherwise.

and you indicate that you only became "obsessed" after you were diagnosed?
i can not logically process that without circumventing essential circuits of reason.

Last edited by b9 on 26 May 2009, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

The only thing you can do with obsession is to ride it out! But you have to try to stay on the side of goodness hehehe

yeah i used to come here a lot but now ive turned it down a bit because there are many negative posts and if you dont watch out everytime you read something bad about as a lil bit will stick on you, so what happened to me was i would pick up tiny bits of nt hatred here and there by reading so many posts and it would pile up... now i dont have that anymore i learned to avoid it.

just a warning not to read the posts by people that are depressed and need to let it all out if you cant block the negative from entering your brain.

Pretty much the same thing here. It keeps me from doing a lot of things.

I think before I really knew very much about AS, I was a lot more productive. When I started learning what it was, I accepted it and allowed myself to just be myself, and that's created all kinds of problems, like tension with my family (we never got along anyway, but they can't tolerate me now).

I suppose my interest in AS has become intense enough for some to call an obsession - check out my post count - though I think the term "obsession" is something of a misnomer, i.e. Aspies don't particularly obsess, they just have special interests that are very important to them. That's not to say that an Aspie can't have OCD as well. In my own case I feel my interest in WP is just the natural result of walking headlong into overwhelming evidence that I've got the condition, and therefore I wanted to go on to find out everything I can about it - seems perfectly reasonable to research an important matter in detail, to try to find out what traits I have/don't have.

I do sometimes worry that I'm spending too much time messing around here, but it's like that with anything I focus strongly on. I always seem to have a nagging voice in my head telling me that I'm neglecting everything else in my life at my peril. I think I'll simmer down in time....there's some evidence of that happening already after the 8 months or so that I've been here. I guess when I go through the DX the whole thing will intensify while that's going on, and I'll be keen to record my adventures here with that, partly to get it clear in my own head what's happening, and hopefully to help other people who are going through the same kind of stuff I've been going through. It's a good thing we've got, people giving and getting a bit of help, OK sometimes it's punctuated by flashes of temper and judgemental crap, but that's true of any special-interest group, just one of the quirks of interacting with others, and I think it's worth the trouble overall.

So no, I don't want my involvement in WP to disappear, just to temper it a little as time goes by. The wider issue of spending so much of my time analysing everything I experience and do in terms of AS traits is similar - I hope that too subsides into something a little less all-consuming than it is now, to let through other ways of looking at life. Yet I can't deny that it's a fruitful pursuit - an invitation to a party will never seem quite the same again now I know what's going on.

I thnk it's always painful and disturbing to get heavily into any area of human endeavour, there are times when the whole subject makes me want to scream, a feeling of engulfment. It's good to take breaks and remind myself that I'm a human being first and an Aspie second.

I relate. For me it's a problem because everyone gets so sick of hearing about it, if I'm not talking directly about it I do it in a round-about way and it's taking a toll on my relationship especially. For a while I decided to censor myself about it with him. Anyhoo, now that I'm gonna get properly checked I hope it'll at least be less stressful, although I suspect it'll get more intense for a while ig I get the official diagnosis. But it's too hard to let it go, I sometimes feel like telling myself to shut up, but I just don't listen do I?

I really hope the scientists do find a cure for this curse.

The lady in red wants a cure for "this curse", I would say that be careful what you wish for. AS has two sides of the coin, one side might be a nightmare while at the same time the other side is a great blessing. Sometimes the same aspect of AS can be a nightmare in one place and a blessing somewhere else in life.

I found out AS not long ago and have been researching about it since. So I guess I have a minor obsession too. But I'm obsessed because I'm interested by it. If I lost that interest, I suppose the obsession will go too. So either let it wane naturally or try to find something that interest you more. btw for me, amusement parks or jigsaw puzzles just won't cut it.

I think most here consider their obsessions to be interests. They only look like obsessions if someone else looks in and makes a comment.