Still Don't Fully Understand What "Special Interests" Are

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I don't understand how "obsessive" an interest has to be to qualify for an obsessive interest.

Let's take my interest in the LSAT (which is a test required to get into law school). I have no interest whatsoever in going to law school and I don't plan to officially take the test. I'm not even very interested in the whole test, but mainly the Logic Games portion of the test because I love logic. It seems that this qualifies as a "circumscribed" interest. It is waning now, but when I was the most intensely involved, I was doing LSAT Logic Games practice tests for a few hours a day, timing myself according to actual test conditions, checking my answers, recording my score, and trying to figure out what I did wrong when I missed answers.

Yet, it is not my only interest. I was most focused on that at that time, but my other interests were still there, sort of in the back of my mind. I still regularly did my vocabulary drills for the foreign languages I study. I did not think about the LSAT all day, or as soon as I woke up in the morning. I have had a few hobbies that I thought about first thing in the morning, but that's more of an exception than a rule. It's very rare for me to only have one thing that I want to do to the exclusion of anything else. I have spent up to eight or so hours a day on one hobby, and only twenty minutes on another, but I do usually want to spend time on multiple interests, even though it might be difficult to pull myself away from the stronger interest.

So how obsessive is obsessive? And is the LSAT even a narrow interest, considering that it is part of a broader interest in logic? Because of that broader interest, I have also, at different times in my life, spent hours a day doing su doku puzzles, working through symbolic logic textbooks, and playing a computer game called Einstein's puzzle (visual logic game). Looking at those four different manifestations of an interest in logic, it doesn't seem quite so narrow.

Special interests are strong interests that make many people on the spectrum happy. Those are interests that a lot of us get very engaged in. There are a multitude of reasons that our interests find us. The Kinks have been my special interest for over half of my life due to the fact that they've recorded many songs about things that are relevant to me such as:

Individuality
Gender issues
Mental Health
Tough times
Rebellion
The Middle Class
London
England
Emotions
Beginnings and Endings

The four original members of my favourite band also remind me of the four original members of my immediate family.

I don't know the answer to this question, either (and since it is poorly defined as a diagnostic criterion, I'd say it is open to interpretation). But speaking to the "obsessive" term, specifically, I think the medical/psych community tends to judge such things not by counting hours or debating specificity, but by gauging the activity in the context of one's day-to-day life and the other activities that one is foregoing. In other words, I think someone is "obsessive" about something if their interest in that thing interferes with their happiness, productivity, or relationships. I also think it is very difficult to analyze your own interests in that way, because through post-hoc rationalization you will inevitably convince yourself that your interest is justifiable, beneficial, rational, good, worthwhile. So then the question becomes whether other people in your life have an issue with your interest, e.g. how do you respond to someone who comes between you and your interest (does it affect your relationships?), do other people think you should be doing something else with your time, does it prevent you from doing 'responsible' things for your long-term self-interest (such as leading to over-spending or losing jobs), and so on.

Again, I'm not claiming this is the true answer, but maybe it's another way of looking at the question.

From various texts, I´ve read I understand, that an obsessive interest must take up so much time, that it may keep the person from work, social life and maybe even daily function.

A special interest is an absorbing, joyful interest, that makes you want to know/ own everything about it - and you become a"specialist" on the subject.

Another lay opinion (and I also love logic puzzles! Woo!). It's a "special interest" if:

-- you become an expert in the subject even though you have nothing to gain (money, position, relationship -wise)
-- you spend a lot of time on it, as much or more than a professional in that field
-- you want to (and probably do) monologue about it to other people, because you think it's awesome and can't imagine other people would not also love it if they knew more about it
-- thinking about it makes you happy and excited and doing it makes you lose hours in rapt "flow" concentration. I'd say you might even feel most alive when you're doing it.

I read ADHD folks also hyperfocus on special interests and that NTs get into a flow state when they do certain tasks. Is the autistic thing any different? I would argue that it's not, and that most humans do this. But the difference is that autistics spend less time socializing "normally", more time perservating (I know I perservate on my interest), and more time boring everyone about it (guilty).

I also juggle a few, but I can only really do one at a time. I usually cycle through them. When I'm not on one, I think of it fondly but otherwise completely ignore it. If I'm into something, it's exclusively. But then my mind tells me it's time to switch and then I am focused entirely on the other one. I tried doing all at once in a schedule...but it just didn't work.

Like I was VERY into certain female indie bands and now I will only listen to Phillip Glass and early medieval music. I was focused entirely on improving my spoken Chinese (watching DVDs for hours on end on repeat, looking up words, shadowing, etc.) and now I only draw and want nothing to do with Chinese.

When I was into running, I trained to be an ultrarunner. When I bought a bento box, I researched it for a month and bought the best one I could, the exact model I wanted, handmade outside of Kyoto. When I was into productivity, I became some kind of efficiency expert...it's honestly a bit exhausting to be this way. But if I don't do things all the way, I do them terribly. I have to be an expert or nothing. It's like I'm driven to get to the heart of everything I do...and I can't always choose what that is.

Anyway, does this resonate with anyone? Or am I experiencing something different than you all?

Yep! Glowing interests and absolutely one at a time, - meaning all the time.

Deffinately how I operate.

Intense fascination until I've absorbed enough info. I then put that subject more in the background, and take on a new one as my primary focus. The background files always remain open and ready for cross-referencing with other previous topics and/or current primary topic.

Simple and effective...and fun.

For me, special interests include what others have described here, but also a "perseverative" returning frequently to those interests even in contexts which don't relate directly to the interests. For example, for someone whose interest is the Star Wars movie franchise, the individual might quote from the movies in situations which tangentially related to a discussion in which they are a part. So, in response to a discussion about where to vacation, the individual might say "Disneyland?!? 'You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!'"

Spending hours a day on logic games of LSAT seems pretty obsessive and narrow to me.
Many people are in interested in multiple things and want to pursue them, but they can only pursue one at a time, because their pursuit is so intense that it sucks up all their time not spent doing other things.
As for whether it interferes a lot with school, work, relationships, etc, that varies from person and person with many factors contributing like how much self-control they have, how socially isolated they are, what obligations they have, etc.

What if it becomes something you do all the time but you don't really enjoy it? Is that just a compulsion then?

Preservation of sameness.
When we get used to working on a special interest day after day we might continue doing it even after the pleasurable stage fades out - because we don't like changes.

I think it is compulsion when you don't enjoy it.

I'd say that covers it pretty well. When you become so raptly fascinated by a subject that you want to know everything there is to know about it and feel compelled to share that knowledge with others, with the expectation that it will fascinate them as well only to feel surprised and disappointed when they do not share your zeal; if you get irritated when someone interrupts you from focusing on your fascination, you've got an autistic obsessive interest.



No, I have to differ with you there. I've been on the receiving end of an Aspergian Special Interest Lecture and its nothing like anything I've ever seen a neurotypical person do (I've caught myself doing it many times when I look up in the middle of a monologue to see someone's eyes rolling up in their head as they nod off).

It was only when I got cornered one day while I was trying to do my job and forced to listen to a two-hour plot synopsis of the entire Xena: Warrior Princess TV series that I had a firsthand taste of what its like to have to listen to someone drone incessantly about something no rational person could possibly care about, without the speaker stopping to take a breath the whole time. This Aspie knew details of storyline and character nuance that the writers themselves had surely forgotten. Thank gods it didn't occur to him to describe all the sets and costumes, or we'd still be there.

Typical people have their personal interests, surely, but they don't seem to become so self-identified with them - they don't seem to get quite so emotionally wrapped up in them that their relationships with others become "Love me, love my obsession". Maybe we do that because we have no other comfortable way to connect socially with others, except to disseminate information.

Why do people feel like they have to share their interests with others?
Is it really because they think that others will be as interested as they are?
It is horrible to listen to someone drone on and on and on about something I don't want to hear about.
I never feel the need to monologue about special interests, it seems like a waste of time to talk about it, when I could be doing it instead.

I also don't have any desire to drone on about my special interest to people and I've been losing that desire on WP over the last three years. I'd rather be creating avatars for future use than drone on. I know that droning on at WP could get me seriously hurt.

I think we have various degrees of monologuing. My dad turns every conversation into a treatise on John Wayne and U.S. Foreign Policy. Does that mean he's on the spectrum or just a right-wing bore? I don't know. It could just mean he's on the spectrum.

I still catch myself doing it, but I spent a lot of time (a special interest) learning how to be likeable. I use my "other guy voice" -- a funny voice to mock myself, like Willow on "Buffy" does when she's saying things smarter than anyone in the room -- and work really hard to make my interest sound great. I also have a blanket 30-second rule when I talk, so people can change the subject if they want. But mostly I just don't want to share it with people. I often get selective mutism about things I'm emotional about, and some other my special interests fall into that category.

But when I forget my rules and I'm in a talkative mood, I can go on for awhile. I don't know if NTs do that, but they sure seem to from my perspective. Small talk sure seems like a special interest to me -- they go on and on about the weather, the new mall, what they made for dinner, what the neighbor's kid is studying. I know it's not the same, but how is that different from me explaining about different diets for someone interested in losing weight? I try to use my special interest files to help, not bore. Though I still do that from time to time.