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This past week I received my official autism diagnosis and I've been reflecting on the diagnosis, the process and what it means to be autistic as a way to help me understand myself and my past experiences in life better. One of the things that came up during the initial interview that caught me off guard is when the psychologist asked me about my special interests. This caught me off guard because I have never thought about my interests as being "special". They are just my interests. What really makes an interest "special" and not just a normal hobby?

I guess my answer to the psychologist was good enough because I was diagnosed with autism. However, me with my "special" way of going about things needed a more complete answer. I started compiling a list of all my past interests and hobbies and have been attempting to decide which were special interests and which were just normal hobbies. After all, if I have autism and the doc says that I do, then I almost for sure have had special interests. In the process of researching autism, and specifically special interests, I had a few insights that I'd like to share.

The first thing that I decided was that the psychologist's definition of "special interests" was overly clinical and not worded in a way that helped me to understand the question. Therefore, I've been building my own definition of a special interest. This is what I have come up with so far:

"A special interest (SI) is a hobby, topic, or item of interest, passion, hyper focus, fixation, obsession, fascination, or study that an autistic person uses as a form of escape, often spending many hours engaging in. A SI is different from a hobby because of the intensity or obsessive way that it is done. It may be difficult to set it aside to return to their normal daily routine. Many times, a special interest will involve collecting things or facts, or doing research on a subject. A SI can be very calming since it is able to consume and focus your whole thought process."

This is my definition (so far). Your experience may differ.

When reviewing my list of past interests, I find items like playing the guitar which was a hobby for me and not a special interest. It was something that I enjoyed to some degree but also had to force myself to stick with it. Guitar pedals on the other hand became an intense special interest. I couldn't get enough research to satisfy me and I watched more YouTube videos on guitar pedals then anyone ever should. I had to know everything that I could about types, brands, uses, and even researched schematics and how to make my own guitar pedals. Then I started working on building my own perfect pedal board. The passion and excitement for guitar pedals was way more than I had ever felt when actually playing the guitar. I think it is this obsessive level of interest that makes it "special". The more I focus on my special interest, the less time I have to worry about things or think about the things that baffle me - like social interaction, for example. Also, the collection of things is a big hint that something is a special interest - at least for me.

Some of my first special interests that I have ever had include electrical wall outlets that my mom says I was obsessed with as a baby and I remember doing many experiments with as a young child - and getting into trouble many times in the process. As a child, I was also obsessed with taking things apart. This also got me into trouble many times since I was way better at taking things apart then I was at putting them back together.

Anyway, to make a long story long, it recently occurred to me that my latest special interest is "special interests" and that is very "meta". If you've never compiled a list of your own past special interests, it is a wonderful exercise. This is the first thread that I've ever created on any forum ever. Feel free to chime in with whatever about this topic or your special interests or whatever. I'm sure anyone visiting this forum has some interest on special interests.

That's an interesting idea,
I was into wh40k but I think that was a hobby. I painted a few figures and built a little hut for scenery but lost interest after a year or two.
Computer programming was a big one, that involves total focus.

When observing my past special interests, I think I can summarize them as fitting into three main buckets: how things work, things that make noise, and things that fly.

The "how things work" group include my fascination with electrical outlets and taking things apart when I was young. It also includes my lifelong interest in computers. I got my first computer when I was 12 years old and have been hooked ever since. This interest has included programming on the Apple IIe when I was young and it has progressed to things like studying CPU architecture and operating systems, robotics, and my latest interest with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The "things that make noise" group include my attempts to replicate sounds that I would hear using my voice when I was young. This line of interests progressed to things like guitar, ukulele and piano playing which I have never been good at because my working memory is really bad. That didn't stop me though. Things like guitar pedals, software synthesis, and eventually eurorack have allowed me to continue even with my memory issues that make playing an instrument very difficult. Be careful with the eurorack stuff though - that interest has been very intense and very expensive. There are aspects of this making noise special interest that are self stimulatory with the sounds often getting caught in curious little loops that I can get lost in for hours and are so soothing.

The "things that fly" interests is the oddball. I had a fascination with hot air balloons when I was young and collected things like posters, puzzles and various other trinkets of hot air balloons. Other aspects of this group include RC model airplanes and multicopters, ultralight aircraft, and hummingbirds. Its odd to me that this list is so short. I've never had much interest in flying other than these specific things.

Also, this research paper that I found on the subject of special interests will feel right at home in this thread on special interests. There's a link to the PDF on the page. I found parts of this paper to be very interesting. In the paper, they mention that they studied autistic special interests by reading our posts about special interests from autism forums like this one. They even mention Wrong Planet by name. How's that for meta?

Understanding Differences in Neurotypical and Autism Spectrum Special Interests Through Internet Forums