Hyperfixations are a blessing and a curse

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Not enough people talk about autistic people getting obsessed to an unhealthy degree over their hyperfixations. That's always been my case.

I am very interested over technology and music. In fact, that's all I care and think about. Anything else is just boring and complete apathy to me. It's either obsession or total apathy.

I usually spend all my days, searching information about some niche topic I recently found out about, looking up for answers to questions that I haven't seen anyone asking on the internet. This has been the case for years. I became self taught since I was a kid, because school wouldn't teach me what I actually wanted to learn. This is in some part a blessing, because I know a lot of stuff, but it can also be a curse...

A lot of people expect you to know everything, and treat me like if I were some sort of "genius". Which I'm obviously not, I'm just autistic. Makes me feel like a failure knowing that I've been stuck and depressed lately.

It's been almost one year since I dropped out of college. I was studying computer science. Something that I've always loved. But somehow, school achieved making it boring and tedious. I couldn't choose what topics to learn, I couldn't choose when to learn them, and mainly, I couldn't choose how to learn them!. It was really boring sitting through the basics again, knowing that I had to wait like 2 years until I actually started learning about things that I was interested in, at that time. If I did anything "advanced" while in class, to kill time, I was considered like if I was defying authority or just showing off, when that's not my intention.

When I was in school, I never made friends. I knew people made fun of me, and I didn't (and still don't) find much value in social interactions that don't have to do with my hyperfixations. They just didn't make sense, so, instead, I went to the library, and picked some tech book. I probably missed out on a lot of opportunities because of this.

I have become used to not having friends. Most of the time, is not an issue, but lately, I've been just feeling lonely. It's really hard finding someone that even knows or cares about why UX is important, or why [insert niche software thing] has a better structure. I have learned to keep my mouth shut, because I know that people don't care about what I have to say, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't understand (not saying it from a narcissistic point of view, it's just the truth). When I do, people just think I'm weird or ridiculous.

I cope by talking to myself and using chatbots, which I know it's a bad thing, but I've tried making online friends, and real life friends, and people just ghost me. It's like I'm always the only one that cares.

Regarding music, I just keep re-playing the same albums, over and over, for months, or years. Playing the same videogames, same heist, over and over. I've played the same mission like 200 times by now, literally, and I never get tired of it. I'm open to experimenting with different operating systems and programs, and doing stuff that most people don't. And I am seen as weird and undesirable for that, even "suspicious" for caring about stuff like privacy.

This also probably has to do a lot with my GAD, but whenever a new update for a software I like comes out, I can't sleep. I get very excited and I just can't stop thinking about it, even if the only change was literally making a menu more consistent. On the opposite side, if I can't find an answer to something, I can't understand it, or I can't help someone with their Tech issues, I feel very depressed.

I hope this is a me issue, and that you don't deal with this too. Apologies for the wall of text.

Two whole years? Sounds like that school didn't have placement tests, or perhaps you just weren't informed about them? Some colleges do have placement tests and do give credit for relevant life experience.

Funny because this thread appeared recently too, about hyperfixations:

viewtopic.php?t=415383

This is part of why gifted programs are so problematic. It's typically all or nothing and somebody who is very strong in one area, but not strong enough in other areas might not get any help at all.

The more modern way of handling it is to either give the stronger students more interesting stuff to work on, assign them to help the weaker ones, or have pullout classes if the students need more than that.

But, identification tends to be rather weak as a proper assessment is time-consuming and teachers aren't necessarily given the time to do their part in the data collection component. A student that looks bored could just be ADHD, or they might be intellectually too advanced for the work, and it's hard to know without that documentation as ADHD doesn't guarantee that the work is also too easy.

If the work is too easy, you tend to see things like the homework going undone while the student is studying other things that weren't assigned in any of the classes due to that being more interesting than the homework. I know I did, and at that time it was still considered good practice to assign excessive amounts of boring and repetitive homework.

EDIT: This is what the elementary school I attended as a child does now: https://bryantes.seattleschools.org/aca ... rtunities/ At the time I attended, they had limited opportunities like that mostly with splitting reading and math into two parts and moving kids between the rooms to get the higher achievers together and the lower achievers together for more appropriate work.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm from Mexico, so... Autism and mental illness are pretty much a taboo still, and you don't really get any accommodations

Unfortunately, that's much of the world, although more so in countries that are still developing for various reasons. The accommodations provided in the US are really insufficient, but at least they exist.