Anyone else not like anything?

Post Reply New Topic

Before I was diagnosed with Asperger's, the one thing I thought I knew about it was that those with Asperger's tend to have obsessive, intense areas of interest. Personally, I don't have any of autistic obsessions. I behave in a repetitive, restrictive way (to the extent where I rarely leave the house or interact with anyone), but I'm not particularly interested in anything. Sometimes I'd go as far as to say that I don't like anything. My psychologist has commented on it, saying that my special area of interest actually seems to be in having NO special area of interest! While I've become more aware of this in the last few years, it's not a recent thing. Going back to childhood I remember being almost completely disinterested in everything my friends enjoyed and only doing stuff with them out of a sense of obligation and perhaps guilt. My friends (several different groups of friends over the years) could sense this, I feel, and I got the sense of some annoyance at them towards me, as if they were thinking "why can't you just ENJOY yourself?" The things I do at the moment are simply those things that fit best inside my messy mind. The path of least resistence. I don't care about anything much and can't seem to make myself care, no matter how hard I try. Anyone else like this?

I also dont have one obvious obsessive interest. I have some interests - in general these are things I have decided to be interested in and force myself to do as part of my routine. I also have some things that I do to relax - at the moment it is mainly just browsing the internet, but I wouldnt consider this as a special interest as I dont really take in things I read, it is just easy on the mind. I am not diagnosed with AS and this is the main thing which does not fit the picture. It is annoying as it seems as though I have all the social difficulties, but I dont have this compensation in having a special interest which really motivates and stimulates me. Perhaps I just havent found it yet?

Yeah, I have this problem too. Not sure what else to say on the subject other than: it sucks. I often get into a mood where I feel irritable from boredom but I can't actually do anything to relieve that because nothing seems interesting or worthwile. So I usually end up wasting the day idly browsing websites hoping i'll find something at least mildly entertaining to distract me.

I do have a couple of interests, but I consider them comfortable to follow, rather than compelling. Occasionally I get totally obsessed with something and end up spending a few days doing nothing but thinking about it, reading about it, writing about it, etc. But that's rare.

I also don't have any obsessive interests though I have had some in the past. They were things like anime but I guess I just grew out of it. I'm more worried about being able to maintain a relationship and find my calling before I focus on an interest.

I do have interests nowadays. I am not sure whether they are obsessions, because I'm not constantly preoccupied with them and only sometimes with one. Professionals have commented on my 'lack' of special interests before too. I often had to explain that I didn't even have any in childhood.

As said before, I do have current interests. But it frequently happens that I lose my interest for no apparent reason. With some hobbies - such as reading - I never lose it entirely. But with others I feel that even if I push myself, I just never find them intersting enough again.

I think I had no special interests in back in my early childhood because I only displayed the stereotypical play that they show autistic children doing on TV.

The reason why I always had a hard time to be interested in topic for a prolonged period is that I have trouble to put effort into something for more than fleeting moments. I have the personality of someone who loves changes, is thrilled by the new and seeking for the exciting. (Despite the fact that it clashes with my ASD).
In short, I become bored faster and more frequently than any person I have ever met.

I don't ever recall a time where I didn't have any interests and few that I didn't have at least one obsession that occupied my mind or my time. I do think that I have had periods of very bad depression that made everything seem "meaningless". I think that may actually have been depresion caused by being inbetween obsessions. I think the term for someone who feels no joy...dysthemia? Anyway, that could explain your lack of interests/obsessions. Another cause could be if you had some when you were young and you were "trained" by negative criticism from family or peers from pursueing such things? When I was in grade school, I didn't care that family or friends were not interested in my interests but by Jr High, I became more aware that my interests were considered "odd" for my gender and age and I wanted exceptance more, so I tried to stop talking about them or doing them. I actually think this is why I ended up being depressed and drinking and when I stopped drinking , a lot of my old interests, and some new ones, came back. I am much happier now by not letting others define what is an appropriate interest or not.

I only like a few things, everythings else is unimportant and not attractive to me.
I always thought that I was born on the wrong planet

I had interests as a child, but after the first one I learned to hide them because I knew they were weird. As I got older their durations became shorter, and they're now so transient as to be useless.

Of course, this is only in the stereotypical "Oh wow I love <topic/thing>!" sense. Now I've developed something else...

When the subject turns to law or (more prominently) politics (especially international relations or forms of gov't) I can talk rather extensively, often unintentionally rambling. This is a typical Aspie thing except...

The closest thing I have to a special interest doesn't interest me. It did a few years ago, but now I find it dry. I generally don't research it, but I ramble about it easily if 'provoked.' It's like my brain is wired for it, but really I can't stand it.

It's also weird in that I generally don't have strong political opinions.

Most of my time these days is spent in this state of blank and generalized agitation, which only gets worse if I try to do something. I'm quite happy when I find anything I can get engrossed in for a while, but it doesn't happen as often as I'd like. Even then it's not a good mental state, just a non-bad one.

I am a rapid-cycling obsesser. I don't have a set list of special interests. My favorite thing is to find out the answer to a problem and fix it. This can happen in many different ways. Since I'm in grad school, it works out well. If I read something somewhere that sparks my interest, I'll want to learn as much about it as I can. I don't like to be interrupted when my focus is on something. And as others mentioned, depression can take away from having and maintaining special interests.

I find it difficult to make an obsession of something. I used to have pretty focused interests ('RPG' videogames, for example) but in recent years I don't even try to have intense obsession with anything. My personal experiences have led me to believe that this change is due to the way I get treated when others find out about my obsessions (ie. "Stop being so obsessed about it, it's disturbing."), and/or when I discover the way other people obsess about the same point of interest (which has led to an intense loathing of fandoms). I have never been able to enjoy something when other people are involved because they always ruin it in some way.

That said, I still have obsessions, but now it's in a non-linear rotation that occasionally drops out some subjects and inserts new ones in their place. There's no passion anymore, but it does keep me preoccupied and distracts the depression for a short while.

My dad used to accuse me of not liking anything because I was not intrested in what mainstream society was into. And if I start to get intrested in something, sooner or later it will turn into an obsession. If people took everything related to an obsession away (if they could) and tried to replace it with another intrest, if they were sucessful in getting me intrested, it wouldn't be too long before the replacement became an obsession itself. Anything that is meaningful to me becomes an obsession.

I used to have a strong interest in anything to do with armys/wars/weapons all of my life.
But over the last few years this has been fading.
It being my only strong interest all my life i try to get enjoyment out of other things.
This works a bit, but i can never get the same kind of enjoyment out of the day to day stuff that NT's get unfortunately.
Another reason for it's fading is that it was pretty rare for a good warmovie/game to come out that i pinned all my hopes of having a good time on it when i was younger.
However it always ended up in a dissapointment as the games got boring quickly, and the movies only lasted 90 minutes after months of anticipation.
So yeah i'm all done with pinning my hopes for happyness and enjoyment on some movie/game.