How can you distinguish autistic obsessions from OCD?

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The best thing for OCD is to try to figure out what's causing the anxiety and address it if that's relevant or learn some exercises for increasing your tolerance. Personally, I had it the other way, I knew I had OCD, I didn't know about the ADHD and ASD until much later, so I attributed a lot of that to the OCD when the OCD was probably a lot less significant than I realized. (It's probably also part of why treatment worked so effectively, I hadn't gone as far down the OCD road as it had seemed at the time as I was misattributing ADHD and ASD things to it)

That being said, I'm not sure distinguishing which is which is really that useful as OCD is also an executive functioning condtion and I wouldn't be surpised if we eventually decide that it's one of the ASD frontiers in the anxious direction in the way that Schizoid Personality Disorder is essentially the frontier in Anxiety/eccentric thinking direction.

Sometimes I enjoy my obsessions but eventially go so far that I quit enjoying them & start feeling anxious if I don't do them. Sometimes enjoying & trying to avoid feeling anxious can alternate. Sometimes my OCD obsessions are due to fear about something else & trying to address the cause of that fear can reduce or stop the OCD. The med Buspar majorly helps my anxiety in general which also reduces the anxiety aspect of my OCD; & the med Neurontin reduces my urge to engage in compulsions but does not really help my anxiety. So the two meds help slightly different things for me & the combo works really well for me.

I have both ocd and asd and for me the biggest thing is that while both cause numerous struggles for me I know that ocd is mostly anxiety-based whereas asd obsessions feel less stressful to an extent. For example one of my biggest compulsions that i’ve dealt with because of ocd is repetitive handwashing, which I have spent years treating and I know innately is irrational and silly behavior on my end. But I get so deeply nervous and anxious if I don’t do the task of washing my hands so I do it despite knowing it makes no sense.
Whereas with an asd-based obsession I feel like I can usually pinpoint it as more of just the “way my brain works” and be more accepting of it versus ocd obsessions which feel antagonistic and only detrimental to my life. Even if I am annoyed by an asd obsession it never gets that point of pure raw panic for me, more just frustration and lots of discontentment

Autism special interests should recharge your batteries. An anxiety related interest would be draining your batteries.

People like myself who are not on the autism spectrum and do not experience more than regular everyday anxiety do not have any special positive OR negative energy coming from interests. I might have energy coming from an activity, such as eating or jogging, but not from spending time with an interest.

Pretty much this...in my humble opinion.

It's not this black & white for me. My special interest are usually relaxing but there can be aspects about them that I find draining. For example I really enjoy listening to music & find it energizing but trying to find music to DL & organizing my music collection can be tedious & draining. I can also feel anxious if I don't have everything by a certain artist in great quality or if my collection is not organized a certain way while I'm doing it.

That something horrific will happen