Can You Get Overwhelmed by Your Special Interest?

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My special interest (Studio C) has been releasing a lot of content and new surprises lately and I love it. But I feel like it's taking a toll on me and I have a hard time getting myself to engage in the content even though I badly want to. Am I getting overwhelmed by the excitement? Is that a thing?

Probably, that would explain why half the special interests I get I do nothing with cause I think I wont be good at it.

Sure.

Just because something just feels good, it doesn't necessarily mean regulated or not dysregulated as a result.

Also there are different states to watch out for; overwhelm is not exclusive to emotions; there's mental and sensory...

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I've been overwhelmed by a special interest and had to abandon it suddenly because it was too much.

Yes I've experienced the "too much of a good thing" effect with special interests. When they brought out multi-track programs for music computers, for some time I was fazed by the sheer number of exciting new possibilities.

My brain is always creating new tangents for any line of thought, and as I'm often thinking about trailblazing and looking for new, better ways of doing practical things, it often happens that I keep getting new inspirations, so many that I'm overwhelmed.

My mind is usually racing away processing ideas, and I'm usually racing away looking for information about my ideas. Sometimes I think I'm going to burn out. As I tend to get rather stuck in details, it's hard for me to step back and look at the big picture in order to regulate what I apply myself to, so I rarely weigh things up or ask myself what in the world I'm trying to do.

I've noticed all this more since I retired from work, because I've got more freedom now to organise my activities in whatever way I deem best for me, so I can no longer so easily blame the restrictions other people used to impose on me. It looks pretty clear that although my employer was trapping me and getting in my way, I'm also quite capable of trapping myself and getting in my own way.

I got overwhelmed by my special interests between 2009 and 2015. I'd get excited about things related to London, England and The Kinks. I'd be thinking, "Wow! I'm high but I want more!" There were times that I couldn't sleep because I wanted to listen to The Kinks all night.

Oh yes. My special interest as a kid was chess. When I saw 'The Queen's Gambit' I fully identified with Beth lying awake at night watching chess pieces move themselves around on the ceiling.

I used to get so absorbed in building Lego as a kid. I would go to the lego expo and come home and try to build something I saw. I would hyperfocus for days on end only to end up completely burned out and overwhelmed, the whole thing would fail and I would end up building nothing.

Same sort of thing later in life with other personal interests too.

I try to be a bit more careful these days regarding what I sink my teeth into. I find giving myself time off personal interest just as important.

Special interest can get overwhelming, depends on how deep that your interest in something gets. That's why I had made a video about this since I am deeply interested in uploading YouTube videos before Tik-Tok or YouTube Shorts.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with Geography I talked about it all the time. I was devastated when my sister made it to the geography bee and I didn't, she only knew so much about it because I obsessed with it all the time

Yes, it’s entirely possible. Special interests can bring on positive emotions that can be incredibly overwhelming and overpowering at times.

It’s like your brain goes into full haywire seeing something related to it and you’re full of euphoria and you can’t even think straight or do anything as a result.