Tendency to keep interests secret?

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Anyone else have a tendency to keep their "special interests" secret?
For me sometimes it's like i found a pot of gold and i'm a leprachaun with my secret pot of gold.
I don't really want to share it, i just want to keep it to myself. =/
If i do share it it's like sharing something too much apart of me.
If i give away some of my interest then i might not be whole anymore.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/derek ... rself.html

The only reason I started keeping my special interests secret was because every time I talked about them to the level I wanted to, I'd get a "you're so weird" reaction. I got bullied throughout high school.

Nowadays I'll mention my special interests and hope someone else will be interested in them too, but I've had the experience where I did find someone interested in the same thing, but my interest was so intense that even compared to someone else with that interest I was unusually interested.

I've learned to kind of phrase it like a joke, like "No one is as interested in (special interest) as I am. Seriously, I wish I could find someone who would get as specific as I do." And the friend I say this to usually laughs. If they seem inviting enough, I may end up monologuing for a short time, but I do that rarely because of my high school experiences.

Yeah...for the longest time i didnt know what I was interested in. I eventually developed a list of my interests in ways that make it sound normal but I always exclude the my strongest interests. My obsessive interests are embarrassing so I try to hide them. But one of my friends has figured them out unfortunetly.

[quote="liveandletdie"For me sometimes it's like i found a pot of gold and i'm a leprachaun with my secret pot of gold.
I don't really want to share it, i just want to keep it to myself. =/[/quote]

More the opposite for me - if I know someone, I'm going to share my interests. This, unfortunately, can lead into conflict where these interests are controversial.

Was that way til age 20. But all my interests are forms of communication/expression so eventually they had to become not a secret for them to be what they're meant to be.

yes "my precious"

A lot of the special interest I had were things that were kind of odd & inappropriate. I was bullied a lot as a kid for being "different" so I learned to withdraw & keep thing to myself. I'm a private kind of secretive person offline(but I am opening up a lot more lately cuz I'm more confident offline; long sorry that's more appropriate for L&D section). I talk about my interest online a lot but I feel weird about talking about em offline & the thought of sharing em with someone offline kinda freaks me out

Back in the 1970s, I was obsessed with Star Trek. Back then, there was only the original series, the original Enterprise, and the original cast. I had memorize the dialog of entire episodes, and even found the mistakes in the first edition blueprints. I carved my own phaser (Type-I) out of a block of hard maple, and managed to construct a circuit that made a phaser-like sound when the button was pressed. Whenever I talked about this special interest, people would call me weird and try to get away from me.

Then the ST movies came out, and I found myself surrounded by people who seemed at least as obsessed as I. Paradoxically, I soon lost interest, because I no longer felt special. I've noticed this pattern as the years have gone by. I'll get interested in something that no one else is interested in, immerse myself in the subject, and then quickly retreat when the object of my obsession becomes popular.

Maybe that's why my favorite entertainers live in foreign countries, and are barely known and hardly appreciated here in the States.

I get that way sometimes. I'm quite private so I don't like people knowing about my interests. I have a few "normal" interests that I don't mind sharing (which are never my "favorites", so they are safe to share). I know a good portion of it is related to not wanting to share "my precious" with other people unless I really trust them. It could be some kind of deep seated elitism on my part... that no one could possibly like what I like quite as intensely or for the same pure reasons!

That and I don't think that people usually like stuff in the same way as I do. So it creates a lot of unnecessary explaining... "No, I'm not interested in that aspect. I'm interested in that other part!" For example, I recently showed a Studio Ghibli film to my mom (Howl's Moving Castle). All she cared about was the romance aspect of the story, which was not so important to me. Instead, I just enjoyed watching the nice animation and the beautiful scenery. I love the overall flow of the film. It annoys me when people make false assumptions about how I am or what I like.

Anyhow, though, some combination of the above factors is why I don't share my inner life with people too often. When I find someone who is truly interested in a subject, though, I don't mind sharing with them. It can even be enjoyable at times.

Yes. I have one now. You just gotta find it.

I kept my other interests a secret as a kid too from other kids because they made fun of the way I talked and didn't like me. They made fun of me too so I didn't bother with them. Plus my mom didn't like hearing about them so I didn't talk about it with her. I used to hide them too because she had the tendency to take them away. I started to write in 6th grade with fanfiction with my obsession and she took the notebook away so I started on a new story. Mom didn't bother taking it away again because she knew I would grab another notebook and write again. Before, I had them in my head and would fantasize about it. Then I decided to start writing. No matter what my mother did, she couldn't stop my obsessions or take them away. I just started to sneak as I got older. Mom would even hide 101 Dalmatians so I wouldn't sneak it and then she stopped taking it away because it kept me calm. It was hard hiding my obsessions no matter how hard I tried because she always caught me looking it up online or getting stuff for it. She once caught me with the photos printed from the internet so she took them from me. One time my old best friend gave me these trading cards from the movie and my mom took them too. She threw it all out. That was before she started to accept it. She once took my movie novel too and the key chain and hid them. She hated me looking up London too and would catch me. Even when I click out of the page, she get mad and made it against the rules for me to click out of something when she comes in the office. I probably drove my whole family crazy with it. Then I started to complain I can't get it out of my head when all I had was the movie to watch and doing the writing. I was made to be ashamed of it.


I also like keeping them from my parents and I get embarrassed when my husband won't keep his mouth shut. But he can tell what my interests are because they spill out and I don't even notice until he calls me out on it. Then I get embarrassed. I deny it every time but he knows I am lying. Then he goes on ebay and tries to get me something that is part of my interest. Sometimes he teases me about them. No matter what, he always finds out about it.

I tend to keep my special interests fairly quiet. I don't want people thinking I'm insane or ridiculously nerdy and boring. I was also influenced by my upbringing, when I had to keep quiet about a lot of things I wanted, in case the Big People stamped all over it like they often did. Things were very restrictive back then.

I do feel a great urge to share my special interests with others. Just that they're too specialised to be of much interest to anybody else. I even find it painful myself, reading back the parts of my own diaries which I wrote while immersed in special interests......it's anything but reader-friendly. I guess I was unable to write about my special interests in a way that could be readily understood by anybody normal. I think it's because I was so close to the material - I needed a certain amount of distance and detachment in order to explain it properly, and distance and detachment are the last things that happen with a special interest.

I keep them secret. I feel like talking about my interests is like standing naked in front of someone. Also the way that I explain it never does it justice so people just don't "get it" and that is upsetting.

I can relate to this. About 10 years ago I was a huge fan of U2, and now a lot of unexpected people seem to like them.

I can also relate to keeping my SIs a secret. I was a huge fan of the classic Superman...I have a statue of Supergirl landing on earth, a statue of Superboy and Krypto, a novel signed by Kirk Alyn, and a Composite Superman action figure. But then one day my aunt walked into my room and I could tell that she was weirded out, so now it's all in a box.

I'm an open person in general, but I tend to keep my interests and obsessions to myself. I don't why though.

Oh well, it could have been worse........

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l76u8Z5Ic2U[/youtube]