Preventing a special interest (or specifically delaying)

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Does anyone have any advice for how to prevent a special interest from developing?

I'm in the situation where a new special interest is trying really really hard to emerge, and I know that if I let it do so before the end of the week there is potential for problems. All I need to do is prevent it from really breaking through before Saturday. However I have no clue how to do this.

Any advice? I'm trying to keep myself busy, and as long as I'm doing other things, either productive or involved in other special interests, I'm okay. But as soon as I stop I go back to fixating on this. I can't make myself focus on another special interest without a trigger - things like if I need to start explaining what ASDs are like to someone, I immediately swap to that, but I can't work on writing up a post for my blog on it without an external trigger.

At this point I'm counting down the days until I can let myself actually act the way I'm trying not to.

I ignore it and not pursue it. Do not read about it, do not look it up online, do not watch anything about it.

If you keep refusing to read about it, then does the urge to read about it go down? I'm forcing myself to not read about it or such, but I can't stop wanting to and am not sure how much longer I can take before giving in, especially in the situation I'm actually in of it being a thing I should probably research next week

I don't know I have an obsession until I'm established to it. When I first got obsessed with bus-drivers, I thought it was just a general crush, until I started taking notice of the other bus-drivers that also operated the bus that I was getting, and I couldn't really escape it because I had to get this particular bus to get to college. Then I started writing stories about them, making up their names, and I only thought it was just a one-off story about them because I didn't know what else to write about, then it suddenly turned into more, until a whole full-blown series of stories began about them, and now I'm on my 9th book! Well I am on to a different group of bus-drivers now, as they come and go as years drift by, and now I haven't seen the bus-drivers (that started off this whole obsession) for about 4 years now.

I like having an obsession with bus-drivers and the company they are under, because now I'm older I am more able to keep it under control and be able to make myself known but without looking like it's an obsession, and I've learnt to do it, either through maturity or through bad experiences/learnt lessons I've had with previous obsessions. That's the trouble with being prone to having obsessions with certain people - you've got to be aware more of what you do, otherwise you will end up being mistaken for a stalker and might end up in trouble. It's easier when you're obsessed with facts or history books or something like that because it's more solitary and you can just shut yourself away and pursue it happily on your own without making anything obvious out in public.

I do get the urges. I had to live through them as a kid when mom keep taking them away from me which were movies. I would just go to the books about it or think about it. Then internet came into my life and made it a lot easier. I was even diagnosed with OCD for it. I hated having them in my head if I couldn't pursue it and my mom was making me be ashamed of it in 6th grade and I couldn't stop obsessing. It was giving me distress. Then it didn't anymore when my mom stopped making me feel ashamed about it and taking them away from me.

I am always having to fight with myself when I get unwanted interests and sometimes I get embarrassed about it but apparently I am crap at hiding it because my husband always knows when I get obsessed. It's even all I think about too. Sure I can do other things too like go online and come on this forum or other places I go to. I still clean. Sometimes I still don't want to be obsessed because I don't want it in my head all the time but I can't just stop it.

I don't really see this as an impairment. Not for me anyway. But others do. That is because I am not going by their standards of living. Instead other things would have to distract me and keep me away from it like forums keep me away from it because I get very preoccupied with them. But then I end up going back and looking it up and I enjoy mostly photos.

I'm not sure how easy it is to delay an interest as I've never tried. I've certainly tried to stop them, but that has always proved impossible. Could you try distracting yourself with your previous interest, if it hasn't waned completely? Otherwise you could avoid reading about it or spending too much time on the internet.

I'm not sure I actually ever tried to stop a special interest from developing. Not sure if I'd be able to prevent it from coming into existence, since its beginnings always involve a huge emotional tension, akin to falling in love.

I was once ashamed of developing an interest in rock music (namely with the band Queen), after many years of obsessing over classical music. So I tried to hide it and to deny it. But I cracked down in a matter of days. I actually couldn't think of anything else except their music all day and it was maddeningly frustrating to not actually be able to listen to it... The whole interest grew tremendously and soon enough I was totally in love with Queen. It turned out to be one of the biggest interests ever and it changed my life long-term in ways I could never have imagined...

The closest I came to delaying an interest were the two weeks during which I wrote my master's thesis. I was obsessed with a drug users forum at the time (I still am, to be honest) and I allowed myself to post on it only during certain set breaks (so that it wouldn't interfere with my work); that helped to relieve the tension, but denying myself the right to indulge in it and in my other interest (writing) was very taxing to me, I got very unhappy. I got through only because the thesis was about drug addiction (and psychoactive drugs are my latest special interest)...

Distracting with ongoing interests is what's being most effective. I don't tend to lose interests very much, just add to them, but when a new one shows up it tries to take over my life for a while until it settles down into where it shares with my other interests. Because ASDs are one of my interest I've been mostly effectively distracting myself while I'm typing a reply up for a post here, or reading posts.

I think I might give up on trying to delay it. It has the potential for bad things, but its a low chance, its just that if it was bad it'd be really bad.

I'm really curious to know what it is now, but I won't tempt you by asking

Oh, its straight forward. We will probably be rescuing a German Shepherd but we won't be committing to it until later this week. If I act as if its guaranteed now, then if it falls through then I'll be completely unable to cope, so I'm forcibly not researching anything relevant. I attach very strongly to animals, cats and dogs especially, and very easily pick up animal based special interests.

I mostly was leaving details about because they were irrelevant, because the idea of pushing off a special interest was something it seemed we should have a thread about anyways, and because none of what's going on mentally is dog specific.

Every now and then my old special interests in certain video games will resurface - I just don't read anything about it, look it up, or anything. They're undesirable to me because I think (no offense to gamers) they are a total waste of my time - I have VERY intense special interests and always have, and eventually I realized that if I don't shift my special interests to things that can be productive in life, like as a career, then I would have a lot of difficulties in the future, because almost all of my free time is devoted to special interests.

When I was into gaming, I'd literally spend all of my free time doing that - it had the highest importance of anything in my life - so eventually, when that special interest faded, I realized how bad it was for my life, so I stuck with things like music and language, which can be productive, and which had been special interests for a long time, and every time something else wants to come in, I do everything I can to deny it. It just takes a lot of willpower for me, but eventually it fades away. It helps if you don't feed it at all - meaning, it's best to not do any reading AT ALL about it, or do anything involving it.

And I also have my main mantra/philosophy about my music obsession, which is drilled into my brain: if I'm not practicing, someone else is; they are getting better than me, and they'll take my next opportunity from me. So I just think about that, and focus on that, and practice a bunch, and it helps kill off undesired special interests.

Oh, also, sometimes I need to kill music-related specific special interest stuff. Like recently, I've been having a hard time focusing mainly on bass, and I keep wanting to focus on guitar and keys. But this is problematic because I'm trying to finish a solo bass album so I can get it professionally recorded, and I also am working on originals for bands I'm in, one of which is trying to finish an album. But it's much harder to stall my desire to focus on guitar and keys, especially since I do guitar mostly in one of my bands, and I write a lot of guitar and keys parts.

So for now I'm sort of giving into it, just making myself spend at least 2 hours a day on bass.

This is my strategy. Squeeze just a bit more life out of that old love. Or at least try.

But, wow, I know the dilemma.

I started to become obsessed with coloured Mohawks in the Summer of 2009. I stopped that obsession right in the tracks by choosing something that's more of my true nature for me to become strongly interested in.

If a special interest is still in its earlier stages, I've found that I can force myself to quit being obsessed with it. It can be difficult, yes, but it's possible. I just force myself to focus on my other interests and keep thinking to myself, "I don't like [insert undesired special interest] anymore." Sometimes I might also tell other people that I'm not obsessed with it anymore, just to reinforce it in my own mind. Eventually I will become genuinely disinterested with it and move on.

I stress that the interest has to be in its early stages in order to prevent it from becoming a full-blown obsession. I have tried a few times to purposely stop having an interest that I've had for a couple of years, but it failed every time. I suspect that it's because I am much too emotionally invested in it to force myself to stop at this point, and that it has to end naturally.

Oh yes that makes complete sense. I would be completely unable to cope it something like that fell through. Please keep us updated. In the meantime, why don't you start a thread about your old interest whatever it is and we will ask you lots of questions to keep you busy.