Obsessing over WP

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I´m a new member here and also new to writing in forums. It was hard for me to write my first post here, and now that I´ve done it, I find myself obsessing over the format; thinking in posts, having imaginary discussions here etc. I´ve done this all day today, hours and hours just obsessing over a website and people I don´t know. I find that this sometimes happens to me when I do something new (afterwards I can´t sleep ´cause I´m thinking it through over and over again) or if I meet someone new (if I like the person I start to have imaginary discussion with he or she, although the it´s mostly me speaking because I can´t imagine what the other person would say.)
I´m posting this now to see if there are more autistics that do this and to actually post something "for real".

I find myself doing the same, and I've been posting on and running forums for over a year.

For hours and hours a day?

Sometimes. For me it is typically with perceived sleights, and is heavily influenced by mood and other external inputs. Something happened at work, so someone mis-using a word or pushing any of my buttons really gets under my skin. Obsessively so, sometimes.

It's not a pleasant state of existence, so when I catch myself doing it, I try to avoid the site for a day or two.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with internet forums, but in case you were not aware of it you may find it helpful to note that you can Private Message ("PM") folks. If you're not up for an open discussion. Bear in mind that they're people too. They may not like to discuss things in private, or they may be underage and not allowed to by their parents.

The interesting thing about internet forums, though, is that the odds people see in the real world are extraordinarily slim. And even if you do somehow manage to irrevocably screw up, just go grab a new gmail address & create a new account. In this regard, this particular form of interaction and communication has a safety net that public in-person interactions lack.

But from what I've observed in my relatively short time here, everyone is free to be who they truly are. Not the concocted personae that we present. This generally holds true for most semi-anonymous online environments, but seems especially true here.

This has happened to me, yes. The subject of autism is no longer all that new to me anymore, but when I was younger this happened with me lots with various autism-related fora. These days I'm usually not as shy about simply posting if I feel I have something to add, but even now it does occasionally happen with some particular topic, for hours, if I'm not certain I have a sensible post of my own to make in a given thread (and possibly moreso if I'm inclined to start a new thread).

It's fairly normal for autistics to develop a special interest on the subject of autism, which can well include this particular expression. Even if they're only newly self-diagnosed rather than formally. I can easily see this triggering the type of behaviour you're describing.

I'm always on WP in my spare time. Well, I go on Youtube to watch all sorts of different things and also hope that more ''Tweenies'' episodes get downloaded because I'm too embarrassed to purchase it myself. And I go on Facebook just to have a sneaky look at what everyone's put. But most of the time I do obsessively visit WP, look through what I've recently posted to check for replies, and then go through page 1 of the GAD index to see if there's anything new. Sometimes there's the same threads what don't interest me what seem to stay on the first page for weeks and I haven't a clue what the thread is actually on about . I usually visit WP every time I go on the internet, and I spend most of my time on the internet when I'm not at work or with friends.

I especially enjoy visiting WP when I've got a day off and have the house to myself, and I get something to eat for lunch at about midday and put the world to rights on WP . But for the last two days the internet has randomly disconnected, causing me to have attacks of distress, including biting, yes, biting the router in a temper, hurting my teeth. It didn't help the internet connect but it got the frustration out of me, and I was able to wait patiently until it decided for itself when to come back on.

WP has become a special interest since I was diagnosed August 26. There are so many people and sections and most of them I find interesting. Also seeing people are going through things that I'm am going through or have been through first the first time in my life is pretty addicting. Also a lot of important things in my past that I have forgotten about are brought back to the surface.

This is not my first forum. I have gone on forums related to special interests since about 2000. I like this better then chat rooms because you can think before you answer.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 25 Oct 2013, 10:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm new here, of course, but I've been posting on various forums for over a year, and YES, it's addicting. Like you spend time outside of the forum thinking about what you're going to say or what questions you'll ask other members. I was spending hours and hours a day on this other forum, until I crashed and burned (tried to start over by starting a new account, but the mods found out and merged the accounts. A lesson to be learned, there). I think the obsession is good, in some respects; but if you find it takes up too much of your time, to the point where it's taking over your mental space and/or hinders your ability to function in the world--find some other activity to get immersed into; or several interests, that way you might not burn out.

You could consider getting a mobile broadband SIM to use at times when your broadband fails. It would be useful if there were one of those power cuts you worry about. Hopefully the mobile phone coverage would not be affected during blackouts.

I've done this all my life. I live alone and sometimes miss entire movies or TV shows because I start having a conversation aloud with someone who isn't present and end up talking through the whole thing about subjects entirely unrelated to what I was trying to watch - oh, sometimes it starts out related to the show, but then wanders far afield as I prattle on and on as though someone were actually listening.

As for the forums, over time I've actually taken to leaving a thread after making a comment and not coming back, because I'm so hypersensitive to the occasional snarky reply, that I'd rather not read the reactions, lest I end up obsessing over it and feeling sick for days. If I didn't spend so much time alone, things like that probably wouldn't bother me at all, but lately I have nothing better to do than replay things endlessly in my head. It's not healthy.

Oh heavens yes I do...then I can't function from lack of sleep...! !! !!

I don't think it is a good strategy for me because then when I have a chance to talk to the person, I usually can't say the things I thought about because it's a completely different topic than what comes up when I actually meet them.

So at night, I try to think about something I had to eat that I liked. It puts me in a good mood and calms me. Analyzing what I could say and what the reaction might be makes me anxious. Then I will think about the person or new thing again ... and again try to focus on some concrete "reward" like food ... I think I am just conditioning myself to have a positive reaction to new people or events. I guess I think like Pavlov's dog... hey it helps me sleep.

I am an NT though so please feel free to ignore me as irrelevant. You were asking about autistics. Actually, I think the similarities are greater than the differences ... guess it depends on how you look at it.

Yikes. I've begun doing that as well. I'm so tired of internet snark. The worst is when I can't figure out if the person is just being a jerk, or being serious.

From time to time I get "re-obsessed" with WP and then obsessively post on it and check it for most of the day for several weeks. It can be very disruptive when it happens, but also enjoyable.

I can kind of relate, before I knew I had AS I would obsess over other various forums that involved my special interests at the time.

I do this a lot as well. It's gotten so bad at one point that I had to cut down the hours that I post here. I've found Swagbucks to fill that void and I get outside and do a lot of walking as well. I actually had a dream that I woke up in 1965 and I went on a device that had a typewriter and a small TV with the rounded screen that TVs had back in the day and I logged onto WP and started typing. I was one of the few members who had an avatar because the images of most of the avatars weren't around in the Mid 60s.

Internet was not around either back then and computers were room size so only big cooperations had them.