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1:34pm August 2, 2014
Anonymous asked: Uhm... Hello? I have a few questions (if you don't mind answering) think I may be autistic, but there are still a few things I didn't find much information about. For example, special interests. My main questions are: Is a special interest something that you keep through your life, as in, permanently? And can it be anything (example: literature)?

shutupcasey:

karalianne:

chavisory:

withasmoothroundstone:

Some people keep them throughout our lives.  Some people cycle through them very quickly.  Some people cycle through them, but keep them in the background our whole lives — for instance, I have cycled through many special interests but cats have always stayed even though they started earlier than some more recent ones like crochet.  Also sometimes you can have a special interest that goes away for awhile and comes back with a vengeance unexpectedly.  You can have more than one at once.  And yes it can pretty much be anything.  It’s the way you relate to it that makes it a special interest. 

I wish there was some term other than special interest, but as a person with language problems I’m not going to mourn too badly that there isn’t, I’m just going to use the terms I’ve got.

I have had interests that I cycled through in increments of a few years—tending to be specific things like cats, dinosaurs, the color yellow, the X-Files, various musicians and artists, the supernatural, medical history, etc.

And then I have had far deeper thematic fixations persist basically as long as I’ve been alive:  things like narrative structures, the nature of religion and faith, theater and performance, the power of language, and what I’ll very loosely call “magic” (that’s more about a way of experiencing the world than any actual belief in sorcery).  I have a hunch that these are more or less permanent; they seem to be intensely ingrained themes that my life more or less always comes back around to address.

As for an alternate term to “special interests,” which I can’t stand, I unabashedly prefer “obsessions.”  (I don’t really think that “special interest” winds up being any less stigmatizing or pathologizing than that.)

I learned “perseverations” first and I still use that when I’m talking about my own long-term special interests. Which I do have, and ADHDers are prone to them (we often cycle through them really quickly is all).

I’ve perseverated on (and still perseverate on some of these things):

  • autism
  • ADHD
  • guinea pigs
  • Celtic knotwork
  • writing
  • caring for long hair
  • developmental psychology
  • cross stitching
  • knitting
  • crocheting
  • sewing
  • certain musical artists (in high school if a Michael W Smith or Amy Grant song came on the radio, I could identify it within a few notes of the intro and tell you which album it came from, which track it was on which side of the cassette, and what year the album came out)
  • Suburbans (as in the trucks; at one point I could tell just by looking what model it was; then Chevrolet started making them with all numbers for the names and I was lost)
  • reading (especially particular authors, but in general this is a Thing for me)
  • spirituality in general, but particularly Christianity (especially Anglicanism, asceticism [hermiting], mysticism, and prayer)
  • butterflies and other things I want to have all of, like tins

For me, obsessions are more short-term. Things where I go “I want to learn all about this thing” and I sign out fifty books from the library and read them all and then I’m done and it took about three weeks for me to be finished. But then I know All the Things about the thing, and that information is in my head and can pop out at really weird times. They can also be related to a perseveration, like I might become obsessed with knitted shawls and learn everything I can about designing them and start envisioning shawls I can make but never actually make them (this happened/yes I will make those shawls someday what do you mean I never finish my projects), or like I listed under Christianity, I was obsessed with prayer for an entire year and another time I was obsessed with hermiting (it’s actually called asceticism but I like hermiting better, it’s easier to understand).

I told Beverley Brenna that autism is one of my special interests. I don’t know if that made her think I’m autistic or not (she used to be a special ed teacher and now she teaches education at the university) but I never bothered to ask her if it did, either.

yeah, likewise. especially about the short-term thing

i really worry that i won’t end up taking the best path in life for me because i’ll be wrapped up in one of my momentary obsessions and make decisions around it, and then it’ll go away and i’ll be stuck doing something i hate

anyways i think what makes it a special interest is the unending passion you have for the subject. for me i just can’t get enough of whatever it is - i soak it up and end up wanting more information

it’s also where i find most of my drive to do anything. idk if this applies to op, but maybe it does: a lot of the time i’ll be really stagnant and junk until one of the obsessions rears its head, and then i’ll research up a storm.

What you said about the unending passion, that’s totally it for me. It may be different for some people, but for me it’s like, not only could I read the same book on it over and over, have the same conversation over and over, listen to the same song over and over until it breaks the tape or the player, etc.  But I could also always delve deeper and deeper and there is never enough, never enough information, never enough skills to learn, never enough.  That’s where I am with crochet right now.  Going back and forth between doing “basic” stuff over and over, and then wanting to learn really advanced stuff, and then going back to the basics, and repeating that over and over and over again.  And crocheting with every bit of spare time I have, even crocheting until I fall asleep with the hook in my hands.  For some people it’s the intensity, for some people it’s the focus (on some really narrow, obscure aspect of something, and no other part of that thing interests them), it’s all kinds of things.

Perseveration is a weird word because it has another meaning which is to do something over and over involuntarily. Like a physical action.  Like when you hit a button once but you accidentally hit it three more times because you just can’t stop yourself, that’s perseveration.  And that’s different than a special interest, but someone made the comparison and so now perseveration can also mean special interest.