Autistic Hedgehog

We vary in this a lot, I think. Some do exactly that. Some are more narrow and focused in their interests. Some, like me, are all over the place.

I tend to have longer term interests, and what I call “fixations.” Fixations are pretty much what they sound like: Things I get fixated on. Unlike with special interests, I don’t necessarily try to learn a lot about my current fixation (especially since it can be almost anything, including a color). I just get stuck on it for a while. Which is how I’ve acquired things like a panda plushie and an owl pendant. 

Other people will obsess over something else until they learn everything there is to know about it, and then move on. There’s no one true autistic way with this kind of thing. 

Well, I can only speak for myself, but not only do my interests tend to shift, they come in different levels. Like, I get very surface fixations, and then I’ll want stuff to do with that fixation, and that can be as simple as buying a bunch of things in a color I’m fixated on. Other things run much deeper, and I’ll continue learning about them and being interested in them my whole life. 

Like, for example, there was a period where I was fixated on owls, and wanted to collect lots of owl stuff. That waned. But I’ve been interested in history and archaeology for a long time, and though sometimes I don’t spend a lot of time on it, it always comes back. (I also have a very special place in my heart for maritime disasters.)

Very few of my interests go away, but the intensity of them changes. I’ve heard of other autistics who, for example, learn everything they can about a special interest and then aren’t interested anymore. Based on what I know about my followers, my guess is that there are a lot of different (and perfectly normal) ways that we interact with our special interests. So I’d guess that your experience is no more unusual than any of ours.

For clarification, this is in regards to this post.

That's exactly it, and it’s done with a lot of behaviors you see in every child on the planet, regardless of whether they’re autistic or not. All children learn by mimicry (echolalia), for example, but autistic children may start this behavior much later than allistic children. Even if it goes away (whether it does or not is dependent upon the individual and circumstances) it’s still looked at as a symptom and as something “abnormal” when all it really is, is just a bit late. 

(Incidentally, even if echolalia doesn’t go away in an autistic person, this isn’t anywhere near as strange as “experts” want to make it out to be, because it doesn’t technically go away fully in allistic people either. Although most of them never realize, they will continue to echo people who are around them constantly, picking up on said people’s mannerisms and speech patterns, throughout their entire lives. They’ll even do it at times with people they’ve just met: for example, it’s a perfectly normal (and instinctual) thing for someone to mimic the sitting position of someone they’re talking to if they’re interested in that person. Pfft to you, “experts.”)

So yeah, us being “different” makes people pathologize our behavior regardless of how actually normal it in truth is. I explained it to my husband like this:

If an allistic child shows a keen interest in serial killers, people will assume they have a future as a profiler for the FBI.

If an autistic child shows a keen interest in serial killers, people will assume they have a future as a serial killer. 

That’s just utter bullshit, but it doesn’t stop people from treating us like it’s true. 

As the person who submitted the meme put it:

Why is it that everything and anything an autistic person shows interest in, or proficiency for is a “Special Interest”? I know the difference between my perservations and my hobbies and general interests, thankyouverymuch.

Basically, the problem is that autistics aren’t really allowed to have hobbies. If we like something, it all tends to get classified as a “special interest” and while that may seem like the same thing, it’s not when it’s applied to us. 

For us, a “special interest” is a marker of our autism, which is why the term “special interest” gets used rather than “hobby.”  Everything we like must be a symptom in the eyes of certain allistics, and I believe that’s what the OP meant. That it’s frustrating that we can’t enjoy something without it being inextricably linked to our autism by other people. 

We do have things we fixate on and yes, that can be related to the autism. But some things really are just hobbies and classifying them as “special interests” is a way a number of allistics (especially psychologists and psychiatrists) Other autistics.