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Does your obsession have a positive or negative impact on your life?

mw2530

Well-Known Member
I've always had a love/hate relationship with my obsession. My main obsession is running which has had numerous positive impacts on my life. It has kept me fit and healthy (except for my near constant anxiety or depression) and I've met many people through the sport. Almost all of my close friends are through running. All of them but one. Running is one of the few things that has been a constant in my life through the majority of it. I recently placed in the top 15 of a race with nearly 11,000 participants. While I was very happy with the results, part of me hates the fact that the thing I really love to do and am really good at also makes me feel different from others. Part of me just wants to be average at something. Rather than being either elite or awful at things. It seems like there is never an in between. Being elite makes me stand out. And my deficits make me stand out. I just want to blend in for once.

Overall my obsession has been a positive for me. It has had some negatives though. I've probably put too much energy towards running at times in my life at the expense of other things. It is difficult to find that right balance, but I've gotten better. A positive is that it helps me manage my anxiety and depression. I don't always enjoy running, but it is a coping mechanism for me as much as it is a passion of mine.
 
My main obsession is Disney cartoons/comics, especially those of Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck & co. Generally it makes a positive impact; I don't know what I'd do without it. Only negative interactions with fellow fans, or reading bad fanfiction or something (I actively avoid fanfic because of experiences I've had), have negative impacts.
 
For the last ten years my growing "obsession" is photography... Urban, street photography, music festivals, musicians, sometimes rural... Some years I've taken over 30,000 photos in one calendar year! I have been a member of a local camera club for ten years and made a few friends over that time, still find that my photographic approach is a little misunderstood by many people... *shrugs*

Now I'm rarely found without a camera, almost every weekend I'm out somewhere taking photos...

Generally it's been a good thing for me, I'm an active walker in reasonable shape, I know it has kept me sane in recent years, although admittedly I'm most often going solo on my photo outings for the social aspect... At times I've almost felt that I'm "married" to my photography, since I'm single at present... But it's not uncommon for me to meet people I know on my journeys...

And my vacations from my day job tend to be photographic vacations, one of them? 2,500 photo over six days, and 2,500 kilometres of driving in the process... o_O Just creating many hours of work for myself after I get back home...

Any negative aspects? Much like other people have said, I likely spend too much on it, to the detriment of other areas of my life, I believe a common trait of Aspies... Plus photography is an expensive hobby to keep up with, a good camera along with the right lenses is not cheap!
 
Wanting to buy things
and its mainly negative as i could be a hoarder and it depresses me when i cant buy things
 
I've had some really unusual obsessions. Streetlights, construction machinery (cranes especially), Isuzu tow trucks, bottle caps, number divisibilities, 4-digit numbers that start with 9...and some rather usual ones like specific computer games I play or have played, or certain films/TV shows (I used to put on all the Back to the Future DVD's for a 2 week period and watch them almost every day). These have all had a really good impact on my life, gave me something to always look forward to. They made me happy, although others considered some of these very unusual - frankly so do I, but I don't care - they've made me happy. I talk a lot about these to NT people an I can be pretty bad at telling that they're bored, but I've become a tad better at that over recent years. I used to just completely lack this skill. I also get obsessed with holidays and want them all to just be perfect, without a hitch - while at the same time knowing that there's no such thing as perfect. I guess this is more of a "neutral" obsession rather than a positive or negative one.

I also have really bad obsessions, involuntary ones that I'm trying to combat. Each time I have an anxiety pop into my mind I can't stop obsessing over it...openly. It drives people up the wall crazy and I've been having trouble just snapping out of those obsessions. It put a strain on the relationships I have with people and I always keep blaming myself for that, saying that I could have done better. Not to mention the fact that it makes me unhappy, in both how I worry about it and how I push people away. These need to go away. They make me UNhappy. My psychologist said that it can only be managed, and that is where the FLOAT method he suggested comes in (see Managing Anxieties - the FLOAT Method). I'm also too obsessed with my friends (the few that I somehow managed to make) and have finally learned that I'm being very clingy and possessive; this is also an obsession that has a negative impact on me (and I can probably say them too), because if I tone it down I'll feel more lonely - but if I don't, what if they get tired of it and I just end up losing them as a result. I should just go with the lesser of 2 evils. I'm also extremely plan and routine oriented and am obsessed with making sure that nothing ever deviates from these plans and routines. I am very bad at adapting to change, unless it's a good change. That drives people crazy! So these bad obsessions not only have a negative impact on me, but also on the people around me. I always feel guilty towards the end.

So there we go, me being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here. I need less Hyde and more Jekyll and so do the NT's around me, yet the Hyde paragraph ended up being longer than the Jekyll one...
 
My special interest is 9/11 and plane crashes, so I wouldn't say it's had an effect either positive or negative.
 
mine was anything manga, anime, japanese, comicbooks, cartoons, then suddenly, probably in the last 4 years im not as interested. But i was for a good 10 years. I still draw, but branching out my art style or something inbetween western and eastern
 
My major special interest at the moment is daydreaming about specific video game characters. It's been both positive and negative for me.

It's positive because reading about the characters on a wiki or looking at pictures of them makes me happy, and daydreaming about them has a very therapeutic effect on me.

But it's negative because I didn't consciously choose to obsess over these characters and a lot of times I'm bothered by the fact that I'd much rather go back to my former love of anime.
 
My main special interest has had a largely positive impact on my life as it has given me more confidence.
However, it has some negative aspects as well, as the amount that I talk about it and the level of intensity are off-putting for most people.
 

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