this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
39 points (83.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43760 readers
1165 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One possible interpretation is that autistic individuals can sometimes tend to go a bit overboard when finding a new hobby. We will sometimes find a new topic so engaging that we develop a "special interest" in it and spend days/weeks delving into every possible piece of information and niche knowledge available about that topic, considering all the implications and what-ifs and following all the informational leads.
Spending merely the minimum time required (which in this example is apparently 5 days) to get proficient is harder to estimate because an autist may instead need to spend weeks learning everything. Or, they might not.
For me it's the opposite - I want to learn the minimum needed to accomplish something, and being forced to study is very difficult. At least, that's how my brain sees it.
I want to learn, and would be happy to focus on a drawing class, but the neurodivergent part of my brain sees that as torturous. Being forced to do something that I don't want to do, even if it leads to me doing something that I do want to do, is like nails down a blackboard.
Your description of "being forced to do something" sounds like a distinct situation from a special interest. Special interests are driven by the individual themselves, not forced upon them. I wonder if what you're thinking of might be the phenomenon called PDA ("pathological demand avoidance", or more recently rephrased - more accurately IMO - as "persistent demand for autonomy").
Yes, that's why I said it's the opposite ;)
I don't know what it's called, but I know that I really struggle with doing things that I don't want to do.