"Monotropism" - how do you experience it?

I Found some time to read about monotropism and fill a questionnaire. It turns out I’m quite much monotropic, my result was 215. Most autistic people have above 178. So even the numbers show, that everyone experiences monotropism differently. 

That's really weird. Was this in the public health system? Was the therapist a specialist? I'm hoping that here in New Zealand, because I have to pay, I will be seeing someone who is more of a specialist 

Yes. I had an appointment with a therapist who confirmed that I have all autistic traits and I fall under the criteria, but I’m married and I have a child. So I’m not truly autistic. Just a little bit. I also saw a story that someone was rejected because of their IQ being high. When the IQ level is not listed in the criteria. So it’s also important if you get assessed by someone who is up to date. Someone who will not confuse orange with lemon. 

That sounds awful, there are some terrible people out there. 

I love analogies and metaphors too. It's weird that many autism assessments ask about our ability to understand them, assuming we will take them literally

Yes I'm also worried about the person doing the test, whether they will be fully up to date with all autism research and also able to think outside the box

Thank you for your answer. That's a very logical way to put it. I, however, feel the need for an official stamp/piece of paper/orange label saying I'm an orange. I was raised being told by my parents that my issues are all in my head, caused by "self pity", laziness, rudeness, being "highly strung" etc. My mother was chronically depressed, and as a teen when I told her I was depressed, she got very angry and told me I was not depressed, I was just feeling sorry for myself. So... for me, I want the fruit grader to give me a certificate of orangeness that I can show to the world. So that everyone can see it's not just all in my head. There is A LOT constantly going on in my head and I would like to take this segment out and externalise it onto paper so it stops going around and around. A sort of end to the narrative so I can move on. And it is also for myself, I do need it confirmed for me too that it's not just me in my head. 

PS - I find analogy the best way to communicate.......so thank you for your kind comment above regarding how I have expressed my feelings......through the medium of oranges....I find that very validating and comforting.....but then I AM autistic, I suppose.

Yes.  What you said.  I agree.

I think that, for us 40+year olds, "realisation" of a "trouble" that we have ALWAYS had.....but never been able to "assign".....is often enough.  Not always, and I'm a great believer in "each to their own"......but in my case, when the orange first squirted in my eye....I kinda knew......but then when the frigging-great lorry, loaded with 40 tons of fresh and juicy oranges fell on my frigging head.....repeatedly.....I didn't (and don't) need a fruit specialist to tell me what is impacting me !!

I'm very pleased to hear that this place is serving you well.  This is my experience too.  It is very nice to make your acquaintance Alienatedhuman.....I am Number......as you will have gathered.

Wishing you a restful and contented weekend.

Kind regards

Number.

I really like your answer! It applies to me as well! So I decided that I don’t want to spend my money on diagnosis that I could only put into a drawer. Here I feel that I’m in my tribe, I relate so much to people here that I just accepted that I’m an aspie. That the orange is orange :) plus having a diagnosis could cause me problems in the country I’m living in (Germany) and I wanna get German pass. Definitely not good to have papers with ASD. And most importantly I don’t need any support in my daily tasks. I don’t consider myself disabled in a medical way. I’m just different than the majority of population. 

another thing about getting the assessment and diagnosis it could be waste of money because the people, who asses may be misinformed as well. So someone can be assessed as non autistic, because they are married and having happy life or their IQ is high, when in fact the person is autistic. So it may be a lot of hustle. But if someone needs it, wants it and can afford- of course it’s their choice. 

I tend to hone in on threads which are in my current sphere of awareness. I know we have both spoken about this before here. I would interchange "excessively worry" with "excessively think". There are two sides to this like you say. It can be exhausting when there's no middle ground. Having an awareness of this thinking style....gives a reason, an explanation but I don't know if that helps. Because unless there's outside influence it is difficult to change track. It can either be a relief or uncomfortable and frustrating when this happens.

In terms of monotropism and tasks, I find interruption very difficult. Or it just doesn't register. This can cause me problems or it doesn't,  depending on my energy, environment and day in general. I see it as different ways of thinking to other people, neither are right or wrong, just different with different pros and cons depending on the individual.

In terms of diagnosis, consider if you need it on paper for adjustments in work or accessing mental health provision for example, or if it's more about finding an explanation for your life experiences and you don't need it written down officially.

Shardovan - I can't imagine how difficult it must've been for you relating to your second comment. I had a problem with a very neurotypical friend, who I thought was a good friend, who I had known a long time. One comment sent me west and it took an awfully long time for me to stop thinking about them. Even when the emotion had subsided. Some of it was because I hadn't had chance to say my piece. Delayed processing. Closure can be difficult and moving on takes time. The only thing is we can build ourselves back up and hopefully learn from it, no matter how painful it can be.

I also had a very cruel and protracted joke played on me by a covert narcisist in 2019-2020 and the obsessive spiral of trying to make sense of the madness afterwards and square a very warped circle must have given them considerable supply. It nearly ended me. They could see my monotropism, and they wound me up like a toy and having built me up to set me on a course to completely reverse that in the worst way... ot's taken a lot of work to claw my way back to (approximately) the me they took a metaphorical blowtorch to. The supply they must have got from knowing the damage (even once I was ghosted they knew the pain was still going on in darkness) would have kept them quite satiated for a while... before the next blind victim, probably themselves neurodiverse as I guess that's where the fun lies- NTs are too hardened and wise to such (to them) obvious traps. They will play the game on the same terms, knowing it is one. We authentic and hyper-empathic ASD-types, who need overt text, not the encoded cryptic subtext of 'you should be getting what's going on here ut I won't ever tell you directly', are irresistable targets for such vampires. And the monotopic hell that awaits in the aftermath is like emotional third degree burns for the longest time...

That's primarily my area of greatest vulnerability to it too. Some small trigger can knock business-as-usual on its axis and make me obsessively worry to a point when until I get highly elusive closure on a suddenly all-consuming question (one I need the answer to to get out of a tailspin of feeling unsettled, fearful, dysregulated). One of the worst of these was a several-month period in 2018-2019 where, after someone I know made an off-handed remark, I went and looked up some stats to see how anomalous or otherwise I might be regarding something. When I realised just how vanishingly rare I was, I felt the world tilt on its axis in an instant, and everything in my everyday life receded into the background and suffered - my job, my hobbies, my rest-time... all of it essentially gone. I wanted to get back to them, but I had to go the long way round. Digging deeper and deeper, cross-checking more and more things, finding a counsellor to talk about it intensely with, trying to ease the sense that I was a cosmic joke and instead had my valid place in things. In the end, only my diagnosis truly got me there: I no longer had to frame things as failure but as valid and inevitable difference. I was also by that point so sick and exhausted that I had to let go of it. Someone else might have done that in one afternoon. Briefly pondered, lightly googled, shrugged, moved on, watched Netflix, whatever. I sometimes envy that little bit of mental kung-fu. I can only take the slow and torturous path to where they go in a spiritual hyper-jump. Though maybe I'm getting glacially slowly closer to closing the gap there. 

The other more pleasant variant of that  for me is obsessively mapping out stuff that it astonishes me other people don't care about. It takes various forms, but when a circle needs squared - even if it's only to my satisfaction- I can't rest and enjoy (well, doing the calculations/deductions kind of *is* some of the fun) until it's started. Quite often that takes the form of 'can I make this tv programme contunuity fit together as a workable calendar? Case in point: I made extensive notes while watching Northern Exposure to track how many years it took place over, whether we had to jump a year ahead at some point etc. And discovered that a run of about five eps had to be moved from broadcast order to a slot between two earlier episodes to make that year's/season's chronology even possible within a 365 standard earth year which it purports by implication gto be set in. In the end I hammered something workable into shape and I have those notes to assist my re-watches so I can just fully lean to the escapism knowing the 'this all checks out' groundwork is done. 

I'm doing something similar with Grange Hill at the moment. Trying to determine where they've jumped from one year to the next can be tricky (they nearly always skip Christmas)... but I simply must know! I must be one of the few people on the planet who not only cares but can't fully relax until I have it all square in my head... and sometimes on paper! 

This is a good thread with short and pithy explanations and descriptions of terminology and experience that are very important to my lived experience.  However, I believe your principle question relates to whether you should spend your money to get a formal diagnosis.....and on this point, I offer my thoughts to you, as follows, in the form of two questions;

Are there any practical or emotional benefits, to you, if you can receive a formal diagnosis? If you went for a formal diagnosis and it reported "no, you are not autistic"...would that potentially cause you emotional harm....at this point?

Personally, if it tastes like an orange, feels like an orange, smells like an orange and behaves like an orange, I am happy to accept (on faith) that it is an orange.

That's true, I was always seen as "grumpy" as a teen (I actually was very grumpy lol) and I am generally a very irritable person... but irritation needs a stimulus, right? I very much prefer to be left alone. I too like to read articles then jump to the next related article. I heard once that autistic people's brains have much more synapses firing off all at the same time than neurotypicals, because they/we are constantly making connections between seemingly unrelated topics.

Have you heard of a Podcaster called Blindboy? He is on the spectrum and he does what he calls "hot takes" where he talks about things he's found very interesting and gives his own take on them and links he's made to other topics. It's very interesting and I feel like my brain works a similar way. I did a masters degree in Cultural Studies where I could basically research anything I wanted. 

Interesting, I have adult step kids who pose certain challenges and I think I have hyperfocused on them as a "problem" when a lot of the time they aren't doing anything wrong....  and my father in law too who lives with us. Not to go into detail, there are some genuine concerns, but a lot of my mental energy goes on this topic. I wonder if that is monotropism. 

Hi, so I have been (semi) diagnosed with ASD & ADHD, so I might experience this a bit differently from someone who does not have the ADHD component {although it is my belief that I actually didn't have ADHD (just a family predisposition) until I had COVID-19 - so my childhood experiences are slightly different}. For me, the experience of 'hyperfocusing' is quite similar to doing archery - your attention is entirely focussed on the target, and you are very annoyed by interruptions (including by bodily functions/pain - so these are often shut out or come through as brief flashes rather than the persistent, dull sensation a person in 'normal' focus might experience), but external interruptions are still acknowledged (like how you could still here someone shouting to 'stop' on an archery range!). I would be confident it is different in men (I am/grew up female) as it is a lot less taboo for them to be upset if they are interrupted in a task. 

You may note I use 'hyper focus' instead of 'monotropism' - a suitable analogy for my experience of this would be the difference in reading a Wikipedia article vs a good book. Hyperfocus still, in my experience, gives me an intense desire to learn about a specific topic, but mentally I'm making many links and sometimes I forget what my original aim was to learn about (still on the same topic, but for example I could be very focussed on reading an article about the discovery of a novel dinosaur specimen, but then that reminds me of a curiosity I had about the pigment preservation in this style of fossil). I guess it's also related to the availability of information with the internet age! A lot of things interest me, so sometimes I struggle to distinguish between 'special interest' and 'interesting'.

I don't just see it as related to special interests. It can also be about thoughts. I see it more as the way we focus our attention on something.  It also seems to me to be related to inertia. That being difficulty starting, stopping or changing between states.