Published on 12, July, 2020
hi, do others tend on fixate on things? I do, especially when I've made a mistake. it would be helpful to hear if this was common for other people with autism. and has anyone any tips on managing it?
It's a pretty common one. There's various that I think are a result of the same mechanism.
Fixation on hobbies and interests (spins) and perseverate/recurring thoughts that are often obtrusive ( we find they pop up and won't go away!)
If they're negative I tend to try and bat them away as quick as I can before they stick, dismiss them where you can. Trying to find anything else to distract, like something you're interested in that's positive usually works.
Positive ones like getting stuck thinking about a hobby or interest I tend to have better control of more recently, telling myself I need to move on and think about it later.
If its re running an event over and over I feel that's the same as scripting, one's in the future the other is in the past but both are things we obsess about in terms of what we should have said or didn't do etc. Best to realise that the past isn't there any more, it literally no longer exists so we're not thinking about something we can change or go back to, it's happened, we did our best at the time, we are allowed to make mistakes, not easy, but true. Scripting the future is harder to escape as you are trying to prepare for something, but things rarely go the way we predict so our scripts are often useless and prove to do nothing but waste our time and generate anxiety while trying to second guess every possible outcome of something that might not even happen.
Sometimes writing things down helps to get them out and stop them wizzing round your head.
None of these are easy to escape and can be all consuming, I've lost days to them, but just realising in the moment that you are doing it, having a word with yourself about why and what you think it's going to achieve (or not achieve!)can sometimes help snap out of them.
this is really helpful just to hear that its not just me, your fixations sound like mine. i'm going to try journaling, but just hearing that others have this too and its not just me struggling to manage it, is good to know