Obsession with people

Yes definitely. One thing people find it hard to understand with me is when I listen to songs, I don't really make sense of the lyrics, but I listen to it more as a melody, as a whole thing. While this happens, random people can come into my head. For example, the lyrics could be talking about death or something and I won't actually take that in and I will at the same time think of numerous people throughout the song. So i could be thinking of David Beckham for example during a song about death or soap, or food, anything random really, but the people i think of help me make sense of the song strangely. I have an obession of people like David Beckham, Dwayne Johnson and Daniel Craig, and I like to model myself on them. I like to know great detail about them etc. I would say a lot of autistic people probably experience that about people or objects :) and i love it!

my husband who is on the spectrum has female obsessions. It has been very difficult to deal with at times as he gets in a rage if I even suggest some of his behaviour may be inapprpriate. I understand that this is because he cannot see it as inapprpriate and doesn't want to stop something he is obsessed with but others can see what I see. It can be very hard.

Should we be allowing people to request others to email them on the basis that they are an 'expert'? This can't be verified and people could be making themselves vulnerable by replying.

I think there's a wider issue of safety on these fora. We're castigated for swearing or using inappropriate language but our safety is not looked after with the same zeal.

Wub – yes, this is very like me! I can 'get' people in writing better than face-to-face. I fall in love with historical/literary characters. if I read a novel, i can't just 'read it and enjoy it': I have to pick it apart and analyse it. I was very good at English Literature, but didn't do it at university because I was sick of being forced to read novels I wouldn't have touched with a bargepole, though. (I only like to do this with books I enjoy at some level, or find 'so bad they're funny'; Austen I find a snore-fest, and compulsory Austen at school was enough to put me off her and her works for life!)

Interestingly, some authors and characters who appeal to me very strongly are ones in whom I could sense a degree of kinship: possibly Aspie themselves. Lermontov, I suspect, is a rare Asperger's fatality (in a duelling culture, difficulties with social cues and mores could be lethal), who portrayed something of his own condition in Pechorin in A Hero of our Time. Among fictional characters, Claude in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris is the epitome of the geek as tragic hero/anti-hero, and he remains one of my all-time favourites. And I have my suspicions re: Meursault in Camus' The Outsider. I wonder, indeed, how far the Superfluous Man/existentialist hero is not so much a philosophical statement personified as a description of the Aspie in the NT world, before the Autistic Spectrum was formally identified? 

I think getting obsessed with people is part of the Asperger's, but one thayt isn't discussed much. I still get very, very obsessed with one person, and can think about nothing else!

Hope said:

My obsessions have always been people focused. From memorising the food people ate, being fixated at the sight of girl's hair, dolls, and then an all consuming interest in the actress Kate Winslet and child development.

From my teen years, and even to some extent in my childhood, I have a lived a vicarious existence where I live through other people and have no self-concept of my own. I sometimes fall in love with certain individuals and want to emulate them, to dress like them, and to do the same things as them. I don't usually share these obsessions with others for fear that they will misinterpret my obsession, but I understand boundaries and would never stalk the person - although I will obsessively research them and try and find out about them.

I think I have people based obsessions.  I always thought I was a weirdo for doing it, I had a friend one time and she made out like I was this persons stalker or something.  And that made me feel like one.

I just had huge emotions and feelings towards this person, quite obsessively.  Can I now tell myself that it was just an obsessive thing and move on now??

I'm sexually attracted to Jennifer Lopez and have some knowledge of her, such as her age, her hometown and her songs. (I guess that doesn't count.)

I generally prefer prefer object-based interests like Nintendo and German.

Hope said:

My obsessions have always been people focused. From memorising the food people ate, being fixated at the sight of girl's hair, dolls, and then an all consuming interest in the actress Kate Winslet and child development.

Does anyone else have people based obsessions? The Asperger stereotype emphasises an obsession with gadgets or objects, but my obsessions have always been people based, or about human systems like the body.

Yours sounds quite similar to the way female Aspies are more likely to present--interests quite close to the peer group, only more so, and more persistent. Also, your use of mirroring is seen as typically female-Aspie (possibly because women are expected to be intuitive and be social facilitators, so they use focused attention for this).

I myself have an uncommon set of interests for an Aspie, because my obsessions started out very abstract and verbal--stories, books, philosophies, words, ideas etc. I think because I was so focused on those things throughout my childhood (and had a couple of reasons to mistrust physical things and maths/science) I ended up with a really uncommon degree of literary understanding. For an Aspie. Close-reading of poetry, unreliable narrators, tropes... all those things that Aspies aren't supposed to get but I get because I have been soaking up reading obsessively since before I went to school. The thing that's hard for me to explain is that I get character stuff from books/fiction/TV shows/movies because it's put in there for me to get, but achieve epic levels of fail at direct understanding of human behaviour! Actually including my own--I'm good at intellectualised insight, but very bad at understanding my own moods etc. According to some 'experts' in autism, like Professor Baron-Cohen, my obsessions/skills are typically female and not-autistic, because the autistic or extreme-male brain is weak on language.

I think what makes an Aspie isn't the particular interest but the level of focus, and the fact that the level of focus leads us to miss out on several social or intuitive forms of understanding that NTs typically possess.

It must be hard tring to pick gifts for males in your family, i think mine have give up expecting anything

I never thought of asking anyone older, just went with who ever is near by. Sounds good advice, i stopped this along while back due to akwardness. i now just get my stuff from Arco for trousers and superdry for t-shirts. It's nice to know that other men ask too, makes it feel, less strange..

steven said:

I just wear t-shirts and work trousers. I got useto wearing work trousers and now can wear nothing else and as for t shirt shopping always try to get my sister to help as i have no idea and end up completely overwhelmed. I went through a faze of asking women in shops to help but they looked at me strange, after that i started introducing myself as 'Hello i'm not a weirdo' but could you help me? Seems daft now, i must of scared so many Women in Shops. 

I used to have obsessions with people from a young age. Actors mostly, though also fictional characters from books. I'd do pretty much what you described, Hope. I would collect every tiny magazine clipping I could get my hands on about their new film or an interview with them, and keep them all neatly in a folder. I'd watch their films over and over, as often as I could. 

I guess I still have an obsession with people now, seeing that I paint them these days (never landscapes or animals, just faces) and usually paint one person over and over until someone else comes along who grabs my undevided attention.

Hi  Hope.

I've only read the last two post so i'm going off them hope they make sence.

I could make this really long but i'll keep it short, based on the last post.

I just wear t-shirts and work trousers. I got useto wearing work trousers and now can wear nothing else and as for t shirt shopping always try to get my sister to help as i have no idea and end up completely overwhelmed. I went through a faze of asking women in shops to help but they looked at me strange, after that i started introducing myself as 'Hello i'm not a weirdo' but could you help me? Seems daft now, i must of scared so many Women in Shops. 

I tend to dress my own way – I have my own style, which isn't connected with what's currently fashionable – but I have to admit, I started dyeing my hair red about 30 years ago because a favourite artist (Aubrey Beardsley, one of my long-term passions) was a redhead and it looked stunning on him. And I'm simply not a 'mousey brunette' sort of girl in personality.

For me, it's always been historical and literary characters. I find it easier to get passionately attached to the dead or fictional ;-D

I used to get teased about it at school and as a student: my pin-ups would be people I was studying, or favourite artists & c.

Probably not as true now as when i was a child, but this definetly used to be the case.

The biggest issue for me though was a little different. It was when the subject of dating came up. Id only have to meet a girl once and i was in love. In hindsight i now know it was not only infactuation, but also obsession. I meet a girl once, id be in love with her for years. everything id do would be about getting closer to her. it wouldnt matter what damage i caused in order to get closer to my obsession.

Now im still quick to develop an obsession with a certain woman, however am more able to control my actions and ensure it doesnt become stalking. this is mainly though having to learn from experience.

Just to note my diagnosis isnt official yet as im awaiting assessment.

I'm always facinated by the intellegence of others. I'm drawn to intellegence and very often fall in love with a persons intellect, but not them. Over the years I've realized that this has given others the wrong impression and made for a good deal of confussion as to how they think I feel about them. They confuse my interest in their intellegence as interest in them. It always comes as a shock to me when they act on that. I've lost many friends because they've taken it as a sign that i'm intersted on a more intimate level.

I guess it's partly to do with wanting to connect with others on some level and partly due to the fact that their are so many gaps in my understanding and these individuals seem to have much of that knowledge. It's like I was away the day, when all the basic stuff everyone else seems to know, was taught!

I've always been put down for the things I don't know. Often ridiculed for my naivity. In my case i've found that when you speak articulately, but you have the naivity of a child people either view you with disdain or disbelief! I guess thats why I try so hard to learn. Even now, I still get it wrong. The thing is, that as children most of us really didn't have peer friendships of a sort that helped us understand relationships and friendships and what was acceptable.

I was always on the periffery. The only way I could learn was by example or by mimicing. It's just us wanting to fit in. I see women doing it way more than men. They try and disguise who they really are by trying to be others.

Focusing on the small stuff is what we do. Sometimes it makes it hard to see the bigger picture. If you are like me you probably compartmentalize these things into separate interests or obsessions. As I see it, NT's can merge their interests and are generally far more able to see how one thing can affect another. This is totally lost on me. I'm heavily relient on what others tell me is ok and that can make me vunerable.

Finding that you have your own persona requires introspection. I'm a great observer, of others, but really poor at looking at myself or indeed at seeing how things may look to others.

Discovering that I have choices and who i am as a person, is an ongoing process for me and this has only come about since my diagnosis. We are all the sum of our life experiences and the influences we've witnessed, but being ourselves is ok. Accepting oursleves for who we are is OK. You are unique. Celebrate that Hope. It's your way of connectiing. If it's not harming you or others, then cut youself a little slack.

Coogy xx