<undef><p>I hate these realizations. That a special interest has become a special compulsion and is becoming destructive. Destructive in a sense, in this case, I'm sure there's actually, literally destructive ones too, that it claims all my time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. If I spend time on something else, the guilt I feel is enormous. So I've dropped a lot of other things due to it. And I've started to make my autistic burnout worse again by putting so much effort on it. Effort that an autistic burnout worsening, with its skill regressions and memory issues nullifies, which I've also started to notice, and which makes my anxiety over it even worse.</p><p>I know I need to back off or drop it altogether, I've had to do that twice already; once really back off but not drop it, like "I really don't even want to do this anymore, but I can't drop it, so I'll just do one task a day, just to keep it up", and once I dropped it totally, but a happenstance brought it back into my life. I guess I'm going towards the latter again, I can't really do "I'll just putter around with it". </p><p>But dropping it totally has its problems too, it's like a bad breakup for me, I tend not to want to have anything to do with or remind me of special interests, or people, I've had to drop. Not healthy, I know, but here we are, I haven't had a chance to address *that* problem yet, and learn to deal with it. And to be honest, right now I'm feeling *exactly* the same feelings about this interest and engaging with it, as I felt about my last, troubled relationship (in which, funnily enough, I also was engaged in). Could I have a few more emotional pathways, please?</p><p>I guess this is kinda uniquely AuDHD issue. You get into things on ADHD-impulse and then the autistic you makes them way too big and important part of yourself and gets really distraught about things that end up in the doomboxes (yes, I have several, literal and metaphorical, including a doom blanket covering one doomed project because it's too big to stash anywhere).</p><p>Speaking of which, as I've tried to make "special compulsion" a thing, could we make "special impulsion" a thing? "Oh, I'm just gonna take a stab at this thing..."</p><p>Now I feel bad about writing this, instead of doing that special impulsion. But, lets learn, lets grow a bit, and instead of me doing my penances by trying to claw back the lost time by putting some eeextra effort in it today, I'll just leave it, go out, get some sushi.... Tell you what, I'm not even gonna obsess over wordings and such in this post, rewriting it over and over again. Right after I finish typing this, I'll just hit Send and be on my merry way.</p><p>...and then I'll do my penances :blobcatcoffee:</p><p><a href="https://mementomori.social/tags/ActuallyAutistic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ActuallyAutistic</span></a> <a href="https://mementomori.social/tags/AuDHD" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AuDHD</span></a></p>