Constantly changing interests / obsessions

Its been very interesting reading the replies to this. Does anyone have any thoughts on the actual mechanism of this?

E.g.

1) What triggers your change in obsession?
2) How do you feel about your previous obsession? Do you retain any interest in it, or does it seem uninteresting?
3) Is it possible for you to have more than one obsession at a time?

I'd just started on Prozac when I started this thread. Since its kicked in I've felt a decline in this - it still occurs but its not as intense. It makes sense as Prozac is used to treat OCD / compulsive behaviour.

I've also come to the realisation that hobbies are my way of zoning out / dissociating from the world - its a defense mechanism for having to deal with reality (which has often seemed highly unpleasant due to my recurring mental problems).

1) Random thoughts, unexpected opportunities or comments often get me through the "why not?" phase. That´s pretty much all the push I need. I always succumb to the new hobby-project-career or the new coming of an old one.

2) Previous obsession retreats back into a place in my head, waiting to return when I least expect it.

3) I would be a very happy person if I could keep more than one obsession at a time. From my point of view, it´s impossible. I´ve tried and forced myself. Not going to happen.

I have not been diagnosed with any mental disorder. Psychiatrist ruled out Bipolar Disorder and depression (Both my parents suffered from these conditions) but obsessive interests are destroying my proffesional life. I keep setting important goals for my career only to have "an idea" and start a new project. Regret comes later.

I´ve taken full responsability for my actions but it´s also a very real situation that I have no control over my state of mind during these hypomanic episodes. I want to get rid of these. For good.

There's a very similar post on here somewhere.

Oh goodness, I laughed and wailed at the same time when I read all these posts. Like everybody else, I think "This is meeeeeeeee". It's funny and sad. I blame Wikipedia. All I need to do is hear a news article about a country and I just have to research and know everything about it. Then I look at holidays there, and their political structure...election results, parliaments, parliament buildings...then we get to my long-awaited world tour of parliament houses when I write a big book of parliament houses of the world.

And yes, I'm a demon Trivial Pursuit player.

We'll skip the personal trainer and the gym and the music and the urge to adopt pets and everything else. If I had any money at all, I'd blow the lot. In fact, I'm planning on working lots so I can do precisely that...although I wonder if it's really a symptom of BP to be doing that...is it?

Once I wondered if I had Asperger's but I keep testing myself and it' s far too unlikely.

As was asked previously, nothing triggers these thoughts that I'm aware of (except news articles mentioned above). I don't have more than 2 on the boil at any one time. I don't use them to disassociate from anything; they just get me excited. There's no "identity flux" going on either. It just obsesses me. I wish I could be as nonchalant about the horrible depressive phases of bipolar.

I was researching my symptoms when I found this thread. I have had these circular, racing thoughts since I was a teenager and I thought it was normal. I never imagined until very recently that my brain worked differently than everyone else. One Sunday about 5 years ago I thought I was having a heart attack so i went to the urgent care just to have them check it out. I was having chest and arm pain. When I went in my blood pressure was sky high so they gave me nitro and rushed me to the hospital. Turns out it was a panic attack. Since then I have had recurring bouts of anxiety and recently a deep depression lasting months. I had been relatively stable for years so I didn't think much of it and I went on a few antidepressants and xanax for awhile but my prescriptions ran out and my Dr told me if I wanted more to go to a psychiatrist. I had looked at the symptoms of bipolar but ruled them out because I never had the reckless behavior and never went low enough to attempt suicide although it had crossed my mind. Then we moved to another time zone and my issues with sleep intensified.
I have had sleep apnea for years and I thought my machine was at fault. When we first moved I was cleaning all the time and looking for a job and taking care of business. I had some anxiety but I always did so it was no big deal. Then at one interview while I was waiting to be seen I had a pretty severe panic attack. I became extremely paranoid and it took everything in my power to stay in my chair and keep from running screaming from the building. I ended up finding a job working from home but since then I have been mostly down. I don't really have anyone to talk to and my wife doesn't really want to hear about it. She just thinks I am lazy and obsessed with video games. We moved again recently at the advice of my former psych to a larger city with more job opportunities and more to do which is good. Since then I have been diagnosed with bipolar 2 and narcolepsy. I have to take amphetamines to stay awake but the amphetamines keep me cycling throughout the day.
One day last week, I researched, Woodworking, Quantum geometry, Logic puzzles, Mulching and gardening, cosmology. In the past I was an obsessive reader with probably over 5000 books read. I studied and played chess obsessively for years as well. I have only recently come to realize that this is all because if I am doing these things I am not thinking about the bad things that I had done or that have been done to me. I don't just have memories. I relive the emotions tied to those memories going back to when I was 2. I will be driving down the road and a memory of when I said something embarrassing when I was ten will make me want to drive off a cliff. I could never share this with anyone before because I couldn't explain it really but I don't have any control over when these thoughts intrude on me. Sometimes they are of killing myself or sometimes hurting others who have wronged me. I would never act on these thoughts but they still come and I still feel bad about them. At times I am overcome by the selfishness of me contemplating suicide when I have so many people depending on me which makes me even more down. There are times when I was able to consciously change my mood. I would start thinking of my positives and the reasons why people like me and everything I have going for me but with my recent diagnosis I am afraid that all of that was just a part of my hypomanic delusions. All the great ideas I have had and all of the plans and all of the confidence I once had in myself has been called into question. I now have to question whether I am really a genius or if I am just crazy. Well sorry so long but I have been holding that in.

My father was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder more than seven years ago (and I believe I am following in his footsteps) and he has experienced constantly changing interests / obsessions.
He would become obsessed with a project (building a motorcycle from nothing, completely re-doing a classic car, fixing up an old boat, etc) and he would dedicate all of his time and spend hundreds to thousands of dollars that we didn't have to do these things only to never finish them and move on to something else. He would wake up early to spend hundreds of dollars at swap meets on auto parts, go to every motorcycle show he could find, buy book upon book on the subject, subscribe to every magazine possible, and watch every YouTube video and TV show on his interest at the time. He couldn't like something casually, and his obsessions never lasted more than a couple months before being forgotten about. He would come back to certain interests though.

I have found that I have started to do the same thing as I approach the age where bipolar symptoms start occurring. I will become completely obsessed with things just like my father. I once became obsessed with violins, I watched video after video on YouTube of violin covers of songs, listened to violinists, read up on the instrument, talked to music shop keepers about lessons, and even went so far as to spend $200 on a violin only to never follow through and take a single lesson because my obsession ended a week later.
My interests, along with my likes and dislikes, are also always changing. One week I love knitting, I'm knitting scarves left and right, making promises to make scarves and blankets for everyone. The next week I couldn't care less about knitting because my new found passion is embroidering patches for a denim vest I found, and then it changes again a week (or so) later.

I also have a really hard time knowing what I want to do. I was really into cosmetology for a while, and I was convinced that was what I was going to do, then it was the army, then it was traveling the world as a spoken word poet, then it was being a nurse, then an English teacher, and now I'm all about politics and pursuing Political Science.

Its very confusing, and frustrating, for my father and I. But it makes me feel better knowing that we aren't the only ones who go through this.

It's a good thing I guess that I don't have money. I'm skint. Because I spent a few days researching laptops, settled on Macbook Air, then found the best price, then couldn't do anything with that because I don't have a credit card and my account says -700. So I moved to researching tablets, with exactly the same result. Two days later I lost interest in buying new laptops and tablets, and moved on to finding what the fastest SSD drive is. (I already have one but obviously nothing but the best will do for me!!!) It got to the point when I have a blazing fast computer which I use almost exclusively to research how to make it faster. :/

Oh man this is something I totally do. Right now it is wood carving for me. But Ive gone through many fad hobbies that completely consume my thoughts.Ill gather all the materials, tool, research etc, then by the time Im ready to go it will have ran its course and Im on to the next thing.

Off the top of my head the things Ive picked up over the past 2 years have been, knife making, pottery, leatherworking, taxidermy, woodworking, air brushing, oil painting, illustrating, wilderness survival, bowl turning, archery, etc.....

Luckily one of my obsessions 11 years ago was tattooing, that was something I never let go and have since made a career out of it..I think if it wasnt for this I would not have had such steady work over the past 10 years....So you never know, one of these passing interests may turn into a career for you;)

I've found mine no longer speak on the forum about it, since it's so niche you could practically come by and visit me at work, but, yeah. For the first few weeks I kept on living in fear my brain will lose interest. But it's been more than 3.5 years and I am still doing it!

Very happy I found this.

Over the years I have discovered about myself that I have 'obsessions' that are very intense and last only a few weeks or sometimes maybe months. I have always had them, but in the past I didn't realize they won't last.

A few examples of past obsessions/interests:
- Animals/WWF* (2-3 years)
- Harry Potter* (2 years)
- Airplanes* (a month)
- World War 2/Judaism* (2 months)
- The Beatles* (a year)
(* = childhood interest, before the age of 12)
- Glam Rock (2 months)
- Mathematics/physics (2-3 weeks)
- Genetics (about 2 weeks)
- Star Trek (a few months)
- Weightloss (something I became dangerously good at) (4-5 months)
- Psychiatry/psychology (divided in several sub-interests such as autism, synaesthesia, empathy etc.) (about a year now)

The 'obsessions' listed above are the more prominent interests that have lasted longer than most, I have had many more in between that lasted less long (examples: certain bands, certain TV shows/films, certain actors/actresses, certain 'small topics' such as existentialism, the life of Nicola Tesla, political parties etc.)

I have noticed the following 'patterns':
- When I was younger, the obsessions lasted longer and with age became increasingly shorter (my obsession with animals/WWF started when I was about 4 and lasted until I was about 6-7, then I read the first Harry Potter book, and became obsessed with Harry Potter which lasted until I was about 9 etc.) Now my obsessions last 2 months at most, but are very likely to last only a few days or weeks.
- I tend to become obsessed with something very easily when I am extremely busy. An example: I once was doing a very big research project for school. Because I am very good at black and white thinking, I stopped doing any homework other than this project and worked on it/thought about it every moment of the day (this was probably already an obsession itself). I was quite stressed out and very busy during that period. One day, while I was working on the project I decided to listen to a Muse song, and that was all it took to become completely obsessed with Muse for a few weeks.
- Most obsessions are not 'controllable': I can't choose them or their intensity. However, sporadically, I have the ability to 'choose' an obsession. These obsessions tend to be goal-oriented. Some examples are: weight loss and getting very high grades in school. Unfortunately, as with other obsessions, they don't last, even though I can achieve quite a lot because of them sometimes.

When I realised that I have this behavioural pattern, I looked up whether research had been done on this but I only found OCD and autism as possible explanations. From experience and the posts that I have read on here I think it's unlikely that it is either of these.

I think this is a very interesting pattern of behaviour and I too am surprised that that there seems to be so little literature/research on it. I am interested in whether more personality traits are associated with this behavioural pattern, whether this is a symptom of certain mental illnesses or whether this might actually be a separate 'neurotype' or part of a divergent neurotype.

This is my first post ever on a forum, so I hope I'm doing it right.
My first language is not English, so I apologize for weird formal language and/or any mistakes.

darkroses wrote:Hi,

I'm pretty sure I have Bipolar II although haven't been diagnosed yet. Had a recent very intense hypomanic episode which makes it very likely.

A dominant force in my life has been that my interests continually change. I'll go from being completely obsessed with music to wanting to spend all my time wanting to read about technology. A particular obsession lasts normally weeks / months and then is instantly replaced by something else. Its made having a normal life quite difficult as anything I've done in college I've ended up being uninterested in it quite quickly and I've never ended up doing well in exams as a result (depression + anxiety hasn't helped either). I'm generally bored within a job within a few months too.

I was just wondering if people related to this and if this was common in Bipolar disorder?

This is more indicative of Autism than Bipolar. if they are lasting months and are referring to them as 'obsessions'. look up 'special interests' and Autism.