I was wondering whether anyone else had problems with their interests (/obsessions) changing frequently?

I usually focus on a particular interest for anywhere from a week or two, to a couple of months then out of nowhere will lose interest & something will take its place. I'm not sure I could really call these obsessions... although I have had some in the past. (long explanation at the end)

A while ago my psychiatrist/CPN put this down to "all or nothing thinking". There was some talk that I *might* sit somewhere on the autistic spectrum, (Aspergers), but they said not to the extent to warrant a diagnosis or anything.

My CPN didn't seem to appreciate how irritating it is for me. I think she just said it wasn't interfering with my day excessively so that was an end to that.

I have sort of learnt that "genuine" interests will come around in cycles.

Does anyone else have similar problems? Or ways to control "all or nothing thinking", or this sort of pattern of behaviour...?

I figure I might bring it up with my psychiatrist again, but thought I'd see what others had to say.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The long explanation:

At the moment for example, I am both learning Japanese & watching anime in Japanese with subs. I don't spend all day doing these things, but they are on my mind a lot. For the moment I have trouble watching anything other than anime, if I put something else on TV I'll most likely find it boring & want to put anime on. I even looked up flights to Japan out of curiosity. Nothing unusual about that really. However, in doing that I found I would be eligible for a working holiday visa for another 2 years & started planning how I could take a year out in Japan & figuring out what sort of jobs I could get etc. Pretty OTT considering I've never even visited once & speak little of the language.

It's quite often that I'll follow a few interests around a theme like this. Another example is going through a Nirvana phase, so naturally I started playing guitar a lot, learning music theory & read a biography on Kurt Cobain as well as listening to the music all the time.

These interests don't necessarily come out of nowhere. For instance , I've liked Studio Ghibli films for ages & always had a vague interest in Japanese. Occasionally though, a film or TV programme might start some completely new interest in me, although generally those don't last as long.

It's highly frustrating because I know I could get really good with the likes of guitar, or learn a language really well if I could stick with it constantly. Or get really fit if I stuck with exercising. There is also the element of wasted money on buying things related to these interests.

It's even a problem for getting a job / picking a career. I've got a law degree but by the end of it I had no interest in it anymore. That had evolved into the idea of tax advising but that never went anywhere. I considered going back to Uni to do computing. Then I started looking into jobs again & thought B2B sales was for me. Then I thought I really enjoyed physics at school & it was my real interest, since typically I was always better at science. So looked into going back to Uni for that but shock horror lost interest...

Pretty much resigned now to just getting some sort of administrative job & seeing if that opens any opportunities. I'm at a loss really though & it doesn't help me with the prospect of job hunting at all.