#healthy vs unhealthy obsession from what ive seen and experienced is what defines a hyperfixation

[jinxed-venting]

*Just as a note, most of what I'm going to say is targeted at people in the notes who apparently don't know what a hyperfixation is. "Hyperfixation" refers to a medical symptom of autism and ADHD (which are neurodevelopmental disorders), plus some mental health disorders. Hyperfixations aren't healthy, and frankly people need to stop acting like they are. Just because I have sideblogs for my hyperfixations doesn't mean they don't negatively impact my life. Hyperfixations aren't "I eat, breathe, and sleep this shit," hyperfixations are debilitating obsessions that interfere with your life and sometimes even your ability to function as a human being.

Hyperfixations, as a symptom of a neurodevelopmental disorder, aren't healthy. They're an obsessive fixation on a specific thing, whether that thing is good or bad.

I've lost sleep over hyperfixations. I've hyperfixated on plane crashes caused by bombs (Pan Am Flight 103 for example), and did so while I had family taking a plane to travel out of state which absolutely demolished my mental health. I've forgotten to eat, drink, or even go to the bathroom because I got so hyperfixated on something.

You're acting like hyperfixations are inherently healthy, which they aren't and never are, it's why they're a symptom of a disorder.

In addition to all this, I personally find it incredibly difficult not to ramble to anyone who will listen about my special interests and hyperfixations. If someone will listen, I will talk their ear off about zoology, Sonic, medicine, and whatever else I feel like talking about. Shit like this makes me self-conscious about that, to the point I don't even share those interests with my dad because he commented on it once when I was like 12. Yeah, explain that some aspects of a hyperfixation or special interest are unhealthy, but don't fucking tell someone "stop hyperfixating on this" or "stop talking about this" because it causes lasting issues. You should've told this individual the issues with how they were talking about this person, not told them to quit a hyperfixation???

Additionally, to anyone who thinks this sounds like a regular crush: I've had hyperfixations function like this. I ditched Sonic for a year after two years of hyperfixating on it off and on because the fandom was toxic and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. Additionally, I've had crushes, and maybe it's just because I'm more introverted but I don't talk about my crushes like that. As someone who's experienced multiple hyperfixations in my 20 years of life, Anon is accurately referring to their classmate's fixation as a hyperfixation. The fixation being on a person doesn't make it not a hyperfixation and "crush" and "hyperfixation" aren't mutually exclusive, fuck off.

Also, everyone in the notes acting like a hyperfixation needs to be "okay" or "morally right" (including the person who submitted the original post) is ableist. That's not how hyperfixations work. Autistic people don't control our hyperfixations (or special interests for that matter). Acting like autistic people or people with ADHD can just stop hyperfixating on something at the drop of a hat is ableist because that's not how hyperfixations fucking work. Did you miss the "hyper" at the beginning of the word hyperfixation??? Hyperfixations are obsessive and not easily broken, that's why they're considered a fucking symptom. The person Anon is referring to didn't have the person they were fixated on get mad and then they stopped, Anon confronted them which made them upset, then the person they were fixated on got mad and they stopped. It wasn't a sudden thing and hyperfixations aren't always long-term in the first place.

In addition to ALL of this, we don't know how much this hyperfixation the person Anon is talking about had negatively affected their life, but it sounds like it negatively impacted it significantly. THAT'S A HYPERFIXATION.

In conclusion, if you're one of the people who think hyperfixations and crushes are mutually exclusive, or you think hyperfixations should always be healthy and morally okay:

Aita for telling an autistic classmate to stop having a certain hyperfixation?

This happened awhile ago but I'm curious.

A bit of a background: They're autistic and in the year below me, I'm not autistic but neurodivergent nonetheless (my diagnosis isn't important here), so this isn't a case of a neurotypical person getting fed up with an autistic person's hyperixations. You see, their hyperfixation was on a specific person, a friend of theirs. They'd talk about this person 24/7, everything was about that person. Which, would be fine and all, if the way my classmate talked about the person wasn't incredibly objectifying. It was all about how the person was so attractive, how my classmate just wanted to steal them away, etc. I was right in the middle of a toxic, codependent friendship with someone who claimed I was his hyperfixation (meaning he was romantically and sexually obsessed with me despite me already being in a romantic relationship). The way my classmate was talking about their person reminded me of how my "friend" would talk about me, and I knew it made me feel like an object with no worth outside of that friend. I didn't want that for this person, and I didn't want my classmate to hurt them by talking about them this way. So I told them, essentially, that they need to quit having that hyperfixation because it will make the person you're obsessed with feel like crap. I didn't mention why I felt this way or anything, they didn't ask- simply responding "Oh." My classmate seemed really upset about what I said, but continued talking about the person nonstop until they did something that made my classmate mad, which caused the hyperfixation to go away. I don't talk to the classmate anymore since they moved and we don't have much in common anymore or anything.

My classmate had never hurt anyone as far as I knew, and I'm fully aware I could've been projecting my experience. Whatever the verdict is won't really change much, but it might help me approach situations like this better.

So, aita?

What are these acronyms?