When we find something we love, it’s normal to want to devote your time to it. But when it becomes everything to you, and every other responsibility and interest disappears because of it, be it coursework, household chores or even your own wellbeing, it reaches the point of concern. In neurodivergent people, this is known as a hyperfixation, an uncontrollable interest that causes intense enjoyment and stress.
On the surface, hyperfixations seem extremely similar to obsessions. They share traits such as tunnel vision and increasing anxiety when unable to engage with the fixation or obsession in question.
However, hyperfixations are a sign of neurodivergence marked by extremes, and they’re often misunderstood.
Hyperfixations and Hyperfocus
Hyperfixations and hyperfocus go hand in hand. As its name suggests, hyperfocus describes moments of extreme focus, where time passes by in the blink of an eye, the problems with the story you’re writing or the fantasy game you’re playing slot into place with ease and nothing else seems to exist.
While hyperfixations are seen purely for their creative elements, they can include hobbies and interests of any kind, including:
- A tv show or film.
- Books, from a niche novella to an author’s entire work.
- Sports, whether competitive or purely for fun.
- Specific animals.
- Creative hobbies such as writing, playing an instrument, drawing, painting, or anything in between.
- A particular genre of music or artist.
Unlike with obsessions, hyperfixations are often accompanied by signs of neurodivergence. With ADHD, this can mean having difficulty with time management, impulse control, managing emotions and sensory issues. While this changes slightly for hyperactive, inattentive or combined ADHD, it increases the stress involved in hyperfixations nevertheless.
As for autism, it includes sensitivity to sound, missing social cues and an abnormal sense of empathy or justice. Keep in mind that these signs can overlap, and many people can have both disorders, making differentiation difficult.
With ADHD in particular, hyperfixations often recede and return in the blink of an eye. They tend to last in short bursts. People with autism often find that their hyperfixations last longer, but the intensities are often similar in both disorders.
Balancing Responsibilities
When it comes to hyperfixations, balancing responsibilities can be the hardest part. A hyperfixation’s intensity turns it into a double-edged sword, much more than people seem to realise.
When managing hyperfixations, keep in mind:
- Forcing yourself to ignore the fixation often makes things worse. Instead, allow yourself to engage with it while also making time, however small, for responsibilities like a job or education.
- You won’t always be able to spend as much time on the fixation as you like. This often leads to emotional outbursts, and coping with them is another challenge of its own. If you’re the type to snap and shout at the people around you, even if they just happened to be in the line of fire and aren’t to blame, try to keep your distance and let yourself go somewhere else to calm down. If time seems to be running away from you, it can help to spend a little bit of time on your hyperfixation, even if that means taking ten minutes to explain the trauma of your favourite character to a stranger on the internet.
- Even when you try your best to explain it, your hyperfixation might not make sense to other people. If they walk away shaking their head, don’t take it heart. Trying to make other people see things from your perspective can be like chasing a ferris wheel.
So many people see hyperfocus as a superpower without considering the ramifications to the person involved, including the neglect of their health.
Make sure that you set aside time to eat and drink, even if that means setting alarms every few hours. Keep a glass of water within your line of sight, and try to fit self-care into your routine to help you commit to it. Start with something small, like using a face mask in the morning or having some of your favourite snacks, and it’ll become easier after a while.
If you shave off sleep in order to practice for a moment longer, only to stay awake until 4 am on a weekday, try to set a goal for yourself: play one last song, then let yourself sleep.
While it might not seem like a problem at first, your tiredness will build to the point where even the guitar you love so much feels impossible to reach for. Let yourself take a break: you’ll thank yourself for it eventually.
Losing Control
Often, we find ourselves clinging to the person we want to be, even if it becomes a distant dream. When a hyperfixation fades, it can feel like you’re losing part of yourself. Knowing how to face that version of yourself, to say, “things will never be the same again,” takes more than a day’s worth of effort.
As dramatic as it seems, when a hyperfixation ends, it feels like losing a childhood treasure, watching something important to you reduced to a memory. Hyperfocus becomes difficult. Sometimes, you might start to wonder if it was a dream all along, and listlessness haunts you in its place.
You spend weeks longing for the same feeling you once had, on a ferris wheel that stops and stalls every time it starts to ascend.
As much as you might not want to admit it, when your passion fades, the best thing to do is to take some time away from it. When you spend so long fixated on a single interest, it’s only natural that your enjoyment or focus will start to suffer. Forcing yourself to return to it, to the pages of a book full of memories just out of reach, will only hurt you in the long run.
In these moments, no matter how much your mind races, try to take a moment to think. What was it that made you squirm in your seat until you could pick up a paintbrush again, or cry at every hardship of the characters whose lives seemed to be entangled with your own? Maybe having a song on loop helped you focus, or sitting back in bed made you feel more listless than you thought possible.
Things might not return to how they were before, but it still meant something to you. Having something to devote yourself to gives you purpose. And someday, you’ll find it again, a hyperfixation that means everything to you.
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