Does ASD obsessiveness differ from non ASD obsessiveness?

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How much of a part does compulsion play in obsessive and repetitive behaviour;would you say? I have this tendency to want to repetitively do certain things. What it is can wax and wane over time. Currently I'm 'obsessed' with Slobrain. It can sometimes be something even more trivial like rolling dice again and again while writing down the results. It's something I've been hesitant to talk about due to thinking I'll get a 'piss-take' kind of response, and because I'm not sure it fits in with autistic repetitive behaviours.

If it doesn't harm you, or harm anybody else, people shouldn't be bothered by what you do.

As for your question: I believe it depends on the person. I believe there is ASD-type obsessiveness and "regular" obsessiveness. I get the impression that they overlap, so it's difficult to tell which type of "obsessiveness" it is.

If you must have wheat pasta to eat, for example, and flail away if you get the regular pasta, that seems to me to be an example of "ASD"-type obsessiveness. A strong reliance on "sameness."

Thanks kraftiekortie . 'Sameness' broadly speaking is a good way of describing my lifestyle. However I do my best not to kick up a fuss when things veer from what I ideally want. That would be disrespectful to those who do their best for me.

I get deeply absorbed in things, but I know somebody who has OCD and it seemed to me it was a very different thing. His obsessions were very loaded with anxiety - feverishly checking the car doors and windows to make sure they were safely locked, that sort of thing. My own obsessiveness is calmer than that - there's a compulsive element but I rarely notice any anxiety about it. If I can't have things the way I want them, I feel frustrated, but hardly ever to the point where I'd be in a terrible mood. So for example I'm "obsessional" about recording music, but when circumstances don't allow me to indulge in that, it's only mildly annoying. Similarly, I don't like to see pictures not hung quite level, but if I can't easily set them straight, I don't worry about it much.

Autism and OCD are "co-morbidities". I think autism begs being obsessive about certain interests, but OCD is really its own thing and, as noted above, is related to anxiety.

I know I am autistic. I also know that from age 10 I have only been able to eat cookies (Oreo, Nutter Butter, Chips Ahoy) four at a time; I will eat two on the occasions where there are two or three left, but never an odd number. That to me is plain old OCD.

I read some article some time ago, maybe I find it again. It highlighted a difference:
Autistic rituals and special interests make a person calmer and happier - OCD obsessions don't.

The asperger's book I'm reading right now lists OCD-type as a subtype of AS.

Thank you all for your replies. My current Slobrain interest/obsession doesn't make me anxious but can make me frustrated with myself.

This is maybe not in the same vein, or a little left field , I collect scores from tests. When young and living in San Francisco, in the mid 1960s,I collected Topps baseball cards. I can't remember what I collected in the the 1970s. Between 1982 to about 1990 I bought a lot of singles/lps/cassettes/CDs. I'd make cassettes based on genre/year/theme best of etc. In 1996 I got online and collected mp3s of singles and albums. I mainly used Limewire,or at least that's the one that sticks in my mind most.I had quite a large collection of songs on an external hard drive. I was absolutely gutted when it malfunctioned and I lost all that music.

Nowadays, as well as the tests previously mentioned,I'm also into the DNA side of genealogy- cousin matching,ethnicity. I've tested with several companies. My primary aim going back 30+ years, and that of my father for even longer,
has been to try and connect our branch of our surname to those from Cornwall. To use a police analogy we've gathered together a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that provides absolute proof of a connection.

Quite early on doing the DNA side of things I got a same surname yDNA match.That was in 2011.My surname is quite rare. Unfortunately he's never upgraded his results or taken an autosomal test(cousin matching). I've even offered to pay for it.

Youre a Brit, but at one time you collected "baseball cards"?

Thats interesting.

Spent part of this morning reducing my 10 sets of 20 attempts at slobrain down to 1x10 attempts.Could've cherry picked the best results but decided on using the earliest attempt from each set instead.




Not the best, but not half bad for a 65 year old either.

^ I wouldn't know where to start with that one.

[/quote]
I used to collect vinyls, and tapes, and CDs, and would make mix tapes.

Since you like "throwing dice" maybe you should check out the "Monty Hall Problem". And simulate it with dice, and then report to us your results.[/quote]

I put the Monty Hall problem to a group of friends and acquaintances on line about 20 years ago. Most of them took a bit of explaining to before they acknowledged the correct answer. One of them, a Ph.D in Economics, absolutely refused to accept it. To him, the answer was "basic algebra", which he never explained. Looking back, he might have been autistic.