 Good afternoon, us be legion. Welcome back to another video with Mr. Tom Stanley from the Asperger's Growth Channel. Today we are going to be talking about special interests. What are they? Why do they happen? What do they help with? What are the benefits of having special interests? And what are the downsides all in the video? In a very serious tone. Go check the video out, goodbye. And I'll see you back in like 5 seconds. Good afternoon everybody, how are you doing? I decided to start off the video with a little bit of a dark intro, a little bit of a shady edgy boy intro from your old Tommy boy over here. I know he's always being creative, he's always rocking his brain for new things to do, new intros to make. And what an amazing, completely modest person he is. For anybody who doesn't know what special interests are, special interests is the name given to things that autistic people like to obsess about. Now when we talk about what counts as obsession, it's usually somewhat hyper-focus on a particular area for a particular amount of time that seems abnormal. So it basically means if you really like, I don't know, something like trains, you will spend an inordinate amount of time researching about trains, watching trains, going on trains, basically like an extreme hobby. Is it a bad thing? No, it's not. But there are some negatives to it, especially in childhood and some negatives in teenage hood and adult hood. Got you. I'm going to start off by giving you a little bit of a Thomas Turkey story time. I'm going to tell you about one of my many special interests that I've had over my lifetime. There's been many things ranging from Pokemon to Yu-Gi-Oh. Those things are pretty much similar to Taekwondo to Jimming to some dinosaur cards that I found in an arcade machine. And I was completely enthralled with a game that was basically Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yep, very cool. Anything from philosophical studies to scientific reading, scientific research papers are looking into self-help. There's been a lot of things that I have researched and obsessed over in my lifetime. And it's not always a single thing. It's usually at least three things that are quitewithstanding. First thing being a creative thing that I like, whether it be making music, which I haven't put any music out yet, because I'm still working on it. Art. I'm terrible at drawing, but I can make up some ideas. Or even making YouTube channel videos, which has been mostly the thing that I've done. Then you also have the academic side of things, like philosophy and science. The stuff that I like to read about, to further my knowledge. Those fit into a different category. And then sport. Whether it be learning some Brazilian dance martial art called Capoeira. Or spinning bow staffs in my front garden. Taekwondo, boxing, gymming, all of that kind of cool stuff that I like. They all fit into different categories. And there is one last category as well, because I've forgotten. Relaxing. Gaming. Chillin' out, basically. Anything that I like to do in my downtime. Usually it's very repetitive. And it could be anything from mining for virtual fish on RuneScape. Or liking to binge watch a series over and over again, continuously. And think about the ideas that I have about it. Those are pretty much all the categories that I have. And I sort of flip and change and flip, you know, bounce about between them. And try and weigh them up and see which one's most important. Try and fit everything in. And it can be difficult. But one of the main things that I found about having special interests is that you can be really good at it. You can have a lot of knowledge about one thing. But if something doesn't lie within your special interests, it's likely that your concentration and your motivation to do that thing, no matter how important it is, is going to be sufficiently low. Which is bad, of course. But in the world we live in today, getting good at something, getting passionate and excited and motivated to do something can turn into a job. Anything like a lot of special interests can turn into jobs. One of the negative effects of special interests as a child is that these activities provide a lot of escapism. Now, you could probably say that this is a good thing. A lot of autistic children will engage in solitary play. A very rigid solitary pray. Talking to Jesus. We like to do stuff on our own at a young age. We don't want to interact with people in general. This is what a lot of autistic children are like and what they do. And if something doesn't fit into their interests, we will probably pay little attention to it and feel very annoyed if you try and intrude on that interest. This can impede their ability to develop social skills at a young age. It also teaches them to become very detached from the world, get inside their own head and just live inside their own world. And that can come with a lot of negative influences. If you want to escape from reality at such a young age, just because of how stressful and sensory overloading and social everything has to be all the time, then that's going to carry on into teenagehood. And the detriments that you accumulate when you're younger, the social inabilities that you have when you're younger, are going to carry on into teenagehood. And when you hit puberty, all hell is going to break loose and the gates of hell are going to open. And it's going to be difficult. Escapism is one of the main reasons why we have special interests. The world can be a very unpredictable place. So if we have a routine, something that we like, something that we can feel concentrated on, something that gets us into the workflow and shuts off our brain and stops us from going in fort leaps and thinking about every single thing on the goddamn earth, then that is what we will do and we will escape. Usually escapism is a term for people who abuse drugs like alcohol or anything like that. And the reason for it is that life is not good enough or life is too painful that you feel like you have to go out of your mind, go out of reality just to focus in on something that you like and enjoy an experience. That's kind of the premise of escapism. There is a high rate of alcohol abuse and drug abuse in the autistic community. And, you know, partly that is due to, I mean, a lot is due to the bullying and the difficulties in socialising and getting relationships on employment. There's a lot of factors in that. Severe mental health conditions being, you know, the bulk of it. One of the most important things to recognise in this video is that if you have a special interest and you are younger or you're still living with your parents and they don't approve of it, for example, maybe you really enjoy analysing birds and your parents feel like you could spend your time a little bit more productively and go learn a skill or something, then you're going to feel bad because that's going to disrupt your life. That's an escape that you have that makes you feel like you can have control over yourself. If you're in an environment where your special interests are restricted and you don't have the ability to escape into your own world and you feel bad about doing it because, you know, your parents or your peers have made fun of you for it, then it's going to be very difficult not to try and find other escape routes and sometimes having those special interests that may be a little bit weird or quirky, which is not a bad thing, those words. Keeping those is a lot better, I believe. And I think having this term special interest over something that someone's really passionate in can concentrate on and get into a flow of work that is above average, it's a great thing. And it's something that all autistic people should be pleased about. Obviously some things, not obviously some special interests are not great and anything to do with legal stuff or anything, so I'm not condoning that stuff but, you know, you get me, you understand me. Thank you. Escapism is a powerful tool. Everybody does it. When people go after a long day at work and sit on the sofa and vegetable ate in front of a TV watching reality TV shows, that is a root of escapism. And I think a lot of the time having this, you know, label of special interest can put people off pursuing what they like or feeling embarrassed about talking about what they like. And I'm just here to say, keep doing it. Keep doing it and find a way that you can convert your skills that you learned to that special interest or even that special interest into a job. If you can find a job for yourself that allows you to engage in your special interest and do that for money, that's amazing because we don't always have the most amazing employment record. It's very difficult for a lot of autistic people to get jobs. So try your best without trying to convert your special interests into work. This video is by no means saying that just because you have a special interest, you're going to be interested in alcohol and drugs. I'm not trying to say that at all. It's more of a proclivity to wanting to escape from things. And I think if some people watch this video, if parents watch this video or even yourself, hopefully you will see the value in having a special interest and not feel like pursuing that and talking about it and finding a community around that is a bad thing. I know a lot of people who like to do or are interested in things that aren't particularly fun in any sort of fashion for me, but they like it and they like talking about it and it makes me happy to see them talking about it because I would never know anything about it and they have a whole book, an encyclopedia in their mind about something and that is an amazing thing to witness and it's great to learn from those types of people. So just to round up the video, special interests, yes. Sometimes it can be bad. Sometimes retreating into a special interest too much can be bad for your life. You may neglect other things in your life such as cleaning, cooking, washing yourself, going to work, just because you want to pursue something that you are very interested in. And yes, it is good to keep that, but you always need to make sure that you spend time on the other things that are important as well. Work on that stuff. Make sure that you use your special interests to escape. In small doses, don't spend the entire day doing something that, although you find it very fun, don't spend the entire day working on it if it's not going to bring you any sort of long-term goals. Just use it as your relaxation time. You know, when your parents or your spouse or your partner or your friends are watching TV. Go work on your special interests. If it relaxes you and you feel like you can escape from your body and sort of shut down your mind, go do it. If you find that you can balance yourself and your life and your special interests all together and you're completely fine with it. That's great. That's good. If not, maybe have a think about how you're planning your day out, how you're planning your day from day to day. And balance that stuff out. Go get it. Go. Special interests. Yeah. Thank you very much for watching, peeps. Social media accounts down there as huge. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Go check them out. 40-odd podcasts, of course. There's three episodes out now, so if you haven't watched it already or listened to it rather, go have a listen. See what you think. Tell me what you think. Tell me how I can improve it. So let me know what you want here. Do you find that you spend an inordinate amount of time researching about clownfish? Maybe you're interested in the fact that they are hermaphrodites and that they spend a lot of time switching between sexes depending on the amount of males and females in group. Maybe you find that interesting and quite honestly, you could develop that into a successful career in marine biology. Or you could spend a lot of time not doing that. Don't be that person. Get yourself a job with your special interest in mind and you will be wildly successful. Hope you enjoyed the video, peeps. See you in the next one. Pa-pow! Kitching. See you later.