Fixations and Obsessions

I read a book recently called Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love From His Extraordinary Son by Tom Fields-Meyers.

One part that stuck with me was the idea of obsessions. Ezra, who is autistic, had obsessions that fully involved his thoughts and behaviors. And just as quickly as they arrived, they would disappear and be replaced by a new obsession. First, it was dinosaurs, then animals, then the color red, then The Simpsons, then Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I see this all the time in the people I work with and with my daughter, S. They have an intense interest that they want to talk about or do often to the exclusion of other activities.  I have a touch of this myself. I suppose we could all look at ourselves as on a spectrum of obsessions. Where do these obsessions or intense interests come from? I'm not sure. We like what we like for no explicable reason and sometimes we become entirely immersed. Some of us can control these fixations and some of us have a harder time of it. Sometimes our obsessions take control of us.

What Ezra's father did was rather than try to discourage Ezra from his obsessions - even though they caused him and others to be distressed at times - he supported and encouraged them. When Ezra went through a Gumby phase, his father looked online to try to purchase every available Gumby character and item. The author decided that Ezra's obsessions were an opportunity to build a bond with his son. This helped Ezra to see that another human cared about what he cared about.

What if we encouraged or supported people with intellectual disabilities in their obsession? Well, realistically, sometimes their fixations get them into a little trouble and they benefit from some help with limits. Sometimes the obsessions keep them from living any type of meaningful, social life. But in some cases, are there ways we could encourage their obsessions in a healthy manner? Maybe with support, their obsessions would become hobbies that would be fulfilling to them. Maybe we would make a stronger connection with them. If they need limits set, perhaps we could schedule some time in for their obsession rather than just saying no because it gets them into trouble.

I think it likely that if someone seemingly arbitrarily tried to control or stop my fixations, my obsession toward them would increase and therefore become more problematic.

S has fixations over people. This is a tough one because people should not be encouraged to look at other people as if they are objects, and S has done this since she was a small child. The first inclination of support staff years ago was to stop it by telling her no. Fixations don't easily stop by saying no. So then they tried to see if they could avoid the situations where she would see the objects of her obsessions. Fixations always find a way, though, and the intensity for her to seek these people out became stronger despite people trying to stop the behavior. So then someone suggested using her fixations over people as a learning opportunity as to what is socially-acceptable. Rather than stop her, they now teach her the acceptable limits of how we treat others. Rather than having her avoid the situations, she has now learned how to greet people, how to hang out with others in social settings, how to let them live their own lives, and how to accept that they have relationships with others. This is an imperfect process and S still has her difficult days because of her obsessions. Things are a bit better, though, since including her in the limit-setting.