Fixating on former crushes...
18 Nov 2007, 8:33 am
I'm very OCD in this respect, and was wondering if anyone had any advice regarding breaking out of this consistent compulsion, among others of course. Thanks to the internetz, and not being brain dead myself, I've been able to track down all of the girls I've had large crushes on in the last decade or so, and periodically check their profiles on whatever site (mostly my5p4c3), largely to see if I can find any additional information about them. Not in the conventional "I'm a stalker" sense, since if anything I have/would avoid/ed these people and I really don't care much about where they are, but I am interested in information about who they are, although it's admittedly nearly unpossible to figure anything useful about someone from a personal profile on a website.
Everything else I do is to a greater or lesser extent periodic, and I have an intense dislike for doing tasks I haven't planned on, so... Since I was thinking this behavior, especially focusing on people who I for the most part hardly knew in the first place, is a road block to being happy and finding something engaging and reasonably gainful to do.
18 Nov 2007, 5:18 pm
I'm not so sure that is OCD behavior. However you do sound like a female friend of mine who I think has AS. Well except she doesn't keep track of people she was in love with. She just seems stuck on a certain time period which happens to be the time period in which we worked at the same place and got acquainted. We both moved out of state but she keeps track via the Internet of our former co-workers, customers and their children. I all the time get email updates from her that so & so's kid got arrested, somebody we knew got married, died or has a UTube video. She just reminds me of an old record with a scratch on it and the needle gets stuck in the same place everytime you play it.
I agree with you this behavior in itself is not stalking. However, its not healthy either. I certainly wouldn't tell friends or word may get around that you are a scary, weirdo stalker guy and that won't help any future attempts at dating. I really think you need to see a psychologist over this one. I don't know any other way to get past it unless you can just push yourself to quit doing this behavior. It's not healthy and is harmful to your psyche.
18 Nov 2007, 7:15 pm
omg yes, i have like 3 girls that i major crushes on and i check their myspace profiles like 10 times every day just hoping that they put up a new picture or wrote a new blog or something, I'm pretty much obsessed with them, although it has nothing to do with ocd even though i do have ocd
18 Nov 2007, 7:23 pm
It may be more of a social transition issue. The stronger a relationship is, the harder it is to move on after it's over. Easy-to-get information doesn't make it any easier. If you couldn't look these people up easily, day-to-day living would erode the habit of thinking about them as much.
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20 Nov 2007, 4:25 pm
After reading a few papers, I'm not entirely sure it's as negative as I thought it was initially/has been suggested. According to some research I've stumbled across, ASDs seem akin to learning disabilities in that certain differences at birth lead to a compounding disadvantage when it comes to social learning as we get older. It seems like there is also evidence that suggests the ASD may have a skewed set of fear responses so to speak,
The high levels of anxiety that many patients with AS and AD experience (Martin et al., in press), and the avoidance of eye contact to reduce anxiety and arousal (Hutt & Ounsted, 1966) may be related to the amygdala-medial PFC circuit. If the amygdala is “stuck on” because of inadequate medial prefrontal input, a continuous tonic, anxiety producing output from the central nucleus of the amygdala directly to autonomic centers of the hypothalamus will result. In this state, although arousal and general anxiety may be elevated, the individual is unable to mount a normal emotional response to fear and other emotional stimuli because the circuit may be already nearly fully activated (LeDoux et al., 1982). This model would explain the inability of the affected individual to appreciate and respond to new social-emotional events.
There's also the common notion of differences in monoamine production, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, when attracted to someone. Given that I tend to be more depressive when attracted to someone I believe that simulating this may allow me to mediate the conditions the occur I've had problems with in the past during these circumstances. I.e. this may help me train to minimize the influence of factors I had trouble dealing with in the past.
I know this may sound like I'm rationalizing these behaviors, and I may be, but according to the literature it seems that ASD are primarily social learning disorders involving emotional processing and reactions. If I can manage to mediate my emotional reactions wrt social events, I can take steps toward learning what I've had trouble picking up all my life.
P.S. I meant OCD in the slang, not clinical sense, as in repetitive behaviors. Although given how much I interchange the two I imagine what I write is as clear as mud.
09 Dec 2007, 12:53 am
I have a fixation on a woman I had a crush on when I was about 14-15 years old. I went to high school with her, and after she and I graduated from high school, I never saw her again.
Her name was Melissa, and she was the sweetest, funniest, nicest young woman I had ever known. Rather than try to look her up online, I use her as a model for anyone I am interested in dating.
Tim
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