Special interests vs. obsessions

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When you have both ASD and OCD, it’s sometimes hard to tell when a special interest ends and an obsession begins.

Example. One of my special interests, going back to childhood, is song structure. Every time I hear a song, I break it down in my mind into its constituent parts: verses, chorus, bridge, instrumental break, intro, coda, and so on.

The trouble is that whenever I hear a song and my mind wanders so that I forget to do this analysis (which is often the case these days), I feel like I haven’t “heard” the song and that I need to listen to it again while focused on those things. Even if it’s a decades-old song I’ve heard a zillion times and know like the back of my hand. My urge to hear it again isn’t that I don’t know the information already—it’s that, for me, the experience of hearing it again isn’t complete for me unless I’m mentally examining those things along the way.

Finding solace in the details of one’s special interests is part of ASD, but the compulsive, ritualistic need to go back over something even when doing so no longer serves any purpose—and especially the lack of feeling “whole” without it—is where OCD starts to rear its head.

Anyone else have any special interests where you see a more obsessive-compulsive pattern start to emerge?

The main distinction I've read about is that OCD obsessions are more like anxiety based and is initiated by anxiety.
And it is strongly egodystonic. It doesn't align with who they are, who they thought they are, who they want to be, and have strong distress reactions because of it.

Special interests aligns with your interest and being deprived from it could cause anxiety. It is egosyntonic -- it aligns with one's idea of who they are, who they want to be, etc.

Special interests and fixations are essentially have the same impulse -- yet fixations do not align with one's own interest, and is more of the brain's stimulation seeking/coping or defense mechanism via distraction/ways it attempts to desensitize/avoid/'solve' an issue/quell uncertainty/etc...
The neutral cases, it's more like stimming. In worse cases, it can look like ADHD, and can very much mimic OCD, and one would be prone to anxiety.

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Stimming is self-stimulating self regulatory behavior.
Technically, everyone stims. NTs do it in a more subtle and socially acceptable way.

Just that autistics stims in a notable way.

Usually regulating means to quell discomfort, helps with processing thoughts and emotions, aides maintaining focus and attention, etc...
A dysregulated system causes more intense stims because it's an indication of a more immediate need.

A case of not knowing why one has an urge to stim usually have issues with processing interoceptive senses, particularly sensory profiles with hyposensitivity to internal states.
Usually struggling to process interoception is a common indication of alexithymia, which is common in autism.

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