sup, this isn't so much a problem i'm seeking help with as a weird brain thing i'm curious if other people have/want to complain about. so, i have an anxiety disorder, and also am.. sort of obsessive about fandom sometimes. ever since i was a kid, i periodically get REALLY into a thing and talk constantly about it to anyone who will listen and often try to get other people to watch/read/listen to the thing. when i was little i would watch movies with people after i'd watched them myself, and stare at the other person while they watched the movie to see their reactions. i also got my dad to play videogames i liked while sitting next to him asking him how he felt about them. i've... toned this down significantly now that i'm not, like, eleven! i'm much better at actually noticing(/caring) about whether people enjoy the things i'm trying to show them, and at not overwhelming them with ALL MY OPINIONS ABOUT (THING), and so on. but 1) it's still there!!! 2) apparently the way i toned it down just involved becoming ashamed of it?? so now my cycle of getting REALLY into a thing goes something like this: get excited about thing get SO EXCITED about thing recommend thing to others, talk non-stop about thing to others, etc. get to stage of confused excitement/nervousness/shame where i want to see ALL THE CONTENT. this also intersects with vaguely obsessive tendencies to make me want to be sure i see every individual thing. become overwhelmed by the amount of content. get ashamed about the fervor with which i liked the thing, because strong feelings are bad?? the thing recedes into the background and i am vaguely perplexed by how much i liked it and the enthusiasm with which i recommended it to people get excited about thing -- and so on. 5. can take the form of, say, being stressed at the idea of looking at AO3 comments or a thread on kintsugi for a thing i like because Oh God There Are So Many Things And If I Start I'll Have To Read All Of Them, or [as just happened] going into the tumblr tag for a thing, becoming overwhelmed with anxiety/excitement, and having to close the tumblr tag. this is the dumbest. aauuugh. brain, i'm sure the world won't end if you look at lemony snicket #content on tumblr. just chill the fuck.
(Relatedly (?), I've been away from Tumblr for a few weeks because it was Politics Hell and making me too anxious to function, and today I considered looking at it again and then became overwhelmed at all the cool stuff I probably missed and how I would have to backread all the blogs I like. But.. that's a sort of separate thing.)
AAAAAAA today i was looking at a good ASOUE blog & then became overwhelmed by some combination of 1) oh god there's so much content 2) if i read much further i have to commit to reading the entire blog (?) 3) oh no what if they have a moral philosophy that conflicts with mine and would hate me and became alarmed and had to go elsewhere and now i'm STILL ANXIOUS hey brain... are you good?? hey brain can you fucking chill for five seconds PLEASE
I have an anxiety disorder too, and 4, 5, and 6 are exactly what happens to me when I get into something (I used to try to recommend things to people, but, uh, that got sort of squashed out of me and now I'm weirdly protective and secretive about my interests instead, but that's a whole different issue). It's a total pain. :/ My strategy thus far has pretty much just been to take a break from seeking out content when I start to feel overwhelmed and go back to it when the brainbugs have calmed down a little.
I've got a whole buncha shit and most of it is shit my various professionals have sorta handwaved at rather than definitive diagnoses, but I think I get something like this -- not so much the shame side, but the being overwhelmed by the amount of content and how much I enjoy it, and having to backbutton out of stuff I'm looking at because it's just too much, that sounds reeeaaaal familiar. In my case, my initial thought is it's possibly ADHD and/or emotional regulation issues, but anxiety could definitely be involved. It's a gigantic pain in the ass because it's not like stretching out the cool thing to savour it; it's more like sitting outside the coffee shop early in the morning waiting for it to open, and there's nothing on the door to tell you when that'll be.
Anxiety and ADHD here, I definitely do the *stares at people to see if they like the thing as much as I do!!* thing. I know in my case, poor impulse control + excitement = babbling about thing whether person wants to hear about it or not, and then the anxiety comes from the shame of oversharing/realizing I have way more enthusiasm than the other person... Either way, witnessed.
