Hyperfixation Harm: While to some hyperfixations seem like a positive way to gain knowledge in many different areas, they can be harmful.

It’s an endless, vicious cycle — you’re introduced to a topic and eventually spend every waking moment thinking about or consuming information about that topic. Then one day you suddenly wake up from the daze and it’s gone, leaving an empty pit inside your brain. The cycle of hyperfixation can span from a few days to a few years.

A hyperfixation is the intense focus on one thing with the exclusion of everything else, according to Oxford Specialist Tutors. While almost everyone has experienced bouts of hyperfocus in their lives, people with ADHD, schizophrenia or those who are on the Autism Spectrum are more likely to experience hyperfixation than neurotypical people. 

There’s no perfect answer as to why people hyperfixate in the degrading ways they do or why some neurotypical people can hyperfixate as well. The research in this field is severely lacking, with hyperfocus even being glossed over in the DSM-IV, the manual that provides the framework for classifying disorders, according to Vast Diversity. This leaves many who experience hyperfixations confused as to why they can feel depression when they slip away, or why they even felt too connected to a random topic in the first place.

This lack of research could be due to how different the state of hyperfocus is for each individual. Hyperfixation can look like a teenager being so engrossed in a task that they can’t hear their friend right next to them call their own name. It can look like a person of any generation being so interested in one topic that they push off everything just to learn about it. 

This might sound great — hyperfixation is sometimes known as the “superpower” of ADHD/Autism. Why would anyone not want to have this motivation to learn something new, or to relearn something old? The reality of hyperfixations is that they can be extremely detrimental to the individual they latch onto. 

I’ve hyperfixated on incomparable topics: Watching “I, Tonya” multiple times a day, only talking about astrology for three months, explaining Dissociative Identity Disorder to my friends for five car rides in a row and focusing almost all of my media intake on the same commentator for a year. 

These are all hyperfixations that I’ve lost. And while I could give you a detailed summary on each of these topics — and believe me, I have — I don’t necessarily want to. After dedicating such a large portion of my media consumption to these interests, at one point or another they all of the sudden left the forefront of my brain. It can feel like an immense waste of my time when I do absolutely nothing with the information I’ve learned. 

Throughout my life, I’ve used the intense consumption of one topic as a coping mechanism for me to escape from reality. In the moment, it’s an escape, but once the fixation is gone it’s like being hit with the realization of your surroundings.

The feeling of emptiness when they seem to suddenly perish is indescribable. It’s left me for days questioning myself, my personality and my interests. I don’t even know why they suddenly leave, and I probably never will.

Hyperfixations have left me to sit staring at the Google Form asking me to decide on one topic for many extended research essays, after I’ve thought about my interests and realized that they’re no longer turning the levers in my brain. 

They can be degrading to personalities to say the least — as when they leave, you feel like nobody but a blank slate — but they can also be dangerously obsessive. Oftentimes, hyperfixations land on celebrities or internet personalities such as YouTubers, streamers or influencers — causing an extreme tie to a dynamic person. This is what can lead to toxic fandoms online, feeling a pain in the chest when someone makes fun of the personality you’re fixated on and can lead to depression or anxiety when said person inevitably makes a mistake. 

Don’t get me wrong — hyperfixations can be positive at times, providing a platform to learn for types of people that can often struggle with focus. However, what can be portrayed as a “super power” has the potential to damage the person which the hyperfixation feeds on.