Age regression / age inappropriate behaviour

I don't know enflores, but I think you should carry on removing yourself from situations where you risk being overwhelmed, to me that sounds the start of self care. There's just too many people who want to tell you things with no regard as to whether you wish to engage. Could you have some sort of safe wordwith your family? Just a word like saxaphone, or elephants that means you need to be left in peace for a bit?

I get called childish and I am sitting there thinking “How is me taking myself out of a situation or conversation that is overstimulating me being childish?” I don’t like blowing up on people and have been pushed very hard by an abusive family so I remove myself from the situation by walking away and go walk around and talk then be there possibly get overwhelmed and say something that I don’t mean to or that could be misunderstood.

JuniperFromGallifrey said:

Right! which is why I added that: Autistics mature slower than non-autistic peers specifically due to how humans 'mature into civilised beings'. I say this with quotes because mature and civilised are sometimes wobbly words with different ideas as to what they mean.

I have dificulty with the notion of adults being 'civalised.' I would probably say more 'domestiated,' like pets, by sociaty.

JuniperFromGallifrey said:

Freud, Jung, Lacan and so on all noted that Autistics weren't creating Defence Mechanisms.

And since I don't know that much about freud, jung or lacan I didn't really understand any of what you said. my background reading in psycology has all been cognitive psychology (post 1960s). None of the old stuff beyond very limited history of psycology stuff.

Peter said:

some degree of age incongruity arising out of autism

Right! which is why I added that: Autistics mature slower than non-autistic peers specifically due to how humans 'mature into civilised beings'. I say this with quotes because mature and civilised are sometimes wobbly words with different ideas as to what they mean.

JuniperFromGallifrey said:

It does seem to me the theory suggested in the early-mid last century that Autistics don't create Defence Mechanisms because we aren't wired to pick up social-linguistics is water tight. This accounts for language differences. a lack of desensitisation (thought the physical senses are coupled with other mechanisms) and how one matures. 

Freud, Jung, Lacan and so on all noted that Autistics weren't creating Defence Mechanisms. these are different than Survival Mode (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). Defence Mechanisms are a way of dealing with the social contracts explicitly understood within NeuroTypical "Language". Basically, the idea here is that NTs are subconsciously traumatised into adulthood and further repress this. It's part of what breeds that competitive 'nature', hierarchal systems. It's been suggested it's linked to the ability to dull the senses. So one might have a hard time catching immediate details of their surroundings and what is impacting them, because they'll internalise it leaving them with a feeling and rely on these much more. 

Sublimation, a main Defence Mechanism is a human engagement with turning momentary desires into 'appropriate behaviour". And this is partly why ABA is so heavily focused on behaviour. In NT speak, if you give someone a behaviour to latch onto they can associate with the feeling, so next time the same urge is present, they'll have the 'choreographed' response to tunnel that energy into. But these are really deep dives into clinical psychoanalysis. 

Technically, with Typical peers, what appears 'mature' on the surface might have a lot of immaturity too far out of one's conscious to recognise. 

That was me at uni, I was hanging out with people younger than my kids, I was known as Aunty... and they often came to me for advice or reassurance, I found that a lot of mums were comforted by having another mum around. I was in my 40's when I went to uni, I've always had friends who of different ages and I've loved spending time with my very young friends, small children have such a refreshing and unique way of seeing the world. Older friends have years of experience, knowlege and wisdom to share, how can any of this be wrong or abnormal?

I wonder if it's a middle class white English problem? Other culture's have all ages mixing, Indians and Afro-Carribean especially. If you step out of the mainstream white British culture and look at some of the sub-groups then you get a much wider age range and much wider range of everything really and I've found such groups often more inclusive and welcoming.

These days ages mixing, at least as peers, is viewed as a bit weird/ subversive. For example the very existence of 18-30 holidays. Ask the average 18 y/o when is too old to go clubbing most say between 30-35.

and I’m not talking exclusively about trauma. I’m talking about some degree of age incongruity arising out of autism. I’m just using trauma as an example of how mental health isSue’s can give rise to age ‘inappropriate’ behaviour.

Hypothetical example. A mature student turns up to the student pub crawl in fancy dress acting as loud and rowdy as all the young foke. Or a 35y/o guy turns up at the local kpop fan club which is mostly girls 18-21 and is keen to join the dance class.

That was my interpretation, but I think this post is something that has to do with trauma - emotional or physical.

What's wrong with spending time with people of different age groups? I thought it was healty to mix with a wide range of people, traditional communities are all based around all ages mixing together, is this another case of normal behaviour being pathologised?

There is a word for what you're talking about & I heard it in a seminar 20+ years ago, something to do with how Trauma can impact a part of us which will stop growing. The doctor discussing this made an analogy to walking around with a limb that stopped growing at a young age. This impacts a part of our personality and now neurology discusses how we can rewire the brain in some situations, but it takes mental and emotional work. 

A brain trauma as you described will have these consequences. We see this with Alzheimer's patients who might be old but due to deterioration of they brain end up with the 'emotional' age of someone much younger. 

The discussion I was listening to was about healing, transitioning through forgiving others (regardless of whether or not you reconcile or if they think they need it) and allowing that time in history to be immersed in a type of healing, often it's a spiritual journey of sorts. 

As for autistic being impacted with a greater intensity than our non-autistic peers, it's not always worse. Sometimes having a good ability to calculate what really happened is a better starting point than that reality being locked into a consciousness deeply beyond reach, because one will become worse for wear if they don't really know what they have to navigate and with NTs it's good to remember, they're often programmed to turn unacceptable thoughts, feelings, desires into 'civilised' behaviour, often this can be self or other sabotaging with trauma yet to be sorted. 

It's all to do with trauma, though. This is a good thing to discuss methinks :) 

I remember being told to grow up and when I did something grown up being told off for not being old enough, I just think that as a child you can't win.

My regressive behaviour is very much in private. I have found the last year , or so, very difficult, lots of anxiety and now going through lots of change like, relocating to a new area after living in this house for 18 years. In private I regress to myself aged about 8-10. I have got back into Lego in a big way but only Lego from that era of 1978-85, none of the new stuff. My inner child is playing alone in the corner with Lego, well not playing really just building and setting things in diffirent configurations as playing would need imagination that I do not have.

Rob

I guess I was thinking about age regression among adults. Not kids acting immature for their age which I think is more widely accepted 

Many parents firmly believe and maintain that ultra strict discipline right from the start and giving children an upbringing that is as harsh as possible, forcing them to grow up in the ways that they want, prevents all tendency towards inappropriate behaviour, which they believe must always be punished most severely, including that of age regression, as they believe that severity and a harsh upbringing for children is for their own good in the long run 

Okay? And do you think this relates to age regression somehow? Do you think perhaps you displayed some age regression because of these events? Not clear exactly what point you’re trying to make.

As a gay man myself this is probably relevant in some respects, but also, growing up in a Catholic background, being constantly commanded as a child to grow up, often while getting corporal punishment for being bullied in school - in later years, some people use a diagnosis of autism to dismiss, disregard, invalidate and discredit, anything that someone with autism says as irrelevant, inappropriate and as nonsense, in the belief that the only way to manage autism is ultra strict discipline and screaming commands at an autistic person to be silent, just like a USMC drill Seargent 

I think we're talking about 2 seperate things. Or at least 2 seperate understandings of 'age regresion.' I'm not really talking about a midlife crisis or some sort of theraputic technequ to find your 'inner child.' The example that most springs to mind is an artical I read about a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury that caused partial amnisia. She lost all of her adult memories, after the age of 16 I think. And finding herself not recognising her face or her familly, husband and children, she left them, dyed her hair purpul and started going to rock conserts and clubing. In a sense her self image reverted to an earlyer age. It's natural that you might not want to stay with children to don't remember raising or giving birth to, or a husband you don't remember meeting or marrying. But what's interesting is he life seems to have carried on where she left off at 16.

Now that's an extream example but I have heard people say, 'sometimes I have to remind myself I'm not 7 any more.' When dealling with traumatic memories. The strength of those memories is such that can pull their behavior and outlook on life back to what it was when they were 7. Much in the same way that elderly patients with dimentia may start behaving age inapropreatly when they start to loose the memories of the later parts of their lives.

As an autistic person people often comment on my oddly keen memory and sentamental atachment to the past. I have to wonder myself if it's so much the past I'm attached to or the futures that never happened. I've always had a strong sence of dreaming, of asperation. And sometimes in life, especially when you are young, it feels like everything falls into place. Like the note in a melody each one feels right and harmonious and leading to a resolution. And if your life is like mine that resolution never comes. Circumstances thwart those asperations, those melodies, often as they are nearing their crecendo. And then that unfinished symphony stays with you haunting you. They are still there in your mind years later waiting for their resolution. Years later after all the charicters in the story have moved on you still find yourself humming the tune in your mind from time to time never able to hear the last note.

I think autistic people have a stronger sence of memory and conection to the past. Which is maybe why suden unplaned changes in our enviroment can create such cognative disonance. And it seems to follow that if your memories of 10 or 20 years ago are as emotionally present in your mind as last year that your behaviour will have a lot in common with 10 or 20 years ago.

A point I meant to include is that many people flirting with their Diverse-Empowered-neurotype (sigh) are being encouraged to be recklessly 'authentic' at too young of an age as is. 

Finding your inner child at 22 will look very different than doing so at 52. 

We can teach a child increments of responsibility in healthy constructive ways, but sometimes adults have a load of deprogramming to undergo to un-learn a thing and work out why or how they picked it up, whether it's a perspective or behaviour and it may be out of context or a misinterpretation of thing, much like Freud's explanations on how children might get the wrong ideas about consensual intimate relations between their parents if it appears to them to be otherwise. 

It does seem to me the theory suggested in the early-mid last century that Autistics don't create Defence Mechanisms because we aren't wired to pick up social-linguistics is water tight. This accounts for language differences. a lack of desensitisation (thought the physical senses are coupled with other mechanisms) and how one matures. 

The difference here being more driven by our own personalities with out the construction of Reason / Intellectualism when young and much more unknowingly driven by instinct. As we grow, it's crucial then, to get ahold of reason, wisdom, grow and nurture the intellect and imagination to temper instinct.

Regression can also be an act of back tracking. And in the wild, this is valuable. If we're not growing with our peers but picking up some of the worst of society, the unspoken conflict and a lack of synchronicity in general, these perspectives will need to be mended and behaviours flocked off. And during these moments, one needs to find ground, which may be a sense of safety in something familiar from youth. 

I don't think our NT peers don't do this, thus the mid-life crisis. But they do it in ways which are socially approved, even if that 2 seater BMW means a second mortgage on the house. That's a whole different kind of childish/selfishness. 

Obviously there are times when you need to be more "grown-up", but most of the time we don't, why can't we play and approach life with a playfull attitude? Nearly all self improvement, personal development stuff say that recapturing a child like wonder and enjoyment of the world is crucial for mental health and well being. We may not always get the balance right, but that dosen't mean we should stop, being playful with the world increases our creativity and productivity. People who want everyone to be serious all the time are often unhappy and go around with a face like a cats bum, why would youo want to be like that?

Do you think thinkk some people are seriously neurotypical? We get pathologised according to what we can and can't do, so why dosen't someone turn their diagnostic tools onto NT's and see if their neurology inhibits their opportunities, careers and general life chances?