Does anyone else with Asperger's have issues with their age?

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Lucky you! i started going grey at 14... I wander why! lol

Hah! My hair turned white at age 29! (That's what a high pressure/high stress will do to you).

I'm half-gray, though, within my hair...If I grew a beard, it might be 3/4's gray.

I started seeing gray hairs in my early 30s.

My father's hair was totally white by age 40.

Thanks. I'll look them up.

I think that I'd love to stop time, sure. Wake up tomorrow a few years younger and just stay there. I don't think I'm going to mature further quickly, I feel like I should because society tells me to, but all that I expect is going to happen is that the regret will get more intense and I will feel more anxious being true to myself, I'll be seen as more weird and I'll struggle to make friends with people that I have a connection with.

Since I was a young boy I have had issues with my age. I can remember back in 8th grade when the school recommended that I be held back two years due to my "maturity level", yet I was performing two years ahead of my classmates on schoolwork. Most of my lunch breaks was devoted to reading different topics (science, history, etc.) instead of interacting with students my age, who were often bullying me. I simply did not have much in common with those of my age group. To this day, I have a hard time relating to people who are of the same age as me. Their road in life was so much different than the one I took.

Give yourself some time. I mean which kind of teenage experiences cannot be made later? For some years, I had been regretting, for example, not to have done the dance courses most of our peers did at 14/15, the classmates from my village did not follow them either, and my mother refused to pick us up twice a week, she already had to drive us around quite a lot. I remember having blamed my mother when she suggested to do the dance course at age 18, that it is too late now, because which girl would dance with 14 or 15 years old boys at the age of 18. But now I am glad, because like that I learned Latin dances later a bit with a great Brazilian dancer at a New Years Eve party, and mostly during my stay in Nicaragua, and I think the stiff more ballroom way of dancing teached at the school would not have done any good.

I always thought that the peer pressure with respect to dating was ridiculously high from age 12 or 13 on (less in our class fortunately); later a friend of mine said that she just slept with someone because everybody did it, and so she had something to chat about with others, but then did not feel like having any boyfriend for some years. Although I am NT ( or maybe partly because I am very NT?) I have always been quite immune to peer pressure, and I dont think that the delay has done any harm to me.

As for partying I had one more intense period at age 14 and then age 18/19. Not much inbetween because we lived in a village, there was only one disco to which some people would drive us then the village bar closed, and rockmusic was not that inspiring to got there that often. Although I was really having some good times, staying with many people or just with one person (or also how old this person is) did not make such a big difference for me in terms of personal development. When I see how much many people restrain their social sphere in later years, and how much I have been spending time alone since then, or with books or internet, you might easily catch up with most of us.

Take the opportunities as they present themselves. They will present themselves.

You seem to have a true desire to dress up and behave "younger". Do it. It is important to express yourself in a way that makes you feel comfortable. It will also attract those people that are similar to you, or that are O.K. with it. Dress code and which behavior is doomed appropriate or not, is a very cultural thing anyway: when I was in China, most of my students were around 20, and the girls or even the a little bit older women appeared to me like 10 or 12 years old here, and rather the more immature ones: they dressed up like preschool or primary school kids, adored hello-kitty products, were very naive (due to very protective families plus the general lack of discussion of serious issues in the media) and had very girlish interests.

Just go ahead and dont feel bothered by what others might think or say.

I struggle with the reality that my existence is quite skewed and unnatural for what ought've happened in my life's progression (then again many poor souls die without ever getting to attempt to piece a life together) but I also know I still hopefully have many decades on the globe and am moving toward a foundation I might be able to finally anchor to and have the various seeds I have planted in the soil I have established bloom into a kinda nice gathering of plants. I have done a hell of a lot of work to reach this road I am walking along but it's very mediocre and almost transparent compared to what many other folk my age have achieved and experienced, I have had a different set of cards and challenges and circumstances it's hard to remember. It gets me down a lot but I am not without passion and zest for a brighter future with what I have traversed and figured out, I know even three years of improvement would make thirteen years of toil worthwhile and I live much clearer and infinitely more intently out of all I have matured from.

Thanks. I wish I could learn to be comfortable in my own skin and not care what others think. Sadly, so much of my confidence (or lack of) is based around the opinions of others, and I care a great deal about being accepted.

I'd love to just say, "You know what, I'm going to just act like I'm happiest being", and not care about being too old to do things. But that's hard, and how do I deal with it when I'm 40? What's ok to do now is creepy beyond a certain point. I saw my friend that's a little younger than me again today, and she's pretty much the only person I know I can be myself around. The rest of the time I have to hold back to avoid irritating people or being too weird.

It's such a hard thing for me to figure out in my head, because I feel like I have this ticking body clock versus a personality and mental age that isn't really going to go much further... And I don't want it to, either. Argh, I don't know. I wish this was an accepted problem so I could try to get help and proper advice on it.

opinions are like aholes in that everybody got one, and some people are one. ignore them.

I've never had issues with my age. I like turning a year older. I love telling people my age.

I'm 34, yet people mistake me for being 20-25. Mentally I sometimes still feel like a late teenager. I'm only finally going to college part time. I definitely do not fit with my age group.

I feel like I'm about fourteen, and even younger in some facets. Everyone else my age drives, has a significant other, drinks coffee, eats "grown-up" food, while I'm not doing any of those things (well, I have a driver's license, but not a car, and I'm not nearly good enough at driving to own one).

Everyone does things at different paces. Matures at different paces, finds their way in life at different stages.

(Not to be the "you're only" person) but you are only 20. You're still pretty going to be finding your way, you needn't feel like you should have everything "settled" that a mature person should have. Plenty of people don't get settled until their 30s or older. Even if you never drive or never drink coffee or never have a significant other, you can still be pretty content. Not everything means the same thing to everyone.

i'm still not what proper middle-class types would call "settled."

I feel my real age, personally, but my relative hammers it into my head almost daily that I'm mentally sixteen due to my extremely sheltered childhood. On that subject, sometimes I wonder if I have Asperger's at all or if it's only the effects of having the relatives whom I lived with me at the time bring me up like a bonsai - but that's a subject for elsewhere.

It definitely IS an Asperger thing. And many here share the same feeling with you, even if some aspects are more or less important for them. Just give in "younger" into the search function here on Wrongplanet: you will have many hits that come very close to your problem. I would also say that many experience it with the same intensity. And beyond: The most recent thread with another related issue I stumbled on was "I Can't Do This Anymore" by self-annoyed who deeply regrets that he missed the opportunity to go to college, and do the things related to college life, his self-loathing and his hate against college students and graduates are both very intense. Fortunately you seem to be quite far away from the same level of envy and resentment.

It is also for that reason, to avoid envy and resentment against yourself and others, that I strongly recommend you to behave like you feel instead of acting just to get accepted. Many (older) people here say that they lost themselves, because they acted too much according to the expectations of others and in order to "fit in", and many developped psychiatric issues.



I am pretty sure that, if I knew the people who told you that, I would have been able to explain to you why they are not to be taken that seriously. It is always a certain kind of people who has very rigid ideas about how one is supposed to behave, and who cant see what is special about a particular person, and why requiring her to change her behavior (too much) would not do her any good. In my opinion, it is often people who are on the spectrum themselves, very high-functioning and very keen on proving themselves that they are like anybody else: they are more irritated with unusual behavior anyhow (ASD), but they also cant bear seeing others behaving like what they havent permitted themselves to behave: it hurts them too much, There are quite a lot of HF people here who regret and have quite a lot of psychatric trouble for that reason. Next time try to ask the person, if it hurts or bothers them to see you like this, and why. Try to spend your time with people that are more relaxed. That rubs off. Here on wrongplanet there are quite a lot of more relaxed people, but here too, you have to skip or put into brackets the more problematic ones.



Anxieties and internal panic is very common in people on the spectrum. It is also often as intense as yours or even more intense. I think anorexia in girls and young women or body dismorphia is linked to that, too, and definitely also very common in the ASD population. I would also say that cosmetic surgery (at least the extremer one) is very often sought by ASD people, and for the wrong reasons, e.g. to ease a pain that cannot be eased by cosmetic surgery.

All in all it is more a problem of acceptance. That of others, and your own. Then a developmental delay which needs its own time (you might have a look at developmental psychology in the version of Jean Piaget). It is by the way this developmental delay of quite a lot of people in all its diversity that allowed humanity to develop as a whole, because it is not as simple as that some people are just lacking behind, but that your personalities are really different, you see things in a different way, achieve different things and provoke others to react to you and your products: so their personalities and behaviors are changed, too, their perceptions and their achievements (and the achievements are the smallest part of it). For example, for a scoiety s creativity it is definitely good that most of its members are very playful, and if we have some adults that can do it more like kids, even better so!

One of the most important sentences in my first post was actually: If you try to behave more authentic, and try out the things you want to try out, you will attract people that are similar to you, and people who dont mind. So the right kind of people, instead of the wrong kind. And this is very important for you personal development.

One guy in the Chaos Computer Club (please dont ask me how I happen to hang around there) told me that as an adolescent he got aware that he was weird, and he was confronted with the choice, either to act normal or to stay true to himself. He decided for the latter and he has turned out really fine (I mean a fine kind of weirdness which makes him an interesting person to be with for people similar to him and for open-minded neurotypics like me, and be accepted by us, and it is an acceptance which is less superficial than the acceptance you could get if you stop doing the things you feel like doing.