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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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24 Oct 2016, 3:59 pm

I have consulted Google and read plenty of clinical definitions of arrested emotional development and arrested development. What I wish to read are concrete examples. I prefer the case studies as in how does it manifest in day to day situations?

I know older people who are described as eternally young which means they prefer movies, television, and activities geared toward youth. Is this what is meant by arrested development?
What about an arrested emotional development? Would this be someone who reacts emotionally to everything?

The one that confuses me is arrested social development. Is that just a way of saying someone is always going to be immature in their social interactions even though they don't socialize the same way younger people do? Or, is it someone who really does interact like someone much younger, with the same kinds of interests and everything?



redrobin62
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28 Oct 2016, 9:58 am

Arrested development is an issue I've researched a lot, too. I'm sure, as you've found out, that term is rarely used anymore as psychologists and psychiatrists prefer good old fashioned developmental disability and/or mental retardation. Here are the personalities of some of the people I've met I would classify as having arrested development.

Girl A - 33 years old. All her life, her fairy tale dream was to be married. And she did get married. Her husband was a lying, cheating, deceitful, abusive, worthless son of a b*tch. Why did she stay married? The takeaway was she achieved what she'd wanted to do in life - get married. That he was a total as*hole was superfluous. He did her a favour and bounced, so that's good.

Man A - 50 years old. Married with two sons. Completely ignores his family. Spends entire days in front of his XBox playing video games and has an unhealthy fascination with a 12 year old TV actress not related to him. He swears he's not a pedophile, but so did Michael Jackson. He's since left his family and lives alone in downtown Seattle, so that's good.

Re: arrested social development.
I have two examples, but whether or not they fit your criteria remains to be seen.

K and J are two male lovers. K is 24, J is 35. K can be VERY annoying when you're trying to talk to J because he acts like a little child, always intruding and begging for attention. J puts up with it even though his behaviour is nowhere near as infantile. J, however, doesn't take life seriously and probably isn't able to. Normal adult responsibilities - getting a car, getting a job, getting an apartment - completely eludes him; thus, he and K are perpetually homeless.
Will they ever grow up?

In the streets we have a friend we call Batman. He's 55 or 60 years old and is a Batman freak the way a 10 year old might be a Batman freak - Batman ring, Batman jacket, Batman posters, Batman baseball cap, Batman shoes, Batman t-shirts, Batman shorts, etc. He CAN sound mature, when it comes to working and paying bills, otherwise, he can sound like an older, annoying version of K.

I suppose that would make quite a lot of homeless folks developmentally behind, which makes sense. The mature tasks of responsibilities will elude them all their lives, making them fodder for abuse, prison, homelessness, etc.



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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29 Oct 2016, 2:41 am

Where I live, homeless have mental illnesses or felonies which interfere with either getting or staying employed.



Starfoxx
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09 Nov 2016, 6:20 pm

Apparently aspergers syndRome is classed as a form of arrested development



PeachCastella
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10 Nov 2016, 4:49 pm

lets destroy wp internet army bro muahhaahhaahhaaa plz delete my account posts and everything or ill f*****g kill myself imm ret*d :heart: :heart: :heart: :roll: :roll: :roll:



Cortana Rose
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01 Jul 2019, 9:08 pm

Arrested development is where a person experiences a trauma of some kind, and instead of getting through it their body learns that trauma the way an animal does and the human gets stuck emotionally at whatever age they are when the trauma happens.

A narcissist, for example, experiences the emotional reactions of a 2 to 3 year old.

An autistic person such as myself, is stuck in early infancy. I was stuck at 6 weeks old my entire life until May 28 2019 when my brain finally decided to allow me to remember what had happened.

After I remembered, and it is my BODY that remembers - my mind did not store memories when my body was 6 weeks old or at least not in a way I can retrieve them except some emotional sort of memory. After I remembered my mind went about re-arranging itself until my left frontal lobe was doing what it was meant to do (all the animal functions it seems) and my right brain took over the being-a-human part. Well my right frontal lobe was built to do human things (ie create, plan, take other humans into account when doing things aka have judgement, look at eyes, love, have courage etc.) and my right lobe does it much better. And MUCH more easily. I had no idea how ridiculously easy things are for 'normal' (not-ASD) people, until I finally got MY right brain hooked up at age 54.

Well let me tell you non-ASD folks are spoiled rotten. They have NO IDEA how much EFFORT and autistic person puts into things.

They can't even solve PTSD. Mine was starting to be a problem so I put my mind to it and solved it. It wasn't trivial but it wasn't really all that hard either. So when I say doing things like, oh, understanding that my sister-in-law did not want me to dance at a piano event was HARD, well that was way, way, way harder than fixing my PTSD. Because I was using my left brain at the time to do those things and poor little left brain was never meant to. But because my brain development was halted at 6 weeks old my right brain didn't finish getting hooked up.


So that's what arrested development is. Does that help I hope?