[Elio]

I have struggled most the day today. I have been feeling from infant to tween age with only embarrassing glimpses at feeling like an Adult. Even now, I'm feeling mostly like a tween me.

Anyone else do this fluid feeling of self?

[growlycat]

age wise I always feel like a fraudulent adult. I usually feel much younger.

[TrailRunner14]

Age wise, I don't feel like I ever grew up. The oldest that I have a memory of actually feeling is 14, but I believe that is because of where I find myself right now.

There have been parts of me that have pretended to be grown up when it was needed, like being a mom and a wife. Pictures from those times don't look like me, to me now.

Hope that makes sense.

I guess it's more about what we do with those feelings.

[LonesomeTonight]

I feel like I've been in a sort of teen-aged stage this past year. Rebelling (spending more money than I should, drinking more than I should, another thing from earlier this year), talking back to/questioning people (including H, T, and marriage counselor), yet still being dependent on them. I didn't really go through much of that stage as an actual teenager. Like I didn't have my first drink (or cigarette) till I was in college, and the few times I talked back to or fought with my mom or dad, she got all upset (like weepy) about it, so I didn't do much of that. (Guess I went through the drinking thing in my early 20s, too, so I should have it out of my system, since I'm 39 now, but...) Hopefully this stage won't last as long as actual teen years do...

[Out There]

I've felt this particularly recently doing so much trauma work. And when it's me being an adult and I've needed other people to behave like adults and they haven't. I've been trying to feel and inter rate those younger parts - maybe I've been trying to be an adult for too long !

[runlola72]

I feel so young as well, though I'm in my mid-forties. I feel like I never gained the self confidence that adults have. I made T some homemade gifts (ornaments and a paperweight with heavily symbolic themes) and I felt like I was about six years old making them. Also, my reactions to people including T can be so young.

[junkDNA]

i dont feel my age either. when i had to get all my hospital records for a lawsuit, one of the pdocs wrote that i was childlike. i look a lot younger than i am... im 29 but could pass for 19. ive been carded for R rated movies!! sometimes when i am with my therapist i do feel like a little kid. i think i told him that once.

[Elio]

Typically I feel like an adult - a family provider, doing the needful. Since the event that trigger the steep drop into depression and starting this work to get out of it, I have felt a wide ranges of ages and have been processing the world through the emotions of those ages. I am still mostly adult and still doing the responsible needful things. Yesterday I was feeling and imaging things (fantasies) as young as infant through early teen. It would flow and jump around. Mostly living at young child level.

I am doing better today as the day has progressed. I can feel the adult me here and things are stabilized (or maybe just stuffed away in their corners but they are quiet).

Yes, I fluctuate too. It happens from transferences a lot, but also in therapy when I get really regressed (which has not been in a while).

I think it's really positive, most of the time. If it represents the free-spirited, spontaneous, carefree, innocent part of yourself. That's how it often feels for me. Although feeling like a teenager is quite different.

Up until i got really depressed, people often though I was half my age because I'd get spontaneous moments of this. It was fun and enjoyable. I think those parts of me have gone into hiding or something.