Mental and Chronological Age disparity

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Is it normal for aspies to feel like they are older chronologically than they are mentally?

So you feel younger than you are?

For some of us it is. That's how I've always felt. I may be in my early 20s but I still feel like I'm 12 in a lot of ways.

Probably not everyone feels that way, but I would say a good amount of us do. I definitely feel much younger (maturity/independence-wise) than I am. I feel like I am so far behind everyone else my age.

Yes. I'm over 50 now but I really haven't progressed much beyond 16 mentally - and that's being generous some days.

intellectually I feel like I'm 10 years then my peers (I'm 24) but emotionally, my actions, and the response those actions get from others make me feel 10 years younger then I am.

When I'm at school, I feel like the only mature one. I'm not using a swear word every five words, I'm not calling thinks dumb, or gay. I'm not all caught up in looking like I just came out of Seventeen magazine. I feel so old compared to everyone else.

I guess everyone has different ideas about maturity I guess... I use swearwords but I don't think that has anything to do with my maturity. I'm not really sure where I fit... I feel like I'm unlike anyone I've ever met.

i used to feel this way; but i feel like i'm catching up, so i probarbly only lagged behind (terribly)...

Mentally, I am very logical and very mature. Chronologically, I am somewhat of a "manchild". I lack the social experiences of other people the same age as myself.

It differs for me. When I was a young child, until about age 13-14, I always felt older and more mature than my peers. I was more at ease interacting with adults, and found conversing with adults to be much easier. I followed rules and understood many adult concepts like money, responsibility, accountability, freedom, laws, governments, etc. This stayed true until I was about 14 years old. At that point, I became highly confused. I was still watching cartoons and kid shows and was still entertained by that. It wasn't that I didn't like adult shows, in fact some of my favorites were old reruns of Get Smart, Dragnet, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers, etc. I had always watched and enjoyed many adult programs in addition to my cartoons. I just noticed suddenly people thought watching cartoons was weird or inappropriate, and I didn't quite get why. I still played the same games I'd always played, with my legos or hot wheels cars, but again, this was suddenly "not OK". To the extent I socialized with anyone, I socialized with my younger cousins and family friends. I'm pretty sure my extended family started to think I was somewhat "off" at this point.

I actually didn't understand this at all until I had a better grasp of psychology (from classes in HS and college). When I understood the processes intellectually, it made sense. I still watch cartoons (mostly anime and Family Guy/South Park type shows). I still play video games, but now many adults do and it's not that unacceptable. I now feel much younger than I actually am (31), primarily because I don't feel I've changed very much mentally while others have. I don't expect much will change with age. I'll age physically, but mental "aging" as I understand it, is largely a process of changing social expectations and roles in society, which my aspie brain has a limited ability to even understand. In many ways, I'm no different than I was at 12, when I feel my intelligence was mostly developed, even if my experience was still limited.

My theory on this matter is that without feeling peer pressure and feeling the instinct of most social animals to be part of the "pack" or the "herd", we simply don't change much mentally after our brains are fully developed. Without this instinct, there's no primary motivation, and even if we do feel some impulse to be like others are, we have a limited ability to understand intuitively what's expected of us. If I try to behave "age appropriate", it really is simply an approximation of what I intellectually understand to be the expected psychology and behavior of a typical person my age. I can do a very good approximation. I can fool most people into thinking I'm normal for a limited period of time, but it's like flexing a muscle, I can't keep it up for long, and if I try to the energy drain is unsustainable. I'm fortunate in that I communicate well enough in matters of rationale, logic, and reason to function in the adult world. I do wonder, however, if I actually possess the ability to form emotional relationships outside the familial ones I inherited from early childhood. It gives me pause to wonder how we define such formless, insubstantial things as relationships and how something so easily understood by NTs intuitively so thoroughly evades the absolute logic and rationality of my aspie mind.

I believe I am still pretty young, mentally. Chronologically, I'm middle- aged (over 40), but mentally I believe I may either be in my teens or twenties. Hard to say.
But I am trying harder to act my age; act like a man my age is supposed to.
Here's hoping!

Well, let's just say my behavior has never been perceived as age-appropriate. When I was a child it was seen as too mature and when I became an adult it was seen as too childish.

I just turned 41 but in some ways mentally I feel like i haven't progressed any since adolescence.

I feel a lot younger maturitywise, I'd have to say "15" at 23.

Mentally I'm well past the point that the average person reaches in their own lifetime and I'm still getting older(smarter).

It's the "trying" to act my age that I find hard. I'm 26, but I feel like mentally I peaked around age 14 or 15. I have a concept of what I am supposed to act like, but I can only pull it off for short periods of time.
I mentioned this to my counsellor, and she told me to get rid of the "shoulds". That the only thing that defines how we "should" act is the boundaries within which we are comfortable at any given time.

btw...sorry it has been so long. I had a big mix up in my schedule last week, and I had a meltdown. I'm still not quite myself, it's taking a while to bounce back. I will talk to you soon though.