What if your childhood self and your adult self met?

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Lely
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19 Sep 2019, 7:40 am

Would they know that they are the same person?
If they don't know they are the same person, they wouldn't even interact with each other. My child self would be too scared of adults and my adult self doesn't care about interacting with children.

If they knew they are the same person it would be a bit different. My adult self remembers the things I liked as a child, what I wanted, what I feared, what was fun, and how I felt and what I needed and how I could be helped. I would be a best friend and mother figure for her.

Not sure about my teenage self because I started hating myself/feeling very ashamed of myself then and I still don't know how I would feel if I faced her or if she faced me. Deep and intolerable shame is what I imagine. :oops: she was a detested loser. I would feel ashamed of her. I feel ashamed of my adult version too but my teenage feelings were much more difficult and I had much more shame for myself as a teenager. The only thing I know is we wouldn't have anything interesting to say to each other because we are already so similar... I might tell her some things I know in hindsight but she wouldn't listen because she wouldn't like me either.



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21 Sep 2019, 9:02 am

I’ve actually had this thought myself many times, “what would I do if I went back in time and met my younger self?” The very first thing I’d do is get little me diagnosed, then sit down with her teachers and counselors and get her an IEP. I’d do my best to teach her mom about autism and how it presents in little me, in the hopes that doing so would make her more understanding and less critical of little me’s autistic behaviour.

Little me was always extremely anxious in new environments and when meeting strangers. She would do her best to go rigid and silent in an effort to become invisible. I would take the time to talk to her, learn about her interests, make her feel like a real person who deserves a space in the world. I’d tell her that her mom’s emotionally abusive guilt tripping and anger weren’t her fault, and I’d encourage her to be nicer to her little sister.


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aquafelix
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21 Sep 2019, 10:34 pm

I'd reassure little me that I would survive this and I have a future



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22 Sep 2019, 9:17 am

Like I said earlier, Child Aspie1 (CA1) would most likely distrust Adult Aspie1 (AA1), and giving him candy would have only a temporary effect at best. I already mentioned earlier how AA1 would try to establish rapport with CA1. He'd probably have only limited success, since I "learned" early on that all adults were liars and hypocrites. It's be cool to know how CA1 would react if he knew who AA1 was. After all, I wanted to age-accelerate into adulthood pretty much since I was old enough to be self-aware. I hated being a child with a strong passion, and wanted out.

I suppose if I met my 20-year-old self (immature mind but not body), I'd write him a $12,000 check, so he could get the plastic surgery he wanted and get Effexor for his depression. (It hadn't been genericized back then, so it was very expensive.) This way, he'd have an attractive face at a young age, rather than the monstrosity I had, and thus have an easier time finding hook-ups and/or a great girlfriend. Heck, I spent a lot more than $12,000 on escorts between 2005 and 2017. It took me until 28 or 29 to age into my looks and become at least passably attractive.



AprilR
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22 Sep 2019, 10:13 am

Child self would be traumatized i think :?



lostonearth35
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27 Sep 2019, 2:21 pm

The child me (possibly 12 and under) would be horrified to learn that all her hopes and dreams of becoming a famous artist and creating cartoons for a living would eventually be crushed.

On the other hand, if I told the teenager me (13 to 19 years) that she has Asperger's and explained what it was and it's a real thing that wouldn't be publicly known until she's an adult in around the mid-90's, but it answers her question about why she's so different form other people her age, I'm not sure if that would make her future better or not. Especially if I couldn't tell this to her teachers, her parents, her psychiatrists, or tried to but they wouldn't believe me no matter how much proof I had with me from the future. And instead they think I'm a nutcase and throw me into a mental institution much earlier than I was supposed to be. :(



Aspie1
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28 Sep 2019, 8:24 am

lostonearth35 wrote:
The child me (possibly 12 and under) would be horrified to learn that all her hopes and dreams of becoming a famous artist and creating cartoons for a living would eventually be crushed.

On the other hand, if I told the teenager me (13 to 19 years) that she has Asperger's and explained what it was and it's a real thing that wouldn't be publicly known until she's an adult in around the mid-90's, but it answers her question about why she's so different form other people her age, I'm not sure if that would make her future better or not. Especially if I couldn't tell this to her teachers, her parents, her psychiatrists, or tried to but they wouldn't believe me no matter how much proof I had with me from the future. And instead they think I'm a nutcase and throw me into a mental institution much earlier than I was supposed to be. :(

My child self would probably be surprised to have lived till his 30's. Due to the many problems I dealt with as a child, life was a miserable experience for me, so learning about death made me feel relieved, rather than scared. I had been wanting to die since I was 5, and had thought up suicide plans when I was 8. At age 11, I was even looking up funeral homes for myself in Yellow Pages (wow, I feel old), to find the least costly one, since my family was poor at the time. It retrospect, it was very saintly of me to make sure I don't hurt my family financially by choosing to die.

My teenage self would be elated to find out that antidepressants do exist, and that he'd eventually get access to them. (Well, 20 years later, but still.) Heck, I'd take my Effexor prescription bottle, and discreetly give it to him. It's what I kept asking my therapist for, but she always tactlessly brushed me off. Heck, I wouldn't even break laws by doing that, since we're technically the same person. Then he wouldn't be waiting 20 years to feel the massive serotonin euphoria. Yeah, I had some happy moments, but none compared to the unbridled joy I experienced on Effexor.