Does anyone feel like they never "grew up"?

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I haven't really "felt older" since I was around 11-12 or so. I don't "feel" like I am an adult yet, and find that I become very overwhelmed by having adult responsibilities.

Does anyone else feel similar to this?

I'm basically still about 12-13, at least mentally. It's really overwhelming when the realization sinks in.

I'm perpetually 13 in terms of my social and emotional development.

I had a few friends at that age, and when the friendships imploded my social / emotional development stopped.

Lots of times I feel younger than 13. I still obsess over everything from my childhood, I'm currently repairing the doll I got when I was five, and I stim like a baby most of the time.

My intellect and exhaustion levels are older than my real age, but my heart is still a geeky adolescent (at the oldest).

Unsure.
More like I did grew up.

But that grew up part of me is buried, trapped in a dysfunctional body that cannot allow me to be.


Unlike many others, I know what ails me other than 'autism'.

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I basically do feel like I am still 11-12. I honestly find the fact that I am an adult terrifying, and it kind of makes me depressed sometimes. I don't really know why though.

I just turned 25 and its a little scary. I don't feel older than 20ish. I was less mature than my peers as a kid but I (mostly?) caught up in my teens. I don't feel like I've aged since college but it might just be because my life hasn't progressed.

I think I'm emotionally stuck somewhere between 18 and 23 years of age.

It isn't very helpful.

In some ways, I’ve always been far more mature than many NTs ever are, and in others I’ve never really developed at all. In general, though, I estimate my non-physical age to be around 10. Never really had any of the non-physical changes associated with puberty (which I think is why the two real friends I had in elementary school suddenly began rejecting me around then, they sort of “outgrew” me). Still very dependent on my parents, despite all my efforts to change that over the past decade or so, and learning to accept the fact that that probably isn’t going to change anytime soon, if ever. And I was a weird kid who would read the dictionary and insect field guides for fun and regularly complained about never having had a nightmare of the “traditional” sort, I haven’t really changed in manner of interests, either, only in exposure to things

Half of me feels like an adult, I can pay bills, I can generally keep on top of things, find my way to fixing adult life stuff if it goes a bit wrong, that sort of thing. Functionally, in that sense, I feel like I'm mature and independent enough to get by.

The other half of me is still a late teenager. I haven't had the life experiences to make me feel where everybody else is. Jobs, partners, living independently in different places and with different people. That part of me just hasn't moved on, there's not been anything to move on to. There's just a sort of streak in my timeline from then until now, doesn't change, like a room that's never been redecorated, it's always that same old place.

Those two halves of me argue sometimes, the young half keeps looking back, the old half keeps trying to drag it forward, neither side has won yet.

I guess I'm mostly an adult now, and quite capable of living "independently" as long as the environment isn't too awkward, but there's still a childlike side of me that I wouldn't want to lose. I agree with what Lewis Carroll was saying through his "Alice" books, that in many ways adults are jerks and the kids are the only ones who don't have their heads up their butts. Children seem to instinctively know how to have fun, and they cut through a lot of the complication that adult life is saddled with. If kids weren't so noisy I'd probably have a lot more to do with them, but my sensory issues force me to keep my environment quiet.

I tend to hide the childlike side of myself in public, in case they decide there's something wrong with me, but I expect anybody who wants to be my close friend to accept it. It's harmless enough, just a liking for teddy bears and a healthy contempt for the idea that I'm too old for this or that. I think there are some things that have to change with maturity, for example the relationship with the opposite sex (or whatever takes its place for those with different orientations) can never be the same again, though even that I see as a sad change in many ways.

“When I was a childe, I spake as a childe, I vnderstood as a childe, I thought as a childe: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (I Corinthians 13:11)

St. Paul and I never really were on the same wavelength.

I feel like a 17 year old hippie. I'm unemployed and I work on my arts & crafts all day most of the time. Those arts & crafts are also marketable. I plan of selling my finished work on Marketplace which is a part of Facebook.

I am odd because I don't feel like a child anymore, but I don't feel like an adult either? I feel like I am in my 20's somehow?

When I was that age my social development was pretty much stunted because I shut myself away from the world. Guess it only makes sense when your parents don't allow you to work or go to school. I was surprised I even graduated high school honestly because I surely wasn't expected to

It's hard for me to answer this one. There are two aspects to being child like I think. One is what has someone achieved in their life and are their achievements impressive or adult in nature and the other is social development.

For social development I'm not particularly amazing but can get by but achievement wise they're definitely adult.

It's a subjective concept. Who's more mature? A woman with very poor and underdeveloped social skills who happens to be a fantastic and wealthy business woman

Or:-

A man with great social skills who sits at home all day playing video games, never learned to drive and refuses to work?

Which one is truly more grown up and which one feels more grown up?