What's your internal age?

Not your IQ or how your aches and pains make you feel, more things like:

  • when you dream, how old are you?
  • if you could go back in time (or stay at the current time), and be in your body at that time in your life, what age would best fit how you see yourself?
  • 0-5
  • 5-10
  • 11-15
  • 16-20
  • 21-25
  • 26-30
  • 31-40
  • 41-50
  • 51-60
  • 61-70
  • 71-80
  • Older than 80
0 voters

I would have an easier time answering this poll if I could choose more than one answer.

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Donā€™t generally remember my dreams (or even that Iā€™ve had them). I especially donā€™t have a sense of age (which is pretty normal, since I donā€™t really have a sense of age on a day-to-day basis).

Leaving out the opportunities Iā€™d get back, the weight Iā€™d lose, and the (admittedly minor) knee problems Iā€™d get rid of by being in a younger bodyā€¦ I donā€™t think Iā€™d change. Youā€™re not talking about changing the body, or re-living past opportunities, so changing the age would be about changing the mind, and I generally like where my mind is right now.

I guess I donā€™t see age as a relevant part of my self-identity.

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last week my sister send me a birthday card with the text "were you sad when the dinosaurs died?"
so my external age is somewhere between 65 and 230 Mya

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Like @anon50609448, I would probably have different ages, but I mostly feel really young. I guess 10 is about the age when I started seeing people around me as socially more developed than I was and I wasnā€™t sure whether I could keep up, so that may be why I have such a young mental age. Itā€™s not so much a Truman Complex where Iā€™m the centre of the world, more the feeling that I missed an important committee meeting and everyone ā€œgets itā€ more than me.

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Interesting question!
In my (rare) dreams, I never register what age I am in the dream. However I am usually doing things, feeling the emotions, or exhibiting the intellectual age of, someone half my age. Which is consistent with the age I picked for the second question.

Why do you ask? Can you send us all back in time? :slight_smile:

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To elaborate a little on my response, I inhabit all kinds of different bodies in my dreams - ages, genders, ethnicities, non-human.

If I could pick a different body to live in, I would ideally choose one I have never been before, rather than one from an earlier time in my life.

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I was just discussing it with my family, and they tended to be in the 20-30 range. I guess I can relate to this comic, although I donā€™t think people around me would see me as particularly immature; I donā€™t spend my time doing kid things either (probably less time than many people my age).

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Yeah. Iā€™m often either not me, not this incarnation of me, a disembodied version of me, or (very occasionally) an invisible witnesses to events that have nothing to do with me.

But if it helps any, Iā€™m generally an adult. When I have a body.

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You too? I keep checking my spam filter still havenā€™t found the memo.

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Itā€™s weird, in my dreams Iā€™m generally myself and then next often an outside observerā€¦ but when Iā€™m myself, Iā€™m me as I generally am now. I wonder what that says about me and how I view myself?

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I feel sixteen.

Itā€™s weird to consider it now, since I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever put it into words before, but I feel like my life was going along exactly as it should until I was sixteen or soā€¦ upon which I stepped off the conveyor belt or train of life to sniff some flowers or look at an interesting cloud formation or jack off or listen to ā€œRun to the Hillsā€ one more time, and the train kept going without me. And even though Iā€™ve discovered to my dawning horror that my body and my life responsibilities have kept on trucking along with the train, my soul has been left behind, and has never made a serious effort to catch up. I wish Iā€™d learned more in the intervening years, or done more, or gone more places, or just not spent so many years spinning my wheels.

Thirty years later, I still feel sixteen, but slower and sleepier and creakier.

ā€œRun to the Hillsā€ was the wrong Maiden song to be listening to.

ā€œDonā€™t waste your time always searching for those Wasted Yearsā€¦ā€

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I generally have zero perspective on myself, in dreams. I assume I am adult size, because of my relative size to everyday objects like houses and their contents. But, I donā€™t know that I have an age, generally. There are never any mirrors in my dreams; I might not even be me/myself, I may just be the subject/observer of the dream.

Also, while dreaming I can sort of learn things from printed materials, if the dream scenario calls for it, but I cannot read words. Thatā€™s actually my dream tell, if I can look at letters and read them, itā€™s not a dream. If things get weird to work around the reading thing, then itā€™s a dream.

As for my internal ageā€¦ Iā€™ve never felt my own age, but itā€™s closer now than itā€™s ever been before. Maybe Iā€™ve always been 43 in my mind. Actually that would kind of explain why I was a weird child who was super impatient to become a grownup.

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I wonder how much this says about us too. That I am myself next-to-never. Recently wondered if frequently dreaming I am the opposite gender meant I was trans, but google tells me genderswap dreams are significantly more common than transgender people.

I really wonder what it means that sometimes I am in my dream I am more than one person at the same time.

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Teens. Not for thinking Iā€™m that able to bounce back anymore or that I see myself young at heart, but more seeing that as a point where ā€˜ok you have responsibilities but no ability to voice yourself or have agency in your life.ā€™

Though when I dreamā€¦ thaā€™ts the point in my life I was happiest, when things felt like they sorta made enough sense and there was still a chance for it all not going tits up.

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6 or 72, depending on whether you are measuring by cans or ounces.

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Iā€™m sometimes 3rd person, or switch between 1st and 3rd person. I guess my age is generally not determined, but I often seem to be in the area around my home until I was 13.

One defining and recurring dream that I used to have from about age 4: A huge snake breaks into the house, taking up three stories and filling practically all the space in the stairwell. It goes straight to my bedroom at the top of the stairs and confronts me. Terrified, I tell it where my older brother is, because thatā€™s what the Billy Goats Gruff did. I try to escape, but the snake crushes me so hard that it takes all the skin off my body. And they say that aspies havenā€™t got a sense of imagination.

Anyway, so I learned that you donā€™t betray your older brothers, even if the fairy tales tell you that you can.

I had a dream in Dutch once, then woke up and remembered that I canā€™t speak Dutch.

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Same age as I am now , I think. Not so good at recalling it.
Had some really weird stuff going on recently where Iā€™ve been dreaming somethingā€™s hurting to the point of waking up from it, but nothing on waking. Itā€™s starting to piss me off.

Had to vote for 0-5 as there wasnā€™t a ā€œbeforeā€ or ā€œnot at allā€ option. So I think Iā€™d pick any body where the bit that controls it works properly. :slight_smile:

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I wondered if it was related to being trans too. I mentioned dreaming in other genders to my former writing partner (without mentioning Iā€™m trans) and she thought it was related to being a writer. With some of the dreams, Iā€™m 100% confident itā€™s being a writer. With most of them, Iā€™m equally confident itā€™s not. :laughing:

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See nisey33
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