What Age Dysphoria Can Feel Like: Cognition Dysphoria
(This post applies more to younger age identities.)
Adult Cognition.
It never turns off. Its sirens are ever blazing.
I'm outside, playing with my stuffed Mittons. She's jumping from tree to tree, and I'm with her. Almost. But part of me isn't. Maybe it's 3 or 8%, but part of me is noticing that I am playing, that I want to go back to watching YouTube, that I am a person existing. With this meta-cognition, I'm forever a step outside the water; our brain is physically incapable of submerging completely.
I crave so badly to just Think like a kid, to be fully immersed in the magic. I one day when I was 11 or so that I realized I could think in my head. My internal monologue never stopped from that day onwards. I'm always thinking, always analyzing. It serves me well in pure mathematics, a special interest of mine that requires insight to form a proof. I love that deep thinking then! But I am actually a system (more on that in a future post), and I have headmates whose age dysphoria is so strong. They want to only think childlike because it feels like them. And they can't because our brain isn't structured that way.
It may seem weird that I want my brain to be "less functional". The abstract thinking of chronological adult brains has so much benefits. You can realize when someone is lying to you. You can do intense logical deductions. And you can cook and take care of yourself. I agree; these are really useful. I actually wish I could switch from adult to childlike cognition on the fly so I could still advocate for myself, craft proofs, and write introspectively like this!ยน But what I know is that when I'm giggling with my Sharky, I'm the most me. I'm a kid at heart. And that spark, that childlike joy that's deep within me? That's not dysfunctional! It's special, and precious that it survived over all these years. I still can feel the magic, even if only for small moments. I wish I could hold onto that feeling.
The closest I've gotten to feeling the magic fully was last Christmas Eve when I first watched The Polar Express. The message there, that we can choose to believe in Santa, was so...me! I took my Rambley the Racoon stuffie and said Santa is real!! My parents disowned me, but this was my first Christmas spent with a family, my partner's. I felt loved and a child. I went to bed peacefully.
Usually, however, I can't fully submerge. I'm doing imaginative play with my stuffed animals. I've been turned into a Pikachu! Rambley the Racooon leads me to a prison cell. I apparently break stuffed-animal law! I trick him into letting him out, and I escape. And that's it. That's end of the play. My brain finds the easiest way out of being childish. It can't sustain this simpler mindset for long. And it feels so so wrong.
Many age dysphoric folks like myself will try weed/edibles, hoping the high feels similar enough to childlike processing. Honestly, that relieved dysphoria for a while. But I started getting headaches, and it's just not the same for me at least. So edibles are not something I do as much today.
I've had better luck playing when I have a plot in mind. When I had my Cupcake the Unicorn plushie say, "My son is missing. Can you rescue him from the dragon?" There was a goal, and I played for much longer. My rescue crew traveled across the river, tamed a sea serpent, and we reached Dragon City. Then we climbed the spire to meet the dragon, who of course just wanted more friends. ๐
Perhaps chronological adult brains need more structure to find the magic. Dungeons and Dragons is literally structured imaginative play! โ even if its origin came from war games rather than the roleplaying aspect. But I don't want it to be this hard. I want to be a toddler's body and think like a kid. Because as I said earlier, there's still always one toe out of the water.
Imaginative play is a muscle we forget to stretch as we age, and it is something you have to retrain. Maybe I can train my brain to think how I want it to think. Meditation has been a little helpful here. Still, I do not think it will be the same as being a chronological child, and that hurts.
While I will always dream of medical technology progressing where I can be a child again and control exactly how my brain thinks, switching between childlike and adult modes, I will still play today. My stuffies are waiting for me.
Keep picking those berries~ ๐ซ๐๐
Footnotes
[ยน] It's also totally valid if someone wanted to always have childlike cognition rather than a switch. My headmate Lily wants that!
Addendum
This post is talking about how my thinking is bound to meta-processing, always experiencing a monologue. But in some ways, my brain is already stuck as a child. It occur in my executive functioning and emotional processing, and it's a huge reason why I quit my job. Tons of age dysphoric people feel their brain is permanently regressed. That's the reason r/nevergrewup is named as it is! So my post today is more on how some age dysphoric people experience dysphoria from adult intellectualism. But many won't feel this dysphoria because:
They're brains are permanently regressed in this area as well. This is less common, as in surveys we've conducted, most of us do not have intellectual disabilities.
They have a tween or teenage identity, and so cognition dysphoria is less relevant to them.
In a future post, I'll talk about where I do feel my brain is a child's. Look forward to that. ๐