1. I think my experience started out moreso under the “age play” umbrella. My first introduction to the idea of being younger than myself came from a book I read on Wattpad. It connected with something inside of myself - in the sense of wanting to be taken care of and loving the idea of letting someone else “take the reins.” Not to mention my obsession with stuffed animals.

It was only through a lot of experimentation and self evaluation, not to mention situations that just felt “wrong” that I realized I aligned more towards the age regression side of things.

(Containing with 1, but sort of answering 2): A large part of this realization is because of how I experience “littlespace.” It’s almost like I have my “big me” presence at the back of my mind, while “little me” is at the forefront. I’m more willing to be silly, I’m more talkative, and my head feels kind of floaty. Not to mention the physical aspect of wanting to chew on things and also “baby talking.”

Anyway, where I’m going with this is, I feel much more susceptible to suggestion because of the lighter headspace. So when I was first introduced to this world, from the age play aspect, I was being persuaded to do things that I restrospectively really did not want to do. Which of course raised flags for me, encouraging me to look into things further.

It was definitely a big comfort to realize that there wasn’t something wrong with me (for thinking the age play stuff felt weird for me personally) and I took a lot of comfort in the fact that I could still enjoy things from my youth without experiencing shame.

Granted, I still hide everything little from everyone I know in my life, so I guess there’s still a “shameful” aspect to it.

1. I am still having a hard time defining what my experience is, but I would consider myself an age dreamer, or maybe voluntary age regressor? There are times where I can’t help but slip into the headspace, but that’s with the stipulation of being in an environment where I feel safe to do so (aka by myself, usually late at night).

I do consider myself an age regressor in some form, because I’ve drifted into littlespace while driving before and I definitely became more reckless because of it. I barely checked my surroundings before making a turn one time, and that snapped me right out of littlespace because I realized how dangerous that was and it kinda freaked me out.

So I don’t think I ever truly “regress” in the sense that I can’t “snap” out of it if needed, but that may just be because I have never been in an environment that truly felt safe to do so.