The Mental Age Gap: Why Your Brain Insists You’re Younger Than You Are

Here’s a question for the day: How old are you in your head, as opposed to your chronological age or how old you feel physically?

I’m a few months shy of a milestone birthday that shall remain unnamed, and I’ve been pondering the strange disconnect between my actual age and the age my brain insists I am. Apparently, my internal clock has settled on my early 40s—though it only recently upgraded from my mid-30s.

An article in The Atlantic once posited that people always feel about 20% younger than they actually are. Annoyingly, I’ve found that rule to be remarkably accurate.

The only exception might be adolescence; I remember feeling like a wise 25-year-old at 15, and my own teenager seems to share that delusion.

This past Thanksgiving, I asked my mother how old she was in her head. She didn’t pause, didn’t look up, didn’t even ask me to repeat the question, which would have been natural, given that it was both syntactically awkward and a little odd. We were in my brother’s dining room, setting the table. My mother folded another napkin. “Forty-five,” she said.

She is 76.

I put the question to my own parents, both 76. My father answered, “Late 50s, but for the knees;” my mother simply said, “Old fart.”

I strongly relate to the article’s subject who described looking in the mirror not with dissatisfaction, but with startled confusion—“as if there’s been some sort of error.” That captures it perfectly: a mental glitch.

A few years ago, I was pulled over while rushing my youngest to a pre-surgery COVID test. The officer checked my license and returned with a grin: “You haven’t been stopped in 27 years—I’ll let you go.” My instinct was to protest; surely I hadn’t been driving for 27 years. But we were late, so I thanked him and left. The math later confirmed he was exactly right.

So I’m curious: How old are you in your head, and what is your actual age? What moments have forced you to realize your mental records are a decade or two out of date?

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