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Well, hello there, friend. I'm so glad you joined me for this episode, which is going to be very important because we're going to talk about something that comes up all the time in therapy. Actually, we're going to talk about something that brings people into therapy. A lot of the time today. My goal. Is to help you understand what exactly emotional maturity looks like and does not look like. So we can identify our own. Blind spots.
And of course help us identify what other people have going on too. Right. Because knowing whether you or the people in your lives are emotionally mature. Is going to help you to have more compassion for where they're at. Maybe encourage appropriate growth, whether it's your own or someone else's and most importantly have less drama and conflict. Okay.
So before I get into that, I want to check in with you. Are you feeling stressed or overwhelmed or maybe just plain stuck. 'cause take out therapy club can help you. It's a therapist led membership program, offering workshops, coaching sessions, and a really supportive community to help you overcome stress, burnout, anxiety. And all of the various emotional challenges and roadblocks along the way. I created Take Out Therapy club to be affordable and accessible. It costs less than a night out on the town friend. Visit take out therapy.com to learn more and start your free trial today. In the meantime. I'll teach you about. What emotional maturity is. How does that sound? So here's the deal, I guess, a good appropriate APA definition would be a tendency to express emotions without restraint or disproportionately to this situation. So that is the definition of a person that is emotionally immature.
Right? It's when an adult can't. Or doesn't. Regulate their emotions appropriately. So it's a problem. Right, because all kinds of drama can stem out of people that aren't able to express their emotions appropriately, but here's the deal. We all think we're emotionally mature. Yeah, we do. We look around us.
We wonder why the people in our lives behave the way they do. We can't put a finger on what's going on with them. Exactly. But here's the deal. We could all use a little help in this department. Because emotional maturity is really important for. Like regular, less drama, less conflict, mature adult to adult. And adult to child relationships. Here's the deal when bad things happen to kids. Sometimes it interrupts our emotional maturity depending on the severity of the situation. But we kind of know that we skip a beat when hard things happen.
And if you're a growing child and hard things happen, it causes us to not get to mature in ways that we might otherwise get to. It causes us sometimes to cope in dysfunctional ways. That actually worked pretty well for our situation. And oftentimes we just carry those into our adulthood. Right. So. To be fair. We only have the skills that we have, and sometimes there's like a protective wall. That keeps people from their ability to be emotionally expressive. Like, if you didn't grow up with emotional safety, you're not going to feel that emotional, safe, emotionally safe. I hope that makes sense that like it's important to understand. How emotional maturity kind of happens as we grow, because I do think it helps us to like turn towards the people in our lives and. I understand what they have going on. But the thing is, is like it's vulnerable work to do, to, to look at our own emotional immaturity. But there's an impact if we don't. So today, my ask of you is like, Instead of. As taking this time to look around us at the people in our lives.
Perhaps we just look at ourselves. And say like, Where do we have some emotional growth that could happen? And, you know, It helps to have a sense of humor when looking inward. Right. So, what does emotional immaturity even look like? Well,
It looks like childish behavior. You know how sometimes you go to the Walmart and you see a kid on the floor screaming their heads off. That is really appropriate for a child. It's a lot of feelings. And no real maturity or experience or resilience in knowing what to do with them. So for kid. That's an appropriate expression. Full grown adults, screaming at a cashier or having a temper tantrum and in a public place with other full grown adults. Not that emotional maturity we're looking for.
Right. So we have to look at ourselves. There's often times impulsive behavior. When we are not as emotionally mature as we could be, we tend to be. A little unpredictable. Make decisions really quickly. Be kind of self-centered maybe. You know, emotional maturity involves looking all around us in every situation and being like, well, what are the people around me?
Maybe need.
But when we don't have that emotional maturity, we act in a way that keeps us safe. Right.
Yeah. So sometimes I can look at like impulsive behavior.
You know, another, um, kind of flag on emotional immaturity is demanding attention. Text bombing, calling a lot, doing things to get somebody's attention. Even the silent treatment. Is. I don't know. What's your opinion. Emotionally mature.
No. It's when we don't feel safe emotionally to talk about something with somebody. Or we want them to come and give us the attention that we're looking for the validation and say, what's going on. What's going on? There's so much more easy ways to go about things. So we have to put this behavior in the bucket of emotional immaturity. Right. And so another thing that we do in this kind of zone of emotional immaturity is like name calling. Bullying. Purposely making people feel bad about themselves. Purposely trying to talk somebody down into a position of less power. You know, gossip is one of the things that we do. That falls into this category. It's emotionally immature. Right. As is avoidance, which we all do. One way or another. We can't all go through the world, feeling emotionally safe and full, memorable, and authentic all the time. Sometimes we've got to go quiet.
We've got a stone box. Stonewall a little bit. Avoid the hard stuff. They're just moments to be able to see, to go like, oh, There's a more mature way. I could maybe handle this situation. If we notice in time, right. Because the thing is, is like, One of the important markers of emotional immaturity is it's kind of a lack of empathy for other people. Empathy is a skill. It's a, it's an emotional skill. That when we grew up in an environment. That wasn't particularly nurturing or good at teaching us emotional maturity.
Like maybe the people around us weren't that emotionally mature either.
We don't learn these skills, like lack of empathy. Right. And so sometimes when you see people like my way or the highway, I don't need your opinion. Right? I don't even want to hear what you have to say. This is just that person staying safe.
But we can't call it mature.
So for the next few moments, what I want to do. Is give you some ideas about how to deal with other people when they're being emotionally immature. But also as always let's turn it on ourselves. Let's turn the camera on ourselves. And do these things for ourselves as well. Okay, so good communication is absolutely vital. When someone is being emotionally immature with them, with you. They can express themselves appropriately. And , one thing we can do is offer them some validation.
You seem really frustrated. You seem upset. . That's validation to say, Hey, I see you. And you're, you're having the thing right here. You're not invisible to me. But also our communication needs to include accountability. So it's like, but the way you're acting or the way you're behaving, the way you're speaking. I can't hear you and you're yelling. I can listen to that. . So good communication.
That includes both seeing somebody in using good validation, but also asking for them to see themselves as well. Which is what accountability is, is very helpful when we're dealing with emotional immaturity. Having good boundaries is absolutely vital. , it's our instructions for people about what will work for us in relationships.
It's how we let people know what's okay. And what's not okay. Listen to the boundaries episode. Go to the podcast, webpage. Uh, take out therapy.com and search for boundaries and all these episodes will come up. Boundaries. It's really important to understand that boundaries is not. Instructing others about how to behave.
It's telling others about how we're going to behave. Okay. And then when people are emotionally immature with us on a regular basis. We have choices, right? If we've communicated and they know our boundaries. We can either we can adjust. What does this mean? We can either adjust our expectations of what they're capable of in their behavior. Okay. We can also address their place in our lives and the level of relationship we're going to be in with them. . Or we can accept them as they are. And exercise our own emotional maturity around it. Which means, Hey, I'm not going to have this conversation with you when you're yelling, which means here's my boundary.
What here's, what I'm going to do when you act like this. . So, this is what we do with kids. Cause they're like totally emotionally immature. So annoying.
And so we just tell them like, I see that you're upset. But you can't act like that. I'll talk to you when you calm down.
So that's kinda how it goes. When we're dealing with emotionally immature people, but I think what's really, really important is to understand when other people are being emotionally immature. You don't have to join them. It's not yours. You don't have to be invested. And how mature somebody is or isn't. And, and how they conduct their lives. Or do you write if you're in a close relationship with somebody. Who's really emotionally immature. It's totally.
Okay. To ask people to rise up, to just build some skills it's skills. We don't often get these skills when we're growing up. . But when we learn to be more emotionally mature in our relationships, we're creating emotionally safe relationships. Then we get to be ourselves. Oh my gosh. But you're just like, woo, relax.
A little. . But when we don't know when someone's going to lose their temper with us or something like that, it's not emotionally. Safe. When adults act like children. Because we all do. Sometimes there's always a bunch of drama.
I hate drama. I'm over drama and engaging in other people's emotionally immature. Behavior. So sometimes I just bail out and I'm like, whatever, I'm not dealing with this. Or sometimes I just accept it and let them do their own thing. Learning their own lessons. Right. We don't have to be super engaged in how somebody else is behaving. I can be totally emotionally immature.
And when it happens, I do exactly what I told you to. I communicate, I say, oh man. I handled that really badly. And I apologize. For acting like that. I set boundaries. Right. And I make a commitment to be more mature for next time. Right until next time.
It's hard, you know? Things happen. And we get triggered and then our emotions are out of our control. And I think the most important thing is to be compassionate with each other, to be compassionate with ourselves. To be like, yep. I understood that that happened, but be accountable and be compassionate with other people, it's okay. I saw that you were really struggling, but to ask for accountability. This is how we grow each other up, which I think is part of what relationships are all about.
So grow ourselves up. And the whole grow each other up. You know, I did a whole, workshop in the club on emotional maturity and it was a good one. It was a three-part workshop. And we went through all kinds of dynamics around how. To gain emotional maturity. So at this time you're working on. Get in touch.
Come join the club. You can join for free for 30 days. Okay. I'll see you in there. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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