What is Emotional Immaturity
Emotional immaturity is the inability to process and cope with emotions in a healthy way, so one may be
able to spot it through recognizing certain behaviors in others.
Emotional immaturity in substance addiction recovery is highly common, as individuals who are
struggling with substance abuse often find it difficult to deal with, or convey their emotions.
A lot of people who use drugs or drink alcohol use it as an emotional crutch; to drown out the inner
critic and wash away the unpleasant feelings. They haven’t developed sufficient strategies to deal with
them.
People who are emotionally immature recognize drugs or alcohol is a ‘quick fix’ and so proceed to use
the substance as a way to cope. If someone wants alter their mood, to change the way they feel, they
will use – so it’s not surprising people become addicted to. [1]
But it is the prolonged use of drugs and alcohol as a crutch that has disrupted the natural and healthy
neurological functions of the brain that has led them to be unable to mature. They may have physically
matured, but emotionally, they have not.
The Ultimate Test of Emotional Maturity
One of the more puzzling aspects of the way we’re built is that our emotional development does not
necessarily or automatically keep pace with our physical growth. We can be fifty-five on the outside and
four and a half in terms of our impulses and habitual manner of communicating – just as we can be on
the threshold of adulthood physically while an emotional sage within.
In order to assess our own and others’ emotional development, we can make use of a single deceptively
simple question that quickly gets to the core of our underlying emotional ‘age’.
When someone on whom we depend emotionally lets us down, disappoints us, or leaves us hanging
and uncertain, what is our characteristic way of responding?
There are three methods which indicate emotionally immature behaviour (we might grade ourselves
on a scale of 1-10 according to our propensities).
Firstly: we might sulk. That is, we simultaneously get very upset while refusing to explain to the person
who has upset us what the problem might be. The insult to our pride and dignity feels too great. We are
too internally fragile to reveal that we have been knocked. We hope against hope that another person
might simply magically understand what they have done and fix it without us needing to speak – rather
as an infant who hasn’t yet mastered language might hope a parent would spontaneously enter their
minds and guess what was ailing them.
Secondly: we might get furious. Another response is to get extremely, and disproportionately angry
with the disappointing person. Our fury may look powerful, but no one who felt powerful would have
any need for such titanic rage. Inside, we feel broken, at sea and bereft. But our only way of reasserting
control is to mimic an aggrieved emperor or taunted tiger. Our insults and viciousness are, in their coded
ways, admissions of terror and defenselessness. Our pain is profoundly poignant; our manner of dealing
with it a good deal sadder.
Thirdly: we might go cold. It takes a lot of courage to admit to someone who has hurt us that we care,
that they have a power over us, that a key bit of our life is in their hands. It may be a lot easier to put up
a strenuous wall of indifference. At precisely the moment when we are most emotionally vulnerable to a
loved one’s behaviour, we insist that we haven’t noticed a slight and wouldn’t care anyway. We
may not simply be pretending: remaining in touch with our wounds may have become conclusively
intolerable. Not feeling anything may have replaced the enormous threat of being fully alive.
These three responses point us in turn to the three markers of emotional maturity:
Firstly, the Capacity to Explain. That is, the power – simple to describe but a proper accomplishment in
practice – to explain why we are upset to the person who has upset us; to have faith that we can find
the words, that we are not pathetic or wretched for suffering in a given way and that, with a bit of luck,
we will find the words to make ourselves understood by someone whom we can remember, deep down,
even at this moment of stress, is not our enemy.
Secondly, the Capacity to stay Calm. The mature person knows that robust self-assertion is always an
option down the line. This gives them the confidence not to need to shout immediately, to give others
the benefit of every doubt and not to assume the worst and then hit back with undue force. The mature
like themselves enough not to suspect that everyone would have a good reason to mock and slander
them.
Thirdly, the Capacity to be Vulnerable. The mature know, and have made their peace with the idea,
that being close to anyone will open them up to being hurt. They feel enough inward strength to possess
a tolerable relationship with their own weakness. They are unembarrassed enough by their emotional
nakedness to tell even the person who has apparently humiliated them that they are in need of help.
They trust – ultimately – that there is nothing wrong with their tears and that they have the right to find
someone who will know how to bear them.
In turn, these three traits belong to what we can call the three cardinal virtues of emotional maturity:
Communication, Trust and Vulnerability.
These three virtues were either gifted to us during a warm and nourishing childhood or else we will
need to learn them arduously as adults. This is akin to the difference between growing up speaking a
foreign language, and having to learn it over many months as an adult. However, the comparison at
least gives us an impression of the scale of the challenge ahead of us. There is nothing to be ashamed of
about our possible present ignorance. At least half of us weren’t brought up in the land of emotional
literacy. We may just never have heard adults around us speaking an emotionally mature dialect. So we
may – despite our age – need to go back to school and spend 5 to 10,000 hours learning, with great
patience and faith, the beautiful and complex grammar of the language of emotional adulthood
2 Likes
Mmm good write up
What stands out as important to you, as you think about that, now?
Tell me more
lol I was going to say aren’t all those things examples of labeling. And Were more than or behaviors.
Labels go well on cans, not so much people, joking. But also true