What does being emotionally immature mean?
Emotionally immature people tend to lack adequate social and emotional skills.
When we hear someone being described as immature, first we think they must be younger, and second, they must lack in growth and development.
An Emotionally immature person can be of any age.
Most adults and even many seniors can have character traits of being emotionally immature.
Why people are emotionally immature?
Emotional maturity like any other skill is learned through observation, understanding, and then application.
If as a child, you were raised in an environment where your authority figures were emotionally immature consequently you would be less likely to pick up cues to advance your social skills.
Furthermore, this kind of environment might have activated emotionally immature personality traits within you.
Signs of emotional immaturity
- Having trouble regulating emotions/ easily triggered
- Feel stuck in the ”I am the victim” mentality
- Having the need for control in situations
- Resort to the silent treatment/ stonewalling when you feel hurt
- Lacking empathy and compassion for others
- Trouble owning up to your mistakes
- Never going too deep with emotions or feelings/ keeping everything only at surface level
- Needing the approval of others to feel loved
- Having to manipulate others to get your way
- Avoidant of responsibility/ having trouble facing difficult problems
- Impulsive/ Reckless
Skills that help you develop into emotional maturity
Change your perception of perfectionism. Go easy on yourself as well as others.
Perfectionism is an illusion that can blind us from happiness.
Learn to spend time with yourself to be able to fully rest and recharge. Time alone is important to be able to tune out distractions.
It will be hard for you to self-reflect if you have things and people pulling your attention and energy in every which way.
Most importantly, quiet time helps you rest your body and mind.
When emotionally upset take time to understand your emotions and feelings. When you start to feel emotions get out of control, immediately take a pause and breath before you react.
As a rule, it is important to give your mind some time to catch up with your emotions.
Our emotions can absolutely get the best of us if don’t we don’t have the right techniques to regulate them.
It’s okay to receive help and support. Because being able to receive help from others is a form of vulnerability, many have a hard time with the idea of leaning on others with their problems.
They feel it might make them look weak or needy.
As a consequence it makes us feel more lonely and depressed.
See what part you play in situations that didn’t work for you. Above all, this might be one of the hardest pieces of advice for the emotionally immature.
Nobody wants to believe that their actions and behavior might be the cause of their problems.
Nonetheless, our part no matter how big or small did contribute something.
Take ownership of your mistakes. This part requires us to be authentic with ourselves and our mistakes.
In other words, the truth will set you free. Admit to your mistakes, and if someone was hurt because of you, apologize.
Apologies emphasize on being genuine when you speak to the other person.
Let go of the things that hurt you. Not every that happens to us is meant to stay with us.
Naturally, It is easy to become hateful and angry at the unfair treatment we received in life.
Be that as it may, you are the one continually hurting yourself if you keep holding on the pain and bitterness.
