To develop emotional maturity, we need to make a conscious effort and take action. Here are 3 steps that may sound simple but will help you go through your journey towards achieving emotional maturity.
Emotional maturity is linked to how you process your emotions, this will help you feel confident, happy and in control of your emotions. Understanding our emotional intelligence and understanding of the world starts with understanding ourselves.
When you understand your emotions, you can regulate them and grow as a person. For example, if you're journaling and you understand that you have a lot of anger towards your mother, you can start to explore the reasons why.
These are key insights. You may find that you're angry because she never paid attention to the thing you wanted her to pay attention to. This may seem hurtful to you, so it may cause a spark reaction towards her on a phone call because she has again ignored your efforts.
In these moments we cause string effects that result in normalised reactions.
Emotionally mature people can separate an emotional reaction from a healthy decision. Here are 3 steps to help you achieve this.
3 Steps to Emotional Maturity
Let’s begin your journey to understanding maturity. Included in this article are questions to help you journal.
Writing is a great way of tracking progress, clarifying and absorbing. Remember the page is forgiving and discreet.
Avoid avoidance
When you are feeling emotional it can be tempting to try to push these feelings down or avoid them altogether. However, emotional avoidance can actually lead to more negative emotions in the long run. If you are feeling emotional, instead of trying to push these feelings away, let this emotion go through you.
To be able to discuss and declutter these feelings you have to, sometimes, focus on the worst of feelings to understand them. Try journaling and answering the following questions when you feel inclined to avoid them.
Questions that will help you avoid avoidance:
Why are you avoiding this situation?
What happens when you are not able to address it?
How does it make you feel?
How do you feel physically when this emotion overwhelms you?
How do you want to feel?
When answering these questions, make sure you expand. These are personal to you. The more you delve into understanding them the better the outcome.
Step away from confrontational situations
No matter who this is with. It's natural to feel angry or defensive in confrontational situations, but while reacting in the heat of the moment may give you temporary satisfaction, it can also have long-lasting negative consequences. When faced with a confrontation situation, try taking a deep breath and holding back your response. More often than not, the words spat out in the heat of the moment are not said to solve the situation.
A calm stance will help you calm down and assess the situation. You can gather your thoughts before deciding how best to respond. It can also be helpful to step away from the situation altogether, whether that means physically removing yourself from the location or taking a break from the conversation. Trying to solve the problem in the moment can be more damaging. Taking time to relax and regain control of your emotions can not only improve the outcome but it will also help prevent feelings of regret or resentment later on. Remember, it's okay to walk away.
Take care of yourself and de-escalate the situation. It will always be worth it.
As taking out a journal may be difficult in such a moment, here are some journal prompts that will help visit them and reflect on the result. This will in time change, your immediate response.
Think of a situation recently where you have felt the discussion or situation escalate. This may be an admin task, with someone you care about or one where the familiar feeling overpowers your words.
Questions that will help you step away from confrontations:
How did you feel afterwards? How did you feel physically? Could you have dealt with that better? If so how? What would you of wanted the outcome to be?
Visualise and write how you would have liked that outcome to be.
Answer these questions as often as possible, to change your pattern of thinking. While staying calm may be difficult, this is a way to accept different outcomes and put them into practice when the situation arises again.
Showing Others Consideration
Someone who is emotionally immature tends to be demanding of others' time and can not regulate emotions around boundaries in relationships.
This will include how you interpret and perceive interactions with others.
It can be easy to get consumed in our emotions and look for attention from those around us, but it's important to take a step back and consider this request, or how we deal with the disappointment of not getting it.
Your response in disappointment may affect your relationships.
This isn’t to say stop looking for support, it is more the sense of entitlement that we project. Our exceptions from those relationships may exceed the level of time and patience others can give us.
Our demanding temperament may also lead us to not see the time and positive attention that people do give. Frequently seeking validation and support may result in looking for it in the wrong conversations or ignoring it if not given at the time you required it.
To better recognise the attention people give us, we can adapt the way we look at it. The need for another person's attention comes with the difficulty of being able to give yourself the love and care you are looking for.
The ability to spend time alone, to be kind to yourself and to find something you can enjoy doing on your own, can help close that gap. Give importance to self-love and self-care.
This will result in you being more present when you are around others. It will give you a sense of strength that will result in a more balanced relationship.
Activities that are creative, activities that make us move and help us relax are a great place to start. Practising meditation is also a great way to help reconnect with kinder thoughts.
However, in moments where we feel we need attention and are struggling to find love within we can use the following questions to help us journal.
Questions that will help show consideration to others:
How do you feel? How do you want to feel? List 3 things you are good at doing.
What is the best compliment you have received?
What can you do for someone else today?
The Unexpected Emotions
We have covered all three steps that will help you grow to achieve emotional maturity. The need to want to find change is the first step, the second is to find understanding. With each step we grow, the more we repeat each step the healthier our understanding becomes of ourselves.
We essentially, practise our reactions to emotions. This is a journey that will never stop. As the world around us changes so will our feelings about it.
This last section is for those emotions we displace and can not find a way out of. Not those attached to a situation but ones we are stuck in. The odd explosive reaction that we want to eliminate.
Questions that will help you deal with unexpected emotions:
How does the reaction make you feel? Why does this reaction make you uncomfortable? How would you like to respond when feeling like this? Why do you want to change this reaction? Through exploring emotional maturity and emotional regulation you start to understand that only you are in control of a reaction. Through the confidence of being able to approach difficult matters, you will feel stronger. Some mental health conditions may require therapy and support from professionals, however, practices such as these are there to give you the opportunity to explore growth.
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