Emotional Maturity

I googled what emotional maturity is and this is what I came up with.

Emotional maturity means having the self-control to manage your emotions and work to understand them. As an emotionally mature individual, you don't view emotions as a weakness. Instead, you value them and don't try to hide them.

This is a lot to absorb and it makes me think about myself and a lot of things that I have learned and what I have been trying to teach my children.  I think a lot of people confuse being emotional for being emotionally immature.   Dramatic is a word that comes to mind.  When a person vomits their unprocessed and misunderstood emotions onto another person.  Another word comes to mind and that is needy.  When someone relies on someone emotionally, to the point of burdening another person, for their emotional security or well-being.  Children do these things because emotional maturity has to be taught or at the very least observed in their environment as a normal way of behaving.  It is either taught or "caught".  We have to learn how to take care of our emotions just like we learn how to physically take care of ourselves.  When we learn how to do this for ourselves, we can take care of others emotionally too.    I don't know many of us that grew up in an environment where we learned this  so we have to make a conscious effort to learn to do this ourselves as adults.

One of these extremes is when we can't control our emotions and we behave in ways that aren't productive and don't really serve our best interest or well-being.   Outbursts of anger are when we have feelings we haven't really processed yet but we direct these emotions into the world and usually toward another person.  There is nothing productive about this and rarely does a real problem get resolved this way so this behavior isn't serving you because it isn't helping to improve anything.   Another angle of this extreme is instead of outwardly being angry we internalize the anger and use tactics to punish people.   Giving a person the silent treatment or pouting are ways we can do this.  Usually, people that may not feel empowered enough to get outright angry will use these tactics instead.  The end result is the same, we are not examining our feelings and processing them to present them in a more productive way.  Our emotions are always important but getting to the core emotions to understand them instead of defaulting to these more "dramatic" alternatives is what we need to work towards.  Most of us don't do that because we don't understand how or why we feel the way we do and we resort to "emotional shortcuts" to try to get what we want.  Without doing the work to understand ourselves emotionally, so we can honor our emotions and calmly communicate them to others, we will never be emotionally free and we will feel caught in this hamster wheel of unprocessed feelings and behavior patterns.

The other extreme is just shutting down your emotions and not talking about them at all.  Maybe we don't want to feel emotionally out of control so we don't use any of the tactics above to get what we want but we don't share our feelings at all.  When we don't share what we feel or how we want to feel, then we are creating an isolating environment.   This was my go-to move.  I didn't trust enough that someone cared how I felt or that I could communicate it without feeling weak, needy, or dramatic so I didn't communicate my feelings at all.   I behaved as if I was by myself in managing my own emotions but that isn't conducive to being in a relationship.  I think caregivers (usually Mom's) feel this way because it seems that they are only supposed to care about the needs and feelings of everyone around them and not give any consideration to their own emotions.   When you don't share or have trust in those around you, then you aren't doing your part to create a good relationship.  We have to trust that those that love us care how we feel and they would want our needs met too.   A relationship has to have a foundation of trust and sharing and when we can share our feelings, we give our partner the opportunity to meet us emotionally and we can reciprocate that with them.  

So these two emotional extremes are how most people operate.   Very few have learned how to balance this.   If we want better, more fulfilling relationships, we have to get to this place of emotional balance, feeling our emotions and examining them so we can communicate them.    I guarantee you, you will feel better in your life once you master this but it takes some work and it will push you out of your comfort zone.  Authentically communicating your emotions can feel very vulnerable especially in a society where power dynamics are the gold standard in relating.  It can be difficult to trust that your vulnerability won't be used against you or you can feel disempowered or weak by authentically expressing your feelings.  I guess the lesson wouldn't be to not express yourself in this way but to only surround yourself with people that value and cherish this part of you as you do them.        

Believe me, adjusting to this way of relating is uncomfortable but that doesn't mean it is wrong or dangerous because you feel fear.  It is uncomfortable  because it can be scary because you feel exposed but with practice you get better at it and you start trusting yourself. Kind of like public speaking scares most of us but the more we do it the more comfortable we can get with it.

As you get better at it, you gain confidence, especially when you start seeing more rewarding results in better relationships in your life.   It doesn't mean that people around you will get better at it but you will start to clearly see what and whose emotions you are responsible for in a relationship.  You will value your emotions enough to understand them and be able to communicate how you want to feel and you will understand when you need to value someone else's emotions because they are clear and communicate them effectively.  It is difficult to value dramatic (unprocessed)  emotions or emotions of a person when they aren't expressed.....(we aren't mind readers).  

Many times though, we aren't taking responsibility for our own emotions and we make it the problem of those around us or we are burdening ourselves by taking responsibility for someone else's emotions when it is unwarranted.  Neither of those ways creates authentically connected, fulfilling relationships because we are utilizing emotional shortcuts to try to resolve obstacles.   Emotional courage is one of the most difficult things to demonstrate but the payback is priceless.  

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou that reinforces why this emotional "work" is so important.  It makes the biggest difference in your life and those around you.  

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." 

Maya Angelou