Signs of Emotional Immaturity & How to Bring Emotional Health Into Your Relationships

Do you walk on eggshells with someone you love? Do you sometimes feel like you can't have an honest conversation?

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Signs of emotional immaturity are everywhere. In today’s episode, we dive into the signs of emotional immaturity and its profound effect on our relationships. You'll learn the difference between emotionally mature and immature responses so that you can improve your connections.  

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Here’s what we cover:

1. Why emotional immaturity is so prevalent & how it showed up in me!
2. Examples of mature vs. immature emotional responses
3. The difference between emotional immaturity and narcissism
4. The role of enmeshment in emotional immaturity
5. Tips for how to navigate a relationship with an emotionally immature person
6. Tips for growing in emotional maturity

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Resources Mentioned:

• Pre-order I Shouldn’t Feel This Way
• ‍Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay Gibson‍
• Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships by Nedra Glover Tawwab
• More on Attachment theory, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth ‍
• Galatians 5:22-23‍

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Related Episodes:

• Episode 95: 4 Toxic Behaviors You Need to Recognize & the #1 Way to Protect Yourself
• Episode 94: Should I Stay or Should I Walk Away? How to Discern When It’s Time to Leave with Emily P. Freeman
• Episode 1: What Is Narcissism Really?

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Music by Andy Luiten

Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author.

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.

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Transcript:

Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here. I think today's topic is relevant for so many of us as we're navigating relationships, parenting, friendships, marriages, romances–as we're navigating all sorts of relationships.

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There's this category that I think we don't talk about enough that applies to a lot of different issues that we see surfacing in our relationships. That's this category of emotional immaturity.

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Understanding emotional immaturity is important for a number of reasons. Number one, I think it's really common. I see it a lot. I don't think we've done a very good job of learning how to become emotionally mature humans. There are a lot of reasons for that. 

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In general, a lot of times when we're navigating relationships, whether with friends, whether with romantic partners, whether as parents, or with the people in our communities, emotional immaturity is showing up far more often than people might think. When we can name something like emotional immaturity and recognize it, it helps us learn how to navigate those situations more strategically and with more wisdom. 

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Number two, it's also really helpful to understand the difference between something like emotional immaturity and a more significant deep-seated personality disorder like narcissism. They often get confused and it's important to understand the difference, because the way you might interact with someone who's emotionally immature is going to be different than how you might interact with somebody who's narcissistic. 

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Third, it's really important to recognize emotional immaturity in ourselves. I can honestly tell you that as I look back over my own adult life, I think I was a fairly emotionally immature human well into my thirties. I do not say that with any amount of shame. I say that with some objectivity. 

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I had a lot of really overdeveloped qualities. I would say in some ways I was more mature than my peers. But in this area of understanding and regulating and managing my own emotions, there was some immaturity. Now, how I coped with not knowing how to understand or regulate my emotions was to retreat. 

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I didn't act out or lash out of my emotions. Nobody would have necessarily looked at me and said, oh, she has some emotional immaturity. I chose the flight option of the fight or flight spectrum. I would keep my emotions completely out of those relational interactions. 

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Then I would disappear, escape, where I would essentially numb my emotions, which I didn't realize I was doing at the time, give myself some distance, and then enter back into those relationships without ever really communicating on behalf of those emotions. 

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As you can imagine, that doesn't lead to a lot of intimacy. I could perform well when I was with other people, then I would retreat and I would numb through watching television or food or not really egregiously unhealthy ways of numbing, but still numbing. 

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Nonetheless, I wasn't really giving myself the care that I needed. When I would enter into a relationship that required some emotional maturity, I wouldn't know what to do. That's when that emotional immaturity would come out. I would begin to notice, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do when someone is giving me constructive feedback, or I don't know how to speak up on behalf of myself, or I'm overreacting in a big way to a very minor disappointment. 

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Again, I was pretty good at hiding those overreactions from other people, but I knew what was going on and it was inhibiting my ability to forge intimate relationships with other people. Emotional immaturity is something I think a lot of us struggle with. Again, I really want to emphasize there is no shame in recognizing some of these features in ourselves. 

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I also want to emphasize that we don't want to judge others where we see some of these features. We do want to set healthy boundaries. We do want to extract ourselves from emotionally immature dynamics in our relationships. But we want to be able to do that without self-shame or judgment of others.

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Before we dive in to what emotional immaturity is, what it looks like, and how we grow in emotional maturity, I want to give you a brief overview of the history of understanding emotions to help you understand why this relationship to our emotions is so complicated and why we run into emotional immaturity in other people, and sometimes in ourselves, 

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The reality is that our understanding of the role of emotions came in the late 20th century, particularly with the rise of psychological research in the 60s and 70s, which began to focus a lot on attachment theory.

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If you think about attachment, it's really getting at the importance of nurturing emotional wellbeing in children. When John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth were studying young children and how they reacted, the first thing that they looked at was how a child's emotions were affected emotionally when a parent left the room.

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In those famous attachment studies, they were observing how a child's emotions were affected by the type of attachment he or she had with their parent. That research came into the forefront in the sixties and seventies, but it didn't really trickle down into having a practical impact on parenting until the last several decades. 

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For many people who were raised in the seventies, eighties, even the early nineties, there was a very different emphasis on emotions. Even in healthy families, emotions weren't necessarily discussed a lot. We didn't really understand the importance of honoring a child's emotions, validating a child's emotions. 

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All of those concepts are very new to psychology research. It's also very new in parenting paradigms. If you've been parenting young children in the last couple of decades, no doubt you've probably become aware of how important it is to help your kids understand their emotions.

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But again, that's very new. That's quite recent. A lot of people are simply walking around with a deficit of information about how to manage and regulate and understand emotions. It's a blind spot that a lot of people have now. The shift towards recognizing and validating children's emotions has led to different parenting styles and these parenting styles prioritize open communication and more transparency, the development of this secure emotional foundation that we talk about in terms of attachment.

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But again, that's fairly recent. If you've been parenting kids in the last couple of decades, you've probably given your kids a stronger foundation in that understanding of their emotions. But a lot of people simply don't have that foundation. Even if we have some of the knowledge, we're still working to correct some flawed messages that we got about emotions,

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That's why, again, there's no shame in any of this, but knowledge is power. The more we understand what emotional maturity looks like, the more we can develop it in ourselves and the more we can strive to bring it into our relationships with other people.

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What is emotional immaturity? What do we mean by that? It's a state where someone has a really hard time managing their emotions effectively. They struggle to regulate their emotions, which simply means that they have an emotion and tend to immediately act out of that emotion versus emotional maturity, which is having an emotion, naming the emotion, and then regulating that emotion.

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A lot of times you'll hear me say, “speaking on behalf of an emotion”, instead of speaking from an emotion. When I experience anger, if I don't have the maturity to know how to regulate my anger, I might go around getting really angry in the moment at whoever triggered that anger, whether it's justified or not.

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But if I've learned how to regulate my emotions, I can notice, oh, I'm feeling angry. I wonder what that's about. I can do some self-inquiry. I can discern whether that anger is justified. I can discern the source of that anger. I can discern whether that anger is because somebody has wronged me and I need to actually go have a conversation with that person.

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Or I can also discern if that anger is something going on inside of me, and the other person actually didn't do something wrong. But I felt angry, which means there's something else that has happened. For example, let's say you're with your adult children and one of them talks about how they're thinking about moving out of state and it triggers anger inside of you. 

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You don't like that your young adult child is thinking about moving far away from you. An emotionally mature person recognizes, oh, I'm angry, but I don't think my child has done something wrong. How do I need to manage my anger so that I don't lash out at someone who hasn't actually done something wrong? What is that anger actually about? 

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Then you can go on a process to understand, where is that anger actually coming from? Because this person didn't actually do something wrong. That would be an emotionally mature response. 

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Another example of an emotionally mature response with anger: let's say that a friend is really dismissive of you. You share something really vulnerable or really hard and they're judgmental or critical of you. You notice that you feel anger. In that instance, the anger is warranted. It's justified. It's actually about what the other person did.

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But again, an emotionally mature response would be to recognize that anger, name it, “wow, that made me feel angry” and then respond effectively on behalf of the anger, such as saying something to the effect of, ouch, that hurts. I feel really criticized at this moment. I was looking for support. What's that about? 

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There might even be a little edge to your voice, but you speak up on behalf of your feelings. Those are two examples of an emotionally mature and emotionally regulated response. 

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An emotionally immature response in each of those incidents: let's go back to the example of where your young adult child says that she's thinking about moving out of state. You notice anger and you lash out. “You can't do that. How could you leave everybody who loves you? You won't be okay on your own”. 

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You actually start to go after your young adult child in a really inappropriate way. That is not an appropriate response to what she shared with you. That would be an emotionally immature response. You feel an emotion, but you respond in a really immature way and it's harmful to the other person.

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Let's look at that second example where a friend is dismissive or critical or even judgmental of you after you share something vulnerable. You notice that you feel anger. An emotionally immature response in that moment would be to yell at your friend. “You never listened to me! You're so selfish. I hate you”!

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That would be an emotionally immature response. It's not immature to have the feeling of anger. The feeling of anger is valid. But when you lash out like that in an impulsive unregulated way, you're participating in a really toxic dynamic. Your emotional response out of that anger isn't helping the situation and it's actually making it worse. 

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Again, when it comes to emotional immaturity, it's not that we have these emotions that is the problem. It's how we are able to regulate those emotions and respond effectively on behalf of them.

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The American Psychological Association defines emotional maturity as a high and appropriate level of emotional control and expression. Think about that. There's the ability to take charge and control your own emotions. I don't love that word control because we're not trying to keep them down or suppress them. 

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We're trying to regulate them. We have the emotion, but we're in control. We're in command of them. This is that fruit of the spirit of self-control that we get out of Galatians 5. I can have that emotion, but I'm also in control of it. 

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Then the second component is expression. It's not that we're stifling that emotion. It's not that we're sidelining it or exiling it. It's that we learn how to express ourselves in a healthy way on behalf of that emotion. Control and expression are both a part of emotional maturity.

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When I shared with you my own experience with emotional immaturity in my thirties, I was high in control. I could control my emotions, but I could not express them. That's what led to that emotional immaturity. I could not express my emotions, and we have to be able to express emotions to have healthy relationships with other people.

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On the other hand, emotional immaturity, according to the American Psychological Association, is a tendency to express emotions without restraint or disproportionately to a situation. Again, there's those two components. The emotional behavior is out of control. 

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You're not in control of the anger. You're not in control of the sadness. You're not in control of the fear. In an emotionally immature person, the experience of the emotion, whether it's anger or fear or sadness or disgust or whatever these key emotions are, is out of control, but they're also not being expressed in an appropriate and considered and measured manner.

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If you really think about how to sum this up, when we see someone who's demonstrating emotionally immature behavior, it reminds us of the behavior we see from children. That's what it is. Someone hasn't developed past those childlike states of emotional outbursts that we expect from our children.

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If you are parenting a four year old, a five year old, a six year old, you know they have emotional outbursts. They have disproportionate reactions to situations. They don't always know how to express themselves effectively on behalf of their emotions. We expect this behavior from our children. But when we see this behavior in adults it can do damage to relationships.

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Here are some basic examples of emotionally immature behaviors. I want to be clear that we can all do these things in any given moment, but as with anything, when we begin to define something as emotionally immature, we're seeing a consistent pattern of these behaviors over time.

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There's an inability to handle constructive feedback. We might see a lot of defensiveness rather than someone being able to consider the validity of the constructive feedback. I talk a lot about defensiveness in I Shouldn't Feel This Way, because I see it as a yellow flag for how well we're managing our emotions.

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Emotional immaturity might show up as someone who shifts blame onto others instead of taking responsibility for their own role in a situation. If I can't take responsibility for my own emotions, I'm going to be tempted to blame others for the emotions I'm experiencing. “It's your fault that I'm angry. If you wouldn't do this, I wouldn't feel this way”.

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We see a lack of problem solving skills. As adults, we have to sometimes compartmentalize our emotions. We have to be able to honor our emotions, and also set our emotions aside to solve problems.

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For example, you might have a big emotional response to how your child is being treated at school, and that emotion is valid, but you'll need to be able to compartmentalize that emotion to figure out how best to solve the problem. What do I need to do? Who do I need to talk to? How do I approach this situation to help bring a solution to it?

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We might see constant overreactions, big reactions to minor events. We see little ability for self-reflection, for someone to be able to reflect on the emotions that they have. We see a lack of awareness of other people's feelings. It's really hard to understand other people's feelings if you don't understand your own.

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We see some impulsiveness where there's this acting out of emotion instead of this healthy restraint, honoring an emotion while simultaneously being able to think critically about a situation. Emotional immaturity can stem from a lot of different factors, and it's really important if you're in a relationship with someone where you see some of these qualities, to think about, to wonder, to get curious about what the root of that is.

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Sometimes it's rooted in a lack of knowledge. It can stem from childhood wounds where we've been enmeshed with a parent or a caregiver. I'll get into more of what I mean by that. Again, there is no shame in any of this. Then sometimes, and this is important to name, emotional immaturity is a symptom of a deeper seated problem, such as something like narcissism.

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Emotional immaturity is a symptom of narcissism. Most people who have narcissistic tendencies also show symptoms of emotional immaturity, but people who are emotionally immature are not always narcissistic. I really want you to hear me say that.

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I think that label of narcissism gets thrown around all the time, way too easily. It's an important label, especially when it fits, but there are a lot of other diagnostic criteria to name something as narcissistic. Go back to episode one to listen for more about that. But again, people who are narcissistic absolutely show signs of emotional immaturity, but people who are emotionally immature are not necessarily narcissistic. 

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They might have other really good qualities. They might be able to show loyalties, show responsibilities, and show up well in relationships. They might be a really good friend, a really good partner, a really good parent, but they struggle in this area of emotional maturity.

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I want to talk a little bit more about the role of enmeshment and differentiation in emotional development, because these are key features of growing and emotional maturity. Differentiation relates to an individual's ability to develop a distinct sense of self, to become someone who is separate from others. 

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This term is especially common as we think about families. As a young child, are you able to have a distinct sense of yourself apart from your parents? Was there an understanding that different people could have different emotional responses to the same event?

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For example, maybe a family is going to a specific church and as the kids are getting older, maybe one of the parents is starting to feel unhappy about the church service. Doesn't like the music or doesn't like the sermon. Maybe another parent is feeling okay with it. They like the service.

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Maybe the teenager in the family is really attached to the youth group and really loves the service for that reason. Every single member of that family has a different emotional response to that event, and that's healthy and that's normal. In a healthy family, there would be room for each of those different responses. 

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Even if there's a decision made to leave the church or stay at the church, there's still an acknowledgement that different people have different emotional responses to that decision. Maybe if the decision is made to leave, it's going to be done with an understanding that this is going to be really painful for the teenager who's really attached to the youth group. 

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Maybe we'll figure out ways to help that young person stay involved in that community. There's an honoring of the grief that is entailed for the individual family member. Again, this is a fairly nuanced concept that is fairly new. Many people, if you think about the way you were parented, let's say your parents had to move, you had to leave your childhood home and move out of state for a job. 

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Your parents didn't have a choice. They needed to follow the job and you had to leave and you had to uproot from a school that you loved. You were really sad about that. Again, this is not to blame parents, but in that generation, it wouldn't have been untypical for parents to say, this is the way it is. You're going to have to deal with it. 

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There wouldn't have been as much emphasis on, listen, this is hard. Yes, we do have to make this move, but yes, your grief is also valid. Let's talk about it. Let's honor it. That's nuanced parenting. A lot of us didn't get that opportunity to have their own emotional responses, to take responsibility for them.

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It's not that every emotional response is indulged or pleased or enabled, but that the emotional response is valid. That’s how children learn to regulate emotions. I can have an emotion. That emotion is valid. It doesn't mean that emotion will drive all of the decision making, but I also recognize that I'm okay. When I have a big emotion, I'll be okay. 

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It's honored. It's valid. I can see the merit in being part of a larger community, a larger system of people, in this case of family, where sometimes I don't always get my way. Sometimes that's hard, and also I'm okay because I can have my feelings about it. I'll find a way forward on this different path. 

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That's the goal. That's what leads to emotional maturity. But when we didn't get that experience, when our emotions were sidelined for whatever reason, whether it's parents who didn't know better or whether it was through abusive actions on the part of parents or toxic actions on the part of parents or traumas that were out of our control, we don't know what to do with those big emotions. We don't know what to do with them. It can be really hard. 

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A closely related concept that's related to emotional regulation and individuation is this term enmeshment. Again, I see a lot of enmeshment in some family systems and it really stymies the development of healthy emotional maturity. Enmeshment is a term used in psychology to describe a relationship dynamic where the boundaries between individuals become blurred. 

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In short, there's a lack of boundaries between two different people and with that lack of boundaries, the relationship becomes blended and blurred together at the expense of the individuals in that relationship, which can inhibit personal growth and agency as well as emotional maturity.

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A common example of enmeshment that we see happens between a parent and a child where a parent relies on their child for emotional support in an inappropriate way. For example, one parent might confide in a child about his or her adult relationships, maybe even with the other parents. 

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A parent might look to the child for support through a mental health issue, through an addiction. Children are not meant to parent their parents. They're also not meant to be their parent's primary friend. There is a power differential between a parent and a child and it's really important that a parent understands that and doesn't turn to a child for emotional support, caregiving, or problem solving. 

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There's a term for this when parents do it, it's called parentification. It's really toxic. It undermines that child's ability to develop their own sense of self, their own responses and reactions to people. It's a parent's job to teach a child how to understand their own emotions, their own thoughts, their own opinions, their own gifts, their own preferences.

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It's a parent's job to help a child develop that strong sense of self, that strong sense of identity. When that process gets subverted and a parent leans on a child to help the parent, it gets really toxic. If that happened to you, if you have a parent who relied on you to get their needs met, you may have a really hard time understanding your own emotions or understanding your own preferences.

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Their emotional immaturity had an impact on you. There's an incredible book about this topic by Lindsay Gibson. She's a therapist who writes a lot about this. Her books are really practical and helpful. The book is called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It's a great read if you're resonating with some of what I'm saying about this

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Enmeshment can also happen in romantic partnerships, where one partner tries to dictate the emotional climate of the relationship where you're not allowed to bring your own emotional responses into the relationship. If you think about that example I shared where two people can go to the same event, whether it's a church service or a family reunion, each person is going to have different emotional responses to that event. That's healthy.

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Part of the beauty of relationships is getting to share each person's individual reactions. We learn more about the other person, but in an enmeshed romantic partnership, one person feels like their job is to simply bear witness to the other's emotions. That other person can't do the work of bearing witness to yours, and so there's some emotional immaturity there that leads to a deficit in that aspect of building intimacy in that relationship. 

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Then you can see enmeshment also in friendships or even in sibling relationships, especially in the absence of parental emotional availability. In those situations where the parent was absent emotionally, siblings tend to become each other's primary source of comfort and support. This can be a beautiful thing, but when it gets too enmeshed, it can make it difficult for the two siblings to honor each other when there's a difference of opinion or a difference of an emotional response.

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Enmeshment precludes each person showing up as an individual because there's a fear of losing that attachment. Again, if you think about a healthy relationship, part of it is being present to each other in our uniqueness. That's the beauty of relationships. I get to know you, I get to understand you. I'm so curious about how you're seeing this situation and you get to know me, you get to understand my responses to this situation.

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Together we see a bigger picture. We see more of the whole. We're both bringing different perspectives to a situation and through being able to share and exchange those different emotions, those different responses to that situation, we each gain a bigger perspective.

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This is the beauty of healthy relationships. We don't want to be in a relationship with someone who sees everything the exact same way we do. I need your perspective to help fill out the blind spots in mine and you need my perspective to help you see the blind spots in yours. That requires emotional maturity. It requires me to understand my own emotions and to be able to regulate those emotions so that I can be present to you as you process your emotions. 

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I want to close today with some tips for you if you're in a relationship with someone who is emotionally immature, as well as for those of you who are recognizing, “I have some emotional immaturity and I want to grow in this area”.

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First, if you're in a relationship with someone who has some emotional immaturity: most importantly, beginning to recognize, oh, this is an example of emotional immaturity. This person can't take constructive feedback from me. This person has a lot of emotional outbursts. That recognition is key. 

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The minute you begin to see that and you stop participating in that dynamic, whether through using words or through your actions, that's a huge step toward change. You're removing yourself from that dynamic. Boundaries are really critical. It is not your responsibility to regulate somebody else's emotions. 

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That is their responsibility. You can set the boundaries to remove yourself from their expectation that you will do that. For example, if you have a parent that tends to lean on you for their emotional support. You can say a brief statement of compassion. “Wow, that must be hard. I hope you're getting help for that”. Then excuse yourself from the conversation. 

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Your actions are going to speak loudly that you simply are not going to do the work of regulating their emotions, of helping them process their emotions. You can be a compassionate person and also excuse yourself from those conversations.

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I talk a lot about how to do this in I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. Another great resource, especially if you're dealing with this in the context of your own parents, is the book by Lindsay Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Another great resource is by Nedra Glover Tawwab called Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships.

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Now if you're someone who's been listening and going, I think some of that relates to me. How do I begin to grow in emotional maturity? A couple of steps. Number one, practice voicing your emotions with a safe person. I think I'm feeling this way. I don't know what to do with this feeling, but this is what I think I'm feeling. 

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Give yourself permission to let that young part of you, that beautiful child inside of you that never got a chance to understand her emotions, to do some of that work now. Find a safe person or do it in your journal or do it with God and begin to notice, man, this is the emotion I'm having right now. Isn't that interesting? Have some fun with it. Get curious about it.

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It can be really helpful to establish a daily practice of checking in with yourself, whether through journaling, through prayer, taking a walk each day and checking in on your thoughts and feelings. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What do I really believe? What do I really want out of this situation?

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Begin to consider your own thoughts and feelings. Tell a friend, this is something I'm working on. I want to grow in this. If you've dealt with a lot of trauma or you've been parentified, or you're coming out of an enmeshed family system, seek the support of a professional. They can help you begin to individuate and grow in understanding your emotions. 

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This is such powerful, beautiful work. The fruits of it are so life-giving, because the truth is, the more you invest in your own emotional health and your own emotional maturity, the more your relationships will become more mature. You'll start to notice when folks have expectations of you emotionally that are unfair and that are not your responsibility.

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You'll start setting healthy boundaries and you'll start enjoying the vitality that emotions bring to our lives. There is nothing like that feeling of realizing that you can have all the different emotions and not be knocked off your feet by them, that you can feel grief, that you can feel sadness, that you can also feel joy, that you can also feel hope, that you can also feel disappointed.

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Those emotions actually become the best sort of friends. You learn to become a good friend to yourself through all of those emotions, and you develop a sense of agency, a sense of wholeness, and frankly, and a sense of being anchored that no one can take away from you.

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