Stunted Emotional Maturity
When a person has a personality pattern of emotional immaturity, certain reactive, emotionally driven behaviors automatically and repeatedly show up, as if out of nowhere. Their emotional reactivity is always reminiscently indicative of the trauma they experienced in the past. For instance, if a young child experienced a traumatic event when seven years old, that experience and related emotion will be recorded in the mind, brain, and body repeating itself every time a similar situation occurs. That emotion will immediately recycle over and over again until it has been re-examined, processed, healed, and insight gained.
Habits
Repeated emotional reactions become habitual, stunting an individual’s ability to learn about and grow into emotional maturity. Regretful or remorseful emotions are not familiar because they have a low capacity for considering how their mindless words and thoughtless behaviors affect those with whom they live, work, and socialize.
Honesty
On the other hand, emotionally mature people have trained themselves to think honestly and objectively while maintaining deep emotional connections with other people. Emotionally mature individuals function independently with healthy attachments to those they care about without deliberately planned exploitation. They also understand the value of gratitude and humility and can fluidly incorporate both into their daily lives. As young children they were taught it’s okay to seek help when needed, and to extend help without concern for reciprocity when others are in need.
Humility
Emotionally mature people do not demand or force others to do what they want because they have learned to do as much as they can for themselves, which supports their sense of confidence, individuality, autonomy, independence, and acceptance of change. They are comfortable with humility, understanding that by removing themselves from the need for immature ego gratification, they can humbly respect the beliefs, thoughts, and opinions of others thanks to their well-developed empathy, impulse control, emotional steadiness, and sincere concern for all living beings.
“Emotional maturity is the most important element in all healthy, gratifying, and caring interpersonal relationships. ”