Emotional Maturity In Everyday Life

Disclaimer

Parts of this book might trigger strong emotions and unpleasant memories. If you feel overwhelmed or unable to cope, please stop reading and remind yourself that those are just memories of the past. If you feel unstable, please consult a helping professional.

Warning: you might feel a temptation to interpret ideas from this book in simplified or even extreme ways. Do not do it. Consider the complexities of each situation you want to deal with.

This book represents the opinions and experience of the author. Avoid using this book against your own experience and common sense. The author takes no responsibility for any unwanted consequences that might be attributed to careless use of this book. The reader accepts full responsibility for his or her decisions and behavior.

Preface

Many people invest huge effort into avoiding effort. Promises of magical, overnight solutions are often very attractive. When those promises fail, as they will, people seek short-term relief and escape from reality. This damages their emotional maturity, awareness of genuine emotions and true identity.

Although physical and material aspects of life are important and unavoidable, I primarily see the true potential for happiness in having quality, fulfilling relationships with oneself and others, as well as developing our creativity and other potentials.

This cannot be achieved overnight – it requires long-term self-observation, uncompromising honesty to oneself, investing effort into changing our automatic reactions and commitment to exploring our inner worlds. The rewards are many: supportive intimacy with ourselves, warm and fulfilling relationships with others and courage to take risks and to experience life fully… to name only a few.

Our society is emotionally immature and this is generally perceived as normal and acceptable. Children growing up in such an environment will adjust to it by creating beliefs and emotional patterns that enable them to survive - and years later, these might be difficult to change.

Oversimplifying is a defense mechanism most commonly used as a refuge of immaturity. You can recognize it in nationalism (masked as patriotism), all kinds of prejudice and narrow-mindedness - and in instant-solutions to life and relationship problems. I want this book to be an antithesis of oversimplifying - to take into consideration the complexity of human lives and emotions, and to emphasize the importance of finding balance instead of following exaggerated ideas.

When I use expressions such as childish and immature emotions, some people might interpret this as criticism. This is not my intention – I simply want to define and describe a specific type of emotional reactions. I define immature emotions as those that have been suppressed during childhood, when we were small and powerless. At that time, we did not have the resources to deal with them and to learn to express them in a mature manner. Those emotions are triggered and often burst out and take over in situations that remind us of past moments in which we experienced something similar.

This is unavoidable – everyone carries such suppressed emotions within themselves. If you recognize yourself in some of the situations described in this book, it only shows that you are normal, not that something is wrong with you. From time to time, I recognize myself in many of the examples described throughout the book. I wrote many chapters while I was exploring my own feelings.

I do not want to encourage blaming anyone (people often blame parents or society for their emotional problems). It is crucial to become aware of our individual responsibilities in seeking personal transformation and to discover our innate potentials.

Practically everybody has emotional problems – this is a consequence of living in emotionally unhealthy surroundings. We do not create emotional problems by accident; we use them as defense mechanisms. In other words, we reject parts of ourselves and our emotions, since it is the only way we know how to deal with unhealthy circumstances.

According to psychoanalytical theory, a mentally ill person is the one who is unable to build strong enough defense mechanisms against pain. Defense mechanisms can often be unhealthy and have unpleasant consequences (like avoidance, denial, projections...) but are better than losing our minds.

Our limiting and toxic beliefs are also defense mechanisms. We create them as children in attempt to understand and assimilate unexpected and painful (from the child’s point of view) events. They defend us from even greater loss – loss of family bonds and safety, perhaps even loss of physical and mental health which might follow after the shock caused by the conflict between inner and outer reality.

Children younger than five (especially babies and toddlers) are still perceived by some people as not much more than cute animals, rather than sensitive and complex human beings. If adults believe that small children cannot suffer the consequences of an experience, wrongly assuming they are unable to perceive, understand and remember what is going on, they will likely be insensitive of their behavior in front of the children. It begins with the separation of a baby from her mother in a hospital, followed by family conflicts, worsened by parental criticism or over-protection and so on.

The next reason for inconsiderate behavior to children can come from the expectation that children are able to understand, remember and predict things in the same manner as an adult. This is not true. Compared to animals, we are all immature at birth, with underdeveloped brains not yet capable of basic survival. If human babies were born at the same level of maturity as animals, their heads would be too big to pass through their mother's vagina. The brain of a human child needs a lot of time to grow and mature, and some adults, who have not been educated about it, can have difficulties understanding it.

Until recently, it was believed that newborn babies could not feel all human emotions. In the 19th century (according to J. M. Masson and S. McCarthy), it was believed that newborns and small children were unable to feel physical pain. It was quite normal at that time to perform painful surgery on children without anesthetics, ignoring their screams of pain. It is possible that such lack of empathy among those who promoted this idea, was a result of the way they were treated by their early family.

On the contrary, especially in earliest stages of life – as evidenced by results of many modern scientists who researched the prenatal period – children are very sensitive of their surroundings, including subtle nonverbal gestures and emotional atmosphere around them. Some scientists now claim that small children can be up to seven times more sensitive to non-verbal communication than adults can. The foundation of our personality is thus created within those first experiences and becomes a kind of filter for all subsequent experiences. Most people later consider this to be a coincidence or genetic heritage.

Many people live empty and shallow lives, deprived of feelings of adventure and passion. They do jobs they dislike, with a quality of life barely better than a few centuries ago. For years, even decades, they stay in relationships that lack intimacy and respect, and believe that it is normal that the quality of their lives is just above plain survival. I often think that in terms of meaningful careers, relationships and quality of life, human kind has not advanced much further from Middle Ages behavior.

Can you imagine living with enthusiasm, passion, serenity and strength? With full awareness about your own worth? Imagine that you naturally create healthy and mature relationships, that it is normal for you to express yourself wisely and feel comfortable around other people. How would that feel? How would your life change?

Even if we are so used to our patterns of feelings and thoughts that it might seem impossible or very difficult to change, it can be done. If you want to succeed in personal development, you need to be willing to face even the most immature parts of yourself. You have to take the responsibility for changing your life. The reward is a true and permanent improvement that reaches the very core of your personality. Only committed effort can create visible, permanent results in your relationships and life.

Deep honesty to yourself is the first step on the journey towards your happiness and health.

Self-Esteem as a Foundation for Emotional Maturity

I begin this book with the topic of self-esteem, since I believe that true emotional maturity is not possible without a basic experience of self as worthy of love. People who do not love themselves, in my opinion, cannot truly love or appreciate other people. They might consciously try, but fear, anger and shame accumulated under the surface will often motivate them to act defensively or criticize others, just to be able to bear with their own negative self-images.

Few things are black or white; there are only shades of gray between the two extremes. In one moment, we feel appreciated, and in the next, we can feel humiliated and insignificant. Some parts of our personality are healthy and fully aware of reality, while other parts might be hidden in unresolved, long ago suppressed complexes.

What exactly is self-esteem?

In a society that is on a low level of emotional development, in which most people rarely have the chance to experience what it like is to feel truly good about themselves, it is useful to clearly define self-esteem.

What I want to talk about is far more complex and larger than self-esteem defined just as the way somebody acts or the way somebody perceives herself. Confidence is often confused with self-esteem, yet many people can act confidently while avoiding self-awareness or even while feeling incompetent.

I want to talk about the feelings of deep inner fulfillment, pure pleasure of existence, experiences that are beyond love for oneself. Self-esteem, for me, includes a deep inner core of self trust and self-acceptance. It is like a fixed point in your personal universe, which you can lean on even when, externally, your world appears to be falling apart. The term self-esteem might not adequately describe this inner state, but can be used to describe the behavioral habits that result from this state.

Even when we talk about behavior itself, our society is not familiar with self-esteem and so it is interpreted in many different ways.

In ancient times, our ancestors were brought up to be obedient to authorities. For many centuries, people were brought up in fear, guilt and shame not only for the slightest mistakes in behavior, but simply for harboring ‘incorrect emotions (e.g. anger is a deadly sin"). Feelings of love for self, experiencing self as a valuable human being – would automatically mean disregarding and rejecting imposed fear and guilt, and therefore were not allowed.

For people to believe that their feelings were bad, they had to be convinced that they were sinful and unworthy by nature. When children brought up in that kind of environment grew up and had children of their own, their offspring's immature behavior thus provoked deep feelings of insecurity, guilt and shame. Often it was easier for such parents to call the children bad or selfish than to admit their own feelings of fear, guilt and shame, which had been suppressed for decades. This is how guilt and fear are often passed on to next generations.

In such a way, a society of false politeness and doubtful morality was created, a society in which being good meant to neglect yourself and your own needs, being polite meant not to disagree or stick out, not even to say something good about yourself, and consideration for others often meant damaging yourself.

A basic law of physics says that energy cannot be destroyed; it is only possible to change its form. A similar law applies to emotions.

Suppressed emotions linger within us and strive to rise to surface and give us their messages. If we do not allow ourselves to face them in a constructive way, unconsciously we start to look for relief in other ways– often destructive ones. Gossip, hypocrisy, depression, envy and malice provided pressure relief for many generations. Sooner or later, self-control is not enough to sustain the pressure of accumulated emotions and we switch to another extreme.

This is occurring in our civilization right now. Accumulated destruction rises through countless images of violence and immature behavior on television. Younger generations, which on one side were brought up on tradition and on the other side with such immature models that send the message that destruction is OK, turn to the other extreme – open selfishness, arrogance and aggression. Some people call this self-esteem, which is one reason for confusion about the term.

Many people have never experienced true self-esteem and have only a whimsical image of how is it expressed. It is easy then to believe in false portraits of self-esteem, in an often fake, superficial feeling of power that destruction might give. Once you have your own inner experience of self-esteem, no longer do you need outer models for self-orientation.

If you ever felt arrogance, contempt or aggression – and from time to time this happens to everyone - you have probably noticed that it is not a truly pleasant feeling. Instead of appreciation for oneself, those attitudes are based on fear, defensiveness and attempts to avoid perceived dangers, including trying to suppress unpleasant feelings. On the other hand, when we truly appreciate ourselves, we are spontaneously more willing and able to see the positive qualities of other people. Therefore, true acceptance of oneself is naturally related to the acceptance of others. On some level, we are aware that the human essence is the same for all of us, and whatever we find within ourselves, we spontaneously search for within others as well.

Behavior that appears to be confident, but without consideration and respect for others, is not self-esteem but only hides subconscious negative self-images. You have probably experienced that those attributes you know you possess, you do not feel you have to prove or actively point out to others. The need to show off, to prove yourself, implies that you do not quite trust your qualities or who you are.

Each and every one of us has some negative beliefs about ourselves, and consequently we feel the need to prove the opposite to ourselves and to others. This can be a very strong, compulsive need that is hard to moderate or, sometimes, even to be aware of. Much of what we do or yearn for is motivated by that need. How would it look like if, instead of needing to prove ourselves, we really felt good about ourselves? How much energy and time in all areas of our lives would become available for much more useful purposes?

A young woman I will call Irene came to me with a desire to build her self-confidence and to feel that she deserves to be loved. Although gentle, sophisticated and intelligent, she felt insecure and was afraid to express herself.

Irene had a habit of continuously analyzing her behavior, especially when she wanted to express some of her feelings. Then she would imagine all the unpleasant conclusions that someone might make about her behavior and would use those thoughts to criticize herself. She used to imagine all sorts of ways in which someone might misinterpret her words or intentions, usually in the worst possible scenario. This was particularly a problem in situations when other people's reactions to her were not entirely positive. At that point, she would start to believe that she truly had the bad intentions she imagined someone might attribute to her, instead of holding on to the awareness of her own truth. Sometimes just imagining criticism would cause her to feel like an ashamed little girl.

While researching those infantile emotions, Irene felt that, when she was a small child, she was constantly under observation and her behavior and words were always criticized. She felt that her parents very often interpreted her behavior in the worst possible manner, telling her that she was selfish and that her intentions were bad, while her good qualities and good intentions were rarely noticed. That is quite a common attitude – most of us are much more likely to focus on discomfort rather than pleasure; probably a heritage from our evolution through which our ancestors had to be constantly alert to any sign of danger.

As a child of three or four, Irene instinctively trusted her parents, but could not understand their real reasons for criticizing her. As a result, she started to believe many of those criticisms, in spite of her feelings whispering that something was wrong. As she grew up, not only it became normal for her to treat herself in the same way as she was treated before; she was also attracted to relationships in which she experienced similar behavior, since she learned at a very young age to associate love with criticism.

As a part of the healing process, I asked her to imagine what it would feel like if her parents had noticed and appreciated the best in her and interpreted her behavior in a positive way. During this exercise, she experienced a perspective that had been almost unimaginable to her: to naturally accept herself and to feel love for herself, to feel that she is a good person, and to spontaneously recognize distorted perceptions that many people have in everyday situations.

True self-esteem and respect for others

In external behavior, self-esteem is expressed as respect for our feelings, our needs and demands as well as respect for other people; this means, among other things, to see others as powerful and capable of doing the same. There is no fear of condemnation (which is actually fear of self-criticism!). The need to neglect ourselves to take care of others disappears because we know that they can take care of themselves and, not less relevantly, that it is their right to do so.

The anger and resistance that we might feel in situations when others try to express their discomfort with our behavior, or when they warn us that we have violated their personal boundaries, is a defense mechanism which conceals deep unconscious beliefs that we don't deserve to stand up for ourselves. Those beliefs are usually created at a very young age. Still, in some ways, a child will feel that such a belief is unnatural and will resist it. At a young age, however, he does not know how to deal with such inner