Emotional Maturity - How to achieve it
I feel like I came late to the emotional game.
I spent most of my life thinking that emotions were things to be ignored or suppressed - something that detracted from the human experience, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I now think that emotions are the link between our physical and spiritual selves. They shape how you show up in the world and help you to create the person you want to be.
This quote, attributed to Victor Frankl, sums it up nicely “In the gap between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose”. I see emotional maturity as the ability to grow this gap into a usable space - where you have time to choose your response rather than react to stimulus.
This blog provides a three-step process for achieving emotional maturity - awareness, processing and sharing.
Awareness - What is this emotion?
The first step is awareness. You need to be able to identify and name the emotion you are feeling. Using a “feeling wheel” like the one below is a great place to start. It can also help you to grow your emotional vocabulary.
As well as becoming aware of emotions, you can practise growing emotions you want to feel more of.
It’s as simple as hunting out the emotion you want to feel. I used this technique to grow my sense of pride. Initially, I had thought pride was something I would spontaneously feel when I had done something “good enough” to deserve it. What I have learned is you need to practise feeling an emotion. Before I go to bed each evening I write down three things from the day that I’m proud of. It was hard to start with, but it became easier as I grew my muscle of recognising pride. I am now able to recognise and feel pride and I have a little “pride book” filled with examples.
Judgement can get in the way of being aware of your emotions. Telling yourself you shouldn’t feel a certain emotion, or avoiding feeling an emotion will stunt your emotional growth. Accepting the emotion as you become aware of it is key - you can’t work out what you want to do with the emotion if you are distracted by pretending you don’t feel it.
2. Processing - What do I want to do with this?
Once you are aware of the emotion, you can choose what to do with it.
Emotion is data, it is not fact, but rather a signal or input. This is important to remember when choosing how to respond to an emotion. A great starting point is: “I notice I am feeling…{insert your feeling here}”. Then ask yourself "What would I like to do with this information?”
I know when I first discovered emotions I was concerned, even scared, that I would become easily overwhelmed and not be able to “control” my emotions. I wasn’t sure what I should be doing with them.
A friend shared with me that emotions were meant to be experienced rather than understood. It took me some time to work out what he meant. I discovered that being aware of and naming the emotion was often enough for the emotion to move on - it was the noticing that was important.
Emotion is a signal, as I’m writing this blog, I’m feeling restless - I feel a bit twitchy, like I want to get up and move. I am aware of the signal and choose to set a timer for 20 minutes. I can check back in on that emotion when my timer goes off. I’ve used this technique before and often when the timer goes off I’m no longer feeling twitchy and I can get more work done - or I choose to get up and move - either way it is a conscious choice.
Emotions can feel big, scary and overwhelming - especially when you have tried to suppress them for most of your adult life. I was taught a technique of scheduling in emotional release as I was learning to navigate the world of emotions. Planning to release your emotions, in an environment of your choosing, is a great way to avoid losing control over them. I found I was able to achieve this release with a combination of music and yoga moves, I know others who have a “sad movie” night or use somatic exercises. Get curious to see what will work for your emotional release.
With practice I have learned to let the emotion rise like a wave, sometimes it crashes over me as it passes, but it does always pass.
Smaller emotional clearing can also be achieved with a simple exercise like the one above.
Taking a break from your emotions can also be helpful. This work can be exhausting. Finding activities that don’t require emotional input can be a great way to take a break. I find physical exercise great for this, particularly ones I need to pay attention to. For me, reformer Pilates fits this spot or basketball. An activity where you need to focus on what your body is doing rather than how you are feeling about it.
3. Sharing - Communicating your emotions with others
Sharing your emotions can help to build and strengthen relationships, it allows others to understand you.
When others share emotions with us it can allow us a glimpse inside their private internal world.
Care does need to be taken with choosing who to share your emotions with and how to share them maturely.
Let’s start with who to share with.
You can choose to share your emotions or not, but you can’t control how a person will receive your emotions. Choose wisely. Emotionally immature people can attach judgment and blame to feelings, try to justify inappropriate behaviour and push responsibility for their feelings onto others. You want to avoid sharing your emotions with these people, particularly when learning to become emotionally mature.
Now we can explore how to share emotions.
Communicating emotions with others can be a great way to unpack and explore your emotions - when it is done alongside your own emotional processing work.
Avoid emotional dumping. This is when you vent all of your emotions on someone else, without any thought to the impact. While this can feel like “processing” it’s only taking the first step of awareness without deciding how you want to respond to the emotional signal. You can avoid emotional dumping by focusing the discussion on the action, rather than the signal or the situation leading up to the signal.
I had a great example of this the other day. A colleague was feeling disappointed. They talked about being aware of feeling disappointed and the action they had taken. This led to a discussion about expectations, perfectionism and how we each managed these things. The conversation deepened our connection with each other.
I love the quote by Parker Palmer “The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed - to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is”. I think this is also true for emotions - they want to be witnessed. A signal that wants to be received.
Emotional maturity is the ability to choose how you want to show up in the world regardless of the stimulus you are experiencing. The ability to notice and process your internal signals and then channel them into the action you choose is a powerful gift of freedom you can give to yourself.
I don’t by any means think that I have mastered this, each day as I try and practise and show up it gets a little bit easier.