6 Signs You're Emotionally Mature

if you really struggle with being highly emotionally reactive even to seemingly small things or you don't know how to regulate big emotions when they come up then this talk is going to be for you we're going to talk about becoming more emotionally mature and I'm going to give you some key skills to learn how to do that now just as an aside when we talk about being emotionally immature versus being emotion mature this isn't a judgment of character or your value or worth as a human being so just take note of that your level of emotional maturity only has to do with the skills you were taught usually at a younger age the skills you were taught to be able to manage your emotions to be able to understand your emotions to be able to work with and through big emotions when they came up and if you didn't learn that or if you didn't learn that very much then you're going to be kind of stuck at that level of emotional regulation development or emotional regulation ability that you kind of got second at that younger age and that stuckness kind of carried you through and you're still probably at a lot of those same levels of emotional maturity if you were never taught anything any different and if you haven't really done this work yet as an adult to develop your emotional maturity then you're just going to be kind of stuck in that younger age which is just why we call it immaturity so this isn't again about an evaluation of your worth um or value as a human being it just has to do with what you learned along the way and if you weren't taught it if you weren't modeled it if you weren't shown it then you can't really blame yourself for not knowing how to do it right it would be like if you didn't know how to ride a bike as an adult you wouldn't blame yourself for being so stupid for not being able to ride a bike it was because you weren't taught how to do it you were never taught how to ride a bike maybe for a lot of us we were taught as children how to ride bikes but if you weren't taught how to ride a bike as an adult and then all of a sudden or as a child and as an adult you got on a bike and like fell over immediately you wouldn't be like oh my gosh I'm so stupid I can't do anything right I'm such a loser no you'd just be like oh I haven't learned how to do it yet which is why I'm falling and scraping up my knees when I try so this is why many among us if we never learned how to be more emotionally mature never really learned how to understand what to do with our emotions when they come up when big emotions come up and we only learned how to either act out to react to turn outwards and against other people in our emotion reactions or to turn inward against ourselves when big emotions come up if that's the only thing we are ever taught or ever shown then that's just what we're gonna do so developing emotional maturity is a skill to be learned like any other skill and I'm going to get you started on that here today you ready if you're new here Welcome to our incredible little corner on the internet take a second introduce yourself in the comment section below if you are back again it is always good to have you special shout out to my shifters I know many of you are here watching this and I just want to say hi to you and come and bring discussion from this talk into our shift Society community and we can talk more about this and get deeper into discussion if you're like Julia what's the shift society that is my membership Community where we are taking this work deeper and you are given master classes and lessons um and step-by-step processes to learn specifically how to manage your mind and emotions however no matter whoever or whatever is going around you on around you so you can feel more calm confident and grounded every single day you can get more information about the shift Society in the description below if you haven't already like the channel subscribe to the channel sorry like the video subscribe to the channel always helpful getting these free talks out into the ears and minds and hearts of more people um either way my name is Julie Christina and I am a therapist a researcher a coach the creator of my membership Community the shift society and I help a heart-centered go-getters break through the crap that is holding them back so they can like themselves and their lives more every day and developing our emotional maturity isn't and we're not this isn't a moral thing let's make you a better person to become more emotionally mature mature it just makes you feel better you're not less of a person if you struggle with any of these things if you struggle with your emotional maturity not any less of a person this isn't about making you a better more valuable person this is just about making you feel better making you feel more equipped to be able to handle life in ways that feel better where you feel more confident and secure and empowered and less like an emotional um rollercoaster you just feel more even and uh yeah just more in charge of yourself and your life so let's talk about these let's talk about how to start becoming more emotionally mature now my last talk that you could go back and watch first is about how to tell if you're struggling with your emotional maturity and these things I'm going to talk about today are related to what we talked about last time or in the last talk so you go back and watch that one that's just about evaluating where you're at in your level of emotional maturity so you know what to start working on that's it not evaluating your worth as a person just evaluating where you're at so you know what to work on now these ones I'm going to talk about like I said are related to that so it might be helpful to go back and watch that but you will still get something out of it by just watching this here today so in the last one we did talk about one sign of emotional immaturity is being highly defensive right so getting really offended easily and then becoming defensive around that so how we counteract that with more emotional maturity how did we develop our emotional maturity around this one is to start getting curious if you're a shifter you know right now that's one of our favorite words in the shift society when something is coming up our first step is to get curious what's coming up for me right now why did this offend me what am I making this mean why am I reacting to this in this way so taking a step back and getting curious and looking at and being like okay so I could get defensive right now or I could take a step back and ask myself if I need to and if there is something that I need to be defending or if it's just shame or ego that's getting in the way right now that's causing me to have this reaction so give you an example of this many of you know I recently moved and living in this lovely new space that I love so much and I'm so grateful to be living here and I love I just I love I love where I live and I spent time and energy and effort setting my place up to be really warm really inviting really comfortable a space that I really wanted to be in and I put a lot of time and energy and effort and money into it and I'm really happy with this space and I'm really proud of it now recently I had some family members this is a few months ago shortly after I'd moved in I had some family members come over to visit for the first time and had them over for some coffee in the afternoon had a nice little visit and then before they left one of these people said well it's nothing fancy but it's not bad and immediately I had this big emotional reaction and I was offended and my Temptation was to get defensive and to get upset and to have words to say like that's so rude or like you know that so um inconsiderate or I'll put so much into this and that's the best that you can do like this was kind of going through my head but then I took a step back and I was like Julia why are you getting offended and why do you feel the need to defend something that you really like does someone else have to approve of whatever it is that's important to you in order for you to continue to Value it or to have your own thoughts and opinions about it does this person's thoughts and opinions have to match yours in order to feel okay and in that moment I realize no they are allowed to have whatever thoughts they want to have about my place I just have to make sure I am clear on my own thoughts and I love this place and I think for me it is fancy and I think that it is great and I think that it's beautiful and this person can think you know what it's nothing fancy but it's not half bad and they're allowed to have their thoughts I am allowed to have my thoughts and they don't have to be the same and they're not doing anything wrong and I'm not doing anything wrong now you might think well the person you know it was kind of a little bit you know not super supportive or they could have been more encouraging and yeah maybe they could have and sure that would have been nice but is it necessary is it necessary for that person to have the same thoughts as I have the same perspectives the same ideas the same desires the same preferences is it necessary for them to have all of those same things as me in order for me to feel okay in order for me to not feel offended in order for me to not feel then defensive and the answer is no they can have their thoughts I can have mine there's nothing to defend the next one the next way to build our emotional maturity is to get okay with not being right and I know this is a hard one for many of us especially when it's things that you care about but often the funny thing is is that we will like stick our stake in the ground about things that aren't even that important because we don't want to be proven wrong because we don't want someone to have the upper hand because we don't want someone else to Like one-up Us in some way and so we're like you cannot be right I have to be right and you know we get on sort of this like High Ground instead of asking ourselves why do I need to be right I don't get a medal or a cookie if I am if everyone and everything in the universe agrees on my idea my perspective my view I don't get a medal or a cookie and so why would I waste my energy trying to prove that I'm right when I could just sit back and have my own idea opinion and be curious about someone else's now it doesn't mean that I have to agree but I do need to understand a part of emotional maturity is understanding that everybody has their own ideas and perspectives and perceptions and they have kind of a reason behind it even things that you're like how could you have that political view or how could you you know believe or think that that person is a good person or how could you even like them or how could you how could you like you know they make you say they make the best cinnamon buns well I don't think the cinnamon buns are very good at all I've had way better ones and you're wrong right like we get so stuck on even like silly little things instead of being like they probably have their reasons for their opinions or perspectives and I don't have to agree with them but I don't have to make them agree with me what would that be like if you just release people to have their own perspective and ideas and if you want to share yours and if you are interested in trying to kind of sway them more into your way of thinking because you think it's more healthy or helpful or productive then great have a discussion right have a back and forth without trying to force them into thinking that you are right because just human nature the more we feel forced or controlled the more we get defensive the more we hold back and the more resistant we become and so taking some time to try to understand where someone else is coming from why do they have the perspective they have why do they have the perception they have what situation circumstances or teachings or learnings or information have they've been exposed to that have brought up this idea or perspective that they have that that have built that so working on being curious again trying to listen and understand doesn't mean you have to agree but it also means that you don't have to be right the next way to build your emotional maturity this is a big one for all of us is to learn how to breathe and you're probably like Juliet I know how to breathe I breathe all day every day my lungs just do it that's why I'm alive if I didn't know how to breathe I wouldn't be here and you're right except for when you are emotionally triggered when you are in emotional distress your natural physiological response in your body is going to be to make your breath more more shallow more quick and shallow right and it's going to make all the blood from your brain all your rational kind of logical thinking and conscious thinking leave your brain and go to your limbs because you're in threat mode you're in fight or flight or freeze mode and so your body is preparing for that and the kind of blood is leaving your brain the oxygen in a lot of ways is leaving your brain as well with that blood so you're not thinking as clearly which is why we get reactive and being reactive is one of the Key signs of emotional immaturity so building emotional Church maturity as simple as it sounds really does start with the breath really starts with slowing down our breath because when we slow down our breath we slow we start to slow down our our fight or flight response right like our hardest pounding we're breathing shallow we're getting ready to protect ourselves usually in situations that we actually don't need protection we're not like being chased by a lion chances are you're not being chased by a lion when you're having a conflict with someone when someone says or does something that brings up a reaction in you but your body is responding like there is a threat it's not a real threat it's an imagined threat and so taking charge of yourself of your emotions by breathing first getting out of that fight or flight response and back into breathing which brings the oxygen back up into your brain which brings the blood back and up into your core which regulates your nervous system so that you can be feeling more calm and more grounded and able to access your cortex your cerebral cortex in your brain which is your logical rational part of your brain because when you're in defensive mode when you're in triggered mode your your emotional Center of your brain your amygdala is being taken over and you can't think right this is why you're like I'm so I'm so overwhelmed or I'm so stressed or I'm so upset I can't think and you're right you can't and so the breath is going to be what brings you back into your conscious self in that moment so learning how to breathe taking low sorry slow long deep diaphragmatic breaths where you're putting your hands if you can see putting your hands like on your ribs on each side and expanding your ribs and that is going to be what helps to calm you down so you could take a step back and breathe and regulate and then decide consciously how you want to think about this circumstance and what you want to do about this situation becoming more responsive instead of instantly reactive is one of the keys to building our emotional maturity one um is to try and work on understanding multiple realities so so often we see the world not as it is but we see the world from where we are and we get so set on thinking this is the right way this is the only way this is the way it needs to be this is the way it has to be this is the best right instead of understanding that other people have completely different ways of seeing things or doing things or understanding things that they also believe to be true that their way is the right way the best way the only way and so emotional maturity comes back to taking a step back being like again like we talked about before considering that someone else could have another perspective based on their experience their exposure their learning where they brought we're brought up how they were brought up that they all we all have these with these lives that have formed our way of thinking and that's why we think the way we think now because of the things that we were exposed to that we experienced that we learned that we observed that we absorbed along the way For Better or For Worse and so emotional maturity means that we take a step back and we understand that other people can have other perspectives other people can have other experiences other people don't have other thoughts other feelings other reactions to things and so as hard as it can be especially in the moment when you're feeling worked up when you're feeling fired up someone is trying to tell you that you're wrong and they're right right being able to take a step back and say okay I wonder why they think that they're so right and I wonder why they think that I'm so wrong and can I take a step back and just consider that they have information or an idea or perspective that has led them to believe that they are right just like in this moment I have the same thing that has led me to believe that I am right and this is a huge one for working on not taking things personally so if you think that people are always directing things against you doing things intentionally to hurt you that you are a victim or that people are always against you then you are going to take things personally but if you can take a step back and understand that most people are not doing things intentionally against other people they are doing things for themselves and I've personally had this happen to me before I I didn't um I I didn't respond to an email in a kind of timely way that this person was expecting me to respond to it and they made that mean that they weren't important right that that um that I didn't value them that I didn't value their time that I should have known that this was going to offend them that they had you know issues with like previous abandonment or rejection and they they thought that I should have known that this would have triggered that and the thing is I didn't because I hadn't had a chance to get back to the email yet because I was doing all these other things that I needed to get done and because I didn't understand that their email or the topic of their email was this urgent to them I didn't see it as urgent for me to get back to them so their emergency even though it wasn't framed as an emergency obviously if they're like this is an emergency I am in crisis then I would have been like okay you know got to respond to this but it didn't come across to me that way at all so their emergency wasn't my emergency and I didn't understand that their emergency was an emergency so I didn't treat it as such which caused them to think that I was having thoughts that I wasn't having right and so often really looking at this like could it be that someone is having a different thought other than what we think they are having could it be that if someone doesn't text you back immediately it's not because that you know no one cares about you and no one has time for you that you're not important right if you weren't given the top assignment at your job could it be that it's not because you're a worthless human being right that maybe somebody else has some skills that you haven't developed yet or maybe they were in the right place at the right time you know and they just happen to be there and your boss offered it to them because it was just a thing of proximity or because your boss thought you already had enough on your plate and didn't want to load you up with more could it be these other things so really looking at trying to understand that there are multiple realities going on at the same time and this helps so much with us not taking things personally not getting so offended not making everything that somebody else does about us because more often than not it isn't now that doesn't mean you're not allowed to ever let anything bother you but it's going to change how you approach it if you're going in being like hey I took it this way this is my thoughts about it this is what was going on for me instead of saying you did this you're mean you're cruel your vindictive you're manipulative I mean I'm not saying that people never are but even when they are going in with guns blazing is typically not going to be the thing that resolves the issue so being able to manage our mind being able to consider that people have their own reasons for doing things and those reasons aren't directly against are you know trying to undermine our value as human beings is going to help us be able to react or sort of respond to things handle things and approach things in emotionally in an emotionally mature way that is likely going to get us better result the next thing to do to start working on becoming more emotionally mature is to develop your healthy self-talk now what this looks like is really just being able to notice how you talk to and about yourself when you're up against a wall when things are hard when you make a mistake when you fail we're actually right now the time I'm recording this we're in the middle of our 14 day no self-criticism challenge in the shift Society where our as a whole Community we are working on how we talk to and about ourselves and becoming aware of how often we throw ourselves under the buses under the bus where we are hard on ourselves where we beat ourselves up we we shame ourselves for seemingly small things we're like you know you drop you drop and break a glass and you're like oh I'm such an idiot I'm such a klutz instead of being like oh maybe I was going too quickly and I wasn't paying close enough attention and then this happened or oh random accidents happen right without it being about an evaluation of my worth as a human being where we beat ourselves up so quickly if we ever have a misstep or a mistake we have a setback or a failure we are so quick to beat ourselves up but what would it be like if we were there for ourselves no matter what if even in the midst of failure we were able to catch instead of kick ourselves when we fell what would it be like if when you made a mistake you were able to identify the mistake and do what you needed to do to rectify the mistake without making it mean that you are a mistake so going into continuous self-blaming self-criticism self-shaming is a sign of emotional maturity or emotional immaturity being able to be kind gracious compassionate responsible with yourself is emotional maturity so it doesn't mean that every time you make a mistake you just let yourself off your hook you're like oh well everyone makes mistakes no big deal whoops I like screamed and yelled at my partner oh well you know it's bound to happen sometimes no that's not that's avoiding responsibility that's also not emotionally mature because you're not taking responsibility for what you did but you can take responsibility for your mistakes or for your unhealthy or unhelpful behavior without shaming yourself in the process you can because again shaming is about avoiding responsibility because when you're so stuck in feeling so terrible about yourself that you're not actually doing something to learn from it to grow from it to seek amends from it or make it right so that's what it means to take responsibility for it and that is a huge sign of emotional maturity when we take responsible for the things that we are responsible for another sign of emotional maturity is learning how to ask for what you want or what you need in a clean clear and classy way many of us grew up in homes that there was a lot of either aggressive or passive aggressive communication there was a lot of blaming there was silent treatmenting there was avoidance there was blowing up there was brushing off but there wasn't just sort of this honest and clear communication where someone was able to own their own experience and say hey that hurt my feelings or hey I didn't like that or hey let's work on this or hey that's not okay with me this is what I'd like to see instead what do you think where we just never learned how to own our own experience and then for to ask for what we needed without blaming or berating or criticizing someone else or blaming uh criticizing or berating ourselves for having those needs in the first place or feeling bad and angry that other people weren't meeting the needs that they may not have even known that we had right and that's where passive aggressive behavior often comes up when we're secretly bitter and angry at someone for not meeting a need that they weren't even aware that we had in the first place and so learning how to communicate in a clear clean and classy way if this is something you want to work on your communication becoming a rock star Communicator being able to show up and say what you want think need and feel in a way that is kind but then also compels people to listen and respect that finding your voice and using your voice in an effective way is a skill and they teach you how to do that in my workshop speak and feel heard you can get more info about speak and feel heard in the description below is my master class workshop on assertive and effective communication where are you at if you're like oh boy Julia I've got a lot to work on don't worry you are not alone we all do and there is no destination which is the good news so we take a little bit we take one thing and we focus on that you're like you know what that's what I'm going to work on that's one thing that I really want to focus on so take one thing and let me know in the comment section below what's one thing from this talk today that you're like I'm not going to overwhelm myself with everything I need to work on because that's not going to be helpful you're just gonna your brain's Gonna Get You Know overloaded and you're gonna shut down and you're not going to do anything instead of just letting yourself take it small one step at a time one thing start becoming more aware of that start working on that and go from there it's not go big or go home it's go small to moderate and make it doable and sustainable let me know what that's going to be in the comment section below get on the waitlist for the shift Society get my workshop in the meantime while you wait for the shift Society to open up get a head start on building your emotional maturity by grabbing my master class on effective and assertive communication speak and feel heard share what you got from this talk in the comment section below and as always so good to have you here be good to yourselves be good to those around you till next time take good care

Channel: Julia Kristina Counselling

Views: 16,020

Keywords: emotional maturity, emotionally mature, mature, EQ, emotional intelligence, emotional, emotionally intelligent, emotionally strong, emotional strength, feeling good, julia counsellor, therpist, psychology advice, cbt skills, mental strength, mental health, black and white therapist, psych2go, the school of life, marie forleo, kati morton, therapy in a nutshell, brene brown, julia kristina, maturity, become mature, develop maturity

Id: -QCba6qzY0s

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023