How to Spot an Emotionally Immature Person | Emotional Immaturity and Narcissism

hey everyone welcome back to another video Jenna schaer licensed psychotherapist here I help people navigate and heal from toxic and harmful relationships in today's video I want to chat with you all about how to spot an emotionally immature partner to start this video off I want to give just a brief definition of what we mean when we say that someone is emotionally immature an emotionally immature person is a person that has a low emotional intelligence meaning that they struggle to understand both their own emotions and the emotional needs of other people people the language of emotion tends to be quite foreign these spokes which can lead to a lot of complications in relationships and as I'm sure a lot of you are aware emotional language is required for healthy relationships and that's why having a relationship with someone who's emotionally immature can be quite daunting and even toxic or abusive now this is on a range of Continuum there's different levels of severity when we talk about emotional immaturity narcissism as a form of emotional immaturity is probably one of the most extreme forms of emotional immaturity however not all emotionally immature people are narcissistic a lot of these traits I'm going to discuss do apply to narcissists but narcissists kind of have their own pillars of traits that we just notice with people that are narcissists in particular a sense of entitlement feelings of grandiosity the need for external validation and a lack of empathy in this video today I'm just going to talk to you kind of about about what we see with all different types of emotional immaturity so you can kind of get a feel of what this can look like in people that struggle with this the first thing that's really common amongst emotionally immature people is that they say and do different things meaning their words don't tend to line up with their actions an extreme example of what this can look like is someone that tells you how wonderful and amazing you are and then turns around and cheats on you with somebody else or that they care about your needs and feelings yet failed on a consistent basis to really meet those needs for you and give you a reassurance for how they're feeling in the relationship what they're saying and what they're doing are often in congruent with one another a second big Hallmark of all emotional immaturity is that they are very self-centered and selfish meaning that they're constantly looking for other people to meet their needs but they struggle to meet or even understand the needs of other people again they might say that they do care about your needs but yet when it comes to actually meeting the needs that you tell them that you have they not consistent or they don't do this at all but yet they constantly demand that you take care of them and meet their needs they really give this back that they really only care about themselves and their own well-being in the relationship and an example of this could be commitment phobia someone that struggles or is afraid to commit maybe to a romantic relationship even though you have a need to be in a monogamous committed relationship they might act like they acknowledge that need but yet they don't do anything to really make their relationship official the third sign is the inability to take responsibility when things go wrong narcissistic and sociopathic people in particular really struggle with this part taking responsibility for things that go wrong require the ability to be accountable and take ownership when things go wrong and narcissists and sociopaths really struggle with that or in terms of sociopath they they don't really care if it's their fault or not regardless of how looks they're not going to show up and take responsibility or accountability for or potential problems or issues in the relationship relationship strain or things that you're drawing to their attention that they might benefit from working up a lot of them will shift blame and make it feel like it's your problem or your fault in some way they also don't take responsibility for the way that they can make you feel in the relationship if you try to communicate how they're making you feel what their actions are making you feel like they'll usually deny any responsibility and be like that's your problem and you need to work on sorting that out without their ability to see how they're contributing to those feelings again feelings language is very very foreign to emotionally immature people so telling them how you feel about something it tends to really really go over the head of these types of folks a fifth sign that they have difficulty expressing their own feelings and emotions if you ask them how they how they feel about something they might stumble around and not really understand what that means in some cases they may just deny having emotions altoe I'm just not an emotional person I don't feel emotions while this isn't quite true typically that's the result of quite a few defense mechanisms that work there to kind of numb them out from feeling emotions but they have a hard time doing the emotional work to get to the point where they can really fully feel and acknowledge and understand their own emotions the flip side of this is that they have a hard time again understanding your emotions as well which leads into my sixth sign which is a lack of empathy this is something that's definitely characteristic of narcissism sociopathy psychopathy also can be seen and um more you know not as extreme versions of emotional immaturity because a lack of empathy really is just the inability to really understand how another person feels in a situation or how you're making another person feel emotionally immature people can be quite egocentric kind of again aligning with that selfishness where they could really only see things from their perspective and their own point of view so that makes it particularly difficult for them to be empathetic and see things from a different perspective or a different point of view a second sign which should be no surprised considering the things that we've discussed up into this point they tend to be very poor communicators they are not clear or directec in their communication a lot of the time a lot of the time they'll engage in avoidance of certain topics or they'll divert the topic that you're trying to communicate to them or issue that you're trying to draw to their attention they can Stonewall meaning that they just fail to acknowledge you completely they can get defensive so they can lash out or act out and they feel like you're accusing using them of something they can shut down Breeze in place not being able to really articulate anything it can look like a lot of different things but the thing that this has in common is that in some way shape or form communication is really really difficult for emotionally immature people you can often feel like you have more success communicating with a goldfish than you do with someone who is emotionally immature the goldfish is likely to probably get it a little bit faster and a sign of emotionally immature person is that they can struggle with emotional reactivity and impulsiveness meaning that they act before they really think about how this is going to come across what this is going to say about them or really fully conceptualize the situation the eight sign of an emotionally immature person is that many of them tend to be quite impulsive or emotionally reactive meaning that they often act before thinking about how they're coming across they're even taking the situation the full context of the situation into consideration to really um engage and kind of realize what's happening conceptualizing a full situation seeing different points of view and different perspectives is definitely something that people with high emotional intelligence do almost intuitively people are emotionally immature really struggle with that a lot of times it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction right it's almost like you stick your hand in like a koi pond and the fish just turns around and swims away from you without really thinking about what's going on right and that's because emotionally immature people tend to be really strongly emotion minded people meaning that they act on their emotions without considering rationality or logic emotions take over and their reason tends to go out the window pretty quickly impulsivity they don't think about the consequences of their actions when they're engaging and doing something impulsive this is why a lot of emotionally immature people cheat on their certificate others they don't think about the consequences of what that's going to be like and then you combine that with lack of empathy they don't realize how they're going to make their partner feel all the time or they make or they might go and make a large purchase on the credit card without really thinking about how they're going to pay off that debt it can look like a lot of things those are just a few ways that it can look ninth side of emotional immaturity and this is something that you can notice in yourself is that you feel lonely in the relationship this can even happen if you're living with the person right they're not connecting with you they're not engaging with you in an emotional way you're going to feel lonely your connection needs which we all have most of us have go unmet those connection emotional needs aren't met on an ongoing basis you're going to feel lonely as a result and a 10th and last final sign that I'm going to talk about today is that they struggle with criticism if you draw their attention to any of the things that I've talked to up until this point again they tend to deny or maybe even flip the blame over to you this can look like gaslighting it can look like blame shifting basically you're made to feel like you're causing all these problems they don't have the self-awareness or the ability to reflect on how they're contributing to the way that you're feeling in some forms of emotional immaturity in particular narcissism especially covert narcissist they react very very poorly to any even perceived form of criticism nobody necessarily likes criticism but these people tend to react to it on a whole new level emotionally immature folks can be really difficult to have healthy relationship with in fact I don't really know if it's possible to have a healthy relationship with someone who is emotionally immature unless they're doing the work to actively work on it which unfortunately isn't very common a lot of times how they're contributing because they lack things like empathy uh they lack self-awareness it really is hard for these folks to change now some of them can some of the lower level um you know types of emotional types of emotionally immature people can change usually with some pretty intensive psychother thy um ones that are on the Continuum kind of on the extreme end really really struggle with change narcissists in particular are very very highly resistant to change they lack the emotional resources to even consider how they could possibly be a problem or a villain in anyone's story if your partner is exhibiting maybe just some of these signs talking to them about maybe trying something like couples therapy or seeing if they've considered going to you know their own individual therapy to work on these things there can be room for impr Improvement people can can work to heal some of the wounds that kind of cause you know this emotional immaturity is typically the result of a pretty traumatic upbringing some people that are emotionally mature do have empathy they just don't have the ability to really access it meaning that they don't realize how they're coming across and hurting other people again because of like low self-awareness uh so if this is brought to their attention you know sometimes they're able to identify those things and make changes and and kind of build that empathy muscle up thanks for watching this video I hope it was helpful for you again if you're new here hit the Subscribe button I release videos every week I'd love to see you in future videos if you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up that really helps spread the message to other people that can benefit from this content in this video and I hope everyone has a wonderful day and I will see you in the next Lune bye

Channel: Jenna Schaefer MS-LPC

Views: 258

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Id: hhFiCbTfZ28

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024