Physical: Your body goes through four stages of maturity to grow from being an infant, child, adolescent, then adult. Mental: You grow your cognitive skills, such as how reasoning through problems or processing information. Emotional: As you age and develop, you gain better control over your emotions.
Emotionally mature people observe their thoughts and feelings in order to effectively manage, communicate, and cope with difficult emotions. Emotional maturity is more than being able to maintain your composure. It's also: understanding what you're feeling. being able to show emotions in a healthy way.
Mental maturity is characterized by having a good understanding of who you are. Emotional maturity is managing your emotions so that your behavior remains appropriate in difficult situations. Both of these allow a person to operate effectively within societal and cultural contexts.
Four States of Emotional Maturation
They are: Survival (fear-based living); Security (duty-based living), Success (ego based living) and Serenity (love/trust-based living). I want to describe some of the major characteristics of each of these ways of living.
Build self-awareness
To better control your emotions, build resilience and become emotionally mature, you need to dive into yourself and achieve a certain level of self-awareness. Try studying and examining your emotions, actions, habits, dreams, and past.
Research suggests that most human brains take about 25 years to develop, though these rates can vary between men and women, and among individuals. Although the human brain matures in size during adolescence, important developments within the prefrontal cortex and other regions still take place well into one's 20s.
Males and females don't finish brain development until about age 25.
Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years : NPR. Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years Under most laws, young people are recognized as adults at age 18. But emerging science about brain development suggests that most people don't reach full maturity until the age 25.
As you become more emotionally mature, you focus less on the negative aspects of those around you and more on their positive attributes. You are able to see the good in people and recognize that sometimes people act badly or make mistakes because they need guidance and assistance.
As a person matures emotionally, they gain a better understanding of self and others, develop improved emotional control, and hone skills in empathy and compassion. As a result, an emotionally mature individual can effectively manage their own emotions and respond constructively to the feelings of others.
Behavior. A person's behavior is one of the easiest ways to recognize an emotionally immature person. You may notice that a person's emotions escalate significantly, similar to how a child would react. They may cry easily, get overly angry, or throw a temper tantrum when they don't get their way.
To be fair, these behaviors may be both narcissistic and emotionally immature. Passive-aggression can be simply that—passive-aggression. Oppositional behavior may be emotionally immature behavior and may be a symptom of something more egregious such as narcissism and emotional abuse.
In fact, not only do girls mature faster than boys, scientists believe that their brains can develop up to ten years earlier! In a study performed by Newcastle University in England, it was discovered that as the brain matures it begins to remove neural connections that are stored which it does not think are important.
Emotional immaturity can be the result of insecure attachments during early life experiences, trauma, untreated addiction or mental health problems, and/or lack of deeper introspection or work on oneself.
People can grow and change. If someone you care about is emotionally immature, you may be able to help them learn to behave more like an adult. If they don't want to change, speak to a counselor about how to care for yourself while dealing with an emotionally immature person.
By developing emotional intelligence, we can better understand our emotions, including anger, and learn to respond to them in a more balanced and constructive manner.
Emotional delay can be caused by unmet needs at a developmental level, traumatic disruptions in a child's life, and, in the case of children with FASD or other brain injuries, the brain pathways may be unable to adequately process tasks required.
Some research suggests this is the case. A now-famous study by Nickelodeon UK, from 2013, states that the age at which the average man reaches full emotional maturity is 43. This is 11 years later than women who reach this state at about age 32.
Emotionally mature people don't blame others for their mistakes or make excuses for bad behavior. They hold themselves accountable for their own actions and let others do the same. Radical accountability is painstaking. It is hard and uncomfortable.