Emotional Immaturity

[tconnor]

Relationship Advice #135
Emotional Immaturity

By emotional immaturity, I am referring to the inability to positively control emotions such as: fear, anger, guilt, jealousy, envy, pride, etc.

Some people spend their lives in auto-pilot. They permit others to push their buttons, and therefore turn the power of their own emotions to the other person. I can recall a time when I had a disagreement with a friend who I felt had wronged me. I carried around a great deal of anger for weeks. I never saw this person again, but gave him permission to control my feelings and emotional reactions. Strange thing was I didn’t even like him anymore. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Well, it didn’t to me either, so I decided from that point on that yours truly was going to be in charge of his emotions, reactions and feelings.

Once I gave up the ability of others to manipulate me in this way, a number of things happened to me.

• I started to like myself better.
• I began to feel more in control.
• I stopped worrying about what others thought about me.
• I was happier.
• I made more money.
• I had more ‘real’ friends.

I suggest you keep one thing in mind as you interact with others (that is, if you want to get better control of any negative emotional reactions.) You have a right to feel the way you feel as long as it doesn’t negatively impact those around you, but you can’t afford the luxury of letting others make you feel how they would like you to feel because it makes them feel like they have power over you. My friend in the above example didn’t even know I was experiencing all of this anger, but, nonetheless, it was what I was feeling, and my anger wasn’t hurting him at all; it was only hurting me.