How to achieve emotional maturity? 5 consecutive steps

An emotionally mature person fully accepts responsibility for everything that happens to him, thereby gaining the opportunity to manage himself and his life.

Knowing yourself, your reactions to external events, the ability to describe your feelings and emotions, as well as awareness of why they arise and what is behind them are also qualities of an emotionally mature person. He can consciously and freely choose beautiful, positive and creative states instead of destructive negative emotions and automatic unconscious reactions. Able to feel and understand other people and build harmonious relationships with others.

This seems impossible to achieve. Yes, it’s not that easy, but anyone who wants it can do it.

Development Matrix

The acquisition of new roles/skills is determined by the universal development matrix laid down in the early stages of development. Awareness and targeted use of this staged process was proposed by N. Pezeshkian and allows for therapy, conscious development of oneself, relationships with a partner, social environment and fantasy/spirituality. This matrix consists of the following five stages:

1. Observation is based on the ability to experience internal and external experiences as part of one's life. This ability originates in the infant's universal identity and is described by Moreno as the “stage of the other.” Conscious use of this stage presupposes the ability to cognitively master/aware and regulate one’s behavior in various situations and areas of one’s life.
2. Inventory/understanding – the stage of focusing attention on another. Assumes and develops the ability to determine the content, history, dynamics and possibilities of life situations. Provided by analytical and logical resources of such abilities as justice, accuracy, order, openness, the ability to see the content of the conflict behind emotional manifestations.
3. Situational reward/acceptance/motivation - the stage of exalting another part of the experience, overlooking everything else, including oneself, involves the ability to trust and find resources, and create conditions for their use through support and a combination of necessary ways of motivating oneself and others.
4. Verbalization/decision/action - the stage of actively placing oneself in the place of another and testing the role of new experience. Ability to take responsibility for achieving change. Openness and honesty, patience and courtesy in conflict resolution, a balance of openness and conscious responsibility for the manifestation of emotional reactions. Ability to make decisions.
5. Expanding goals, perspective - interaction in a new role with someone else, the ability to see a goal, predict results

Levels of Emotional Maturity

Every emotion is a consequence of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of some need, value, desire. When the desired is satisfied, positive emotional responses arise; in the absence of satisfaction, negative ones arise. Since most desires, needs, and values ​​are satisfied exclusively through something external, we can conclude that human emotions play a significant role in their existence. After all, it is with the help of the emotional sphere that the “linking” of the mental system of values ​​and needs with the external environment occurs.

Emotions report the satisfaction of a need (evaluative-signaling function of emotions). They provide “psychological strength” for activity (mobilization-regulatory function). With their help, negative experiences are recorded and positive experiences are consolidated (trace-forming and adaptive functions). It is emotions that give people a feeling of being, of its fullness.

Consequently, emotional maturation is no less significant in human existence than mental development. That is why the degree of emotional maturity of a person is the most important characteristic of his ability to exist fully.

Below are the levels of emotional maturity.

The lowest level is called an emotional block. That is, the emotions themselves are there, but they are not felt by the individual. Their presence is determined by resistance to some actions and the emergence of impulses to others. Emotions can force you to take action or block them. In this case, the individual does not directly feel the emotional message. He is simply unable to stop any action that occurs contrary to a conscious decision, or, conversely, to perform any operation. This state can also be described as vacuum, numbness, emptiness or frozenness. It often happens that the described “elusive” emotions are postponed uncontrollably, leading to affective outbursts, which are again replaced by an “unemotional” state until the next similar outburst.

At the next level, emotions are felt as bodily manifestations. For example, fear is detected in sweating and rapid heartbeat, depression – in chest tightness, anger – in uncomfortable spasms in the epigastrium. At the same time, the emotion as an emotion itself is not felt.

Low emotional maturity is revealed in chaotic experiences. Emotions themselves are felt as a certain level of vague emotional energy, but it is impossible to determine which emotion is being experienced. That is, a person does not distinguish between his own sensations; instead of certain emotions, he feels a “porridge” (mash) of them and tension.

The fourth level is the discrimination of emotions. Here we observe the discrimination and identification of emotions, the determination of the situations that arouse them, accompanying mental activity and desires. A person can simultaneously experience several different emotions, recognizing and distinguishing between them. At the same time, intense experiences distort a sound assessment.

At the fifth level, responsibility for one's own emotions arises. Internal subjective control over experiences, which consists in the understanding that it is not events that force a person to feel, but his feelings are a response to the situation. Emotions do not affect a healthy assessment of the situation or the actions taken. Today this level is considered a fairly high degree of formation.

At the next level, not only the ability to manage an individual emotional response arises, but also empathy - understanding and feeling what other subjects are experiencing. At the same time, the individual clearly separates “his own” from “outside” emotions. He does not experience other people's sensations, but feels what another is experiencing. This level is considered a very high degree of development. In order to reach the next level, you need to learn to “exchange” emotions with other subjects.

Emotional interaction occurs at the last level. A person can not only feel the emotions of those around him, but also fully consciously interact with the environment at the level of emotions.

The emotional maturity of a child includes emotional stability, a low degree of impulsive response, and the development of educational motivation. An emotionally formed baby is able to control the manifestation of his own experiences, his mood is stable, and he is also able to restrain dissatisfaction, grief, and resentment.

As a rule, children have three components of school maturity: social, emotional and intellectual. The emotional component of school maturity is very important, since it can become the basis for a child’s unpreparedness for the school environment, and, consequently, the cause of a whole range of school problems, including his social adaptation among his peers.

This is why it is so important to develop the ability to control the manifestation of individual emotional reactions.

Tips for managing emotions

To learn how to manage your emotions, determine what type of person you belong to:

An emotional person is one who is not used to holding back.

Such people need to learn to release emotions not on people, but with the help of techniques (angry writing - splashing out on paper through writing, physical activity - burning emotions through the body: running, squats, cleaning the house, breathing exercises and other intense activities).

An unemotional person is one who is accustomed to not noticing his emotions and suppressing them.

It is necessary to learn to feel and experience emotions without suppressing them. Let them manifest.

This is a step towards recognizing yourself, getting to know yourself and accepting yourself. And then you can apply the methods described in the paragraph above.

When you refuse to feel your emotions, considering them bad or, conversely, ashamed that they are too bright, and you feel that they will not understand you, you are abandoning yourself, you are not accepting yourself holistically.

Here it will help you to understand that the appearance of an emotion is a reflex of our body, it is the nature of our cells, the habit of reacting to an irritant.

This is the level of animal instincts and impulses. And that's okay.

And your task, as a conscious being, is to learn to manage your reactions.

And act not on the basis of a spontaneous reaction, but relying on your feelings and intuition, which are deeper and more thorough, and, therefore, will provide more stability.

Try to address your feelings during an emotional outburst.

Feel how you love your daughter, son, husband, parents and do not want to hurt them. Remember the warmth and tenderness that you feel for them in blissful moments.

And now, this is just a short-term surge for some reason.

If you understand that it is necessary to carry out educational measures, then in a sensory-conscious state it will be much more effective.

This is how the process of growing up, transformation and restoration of vitality occurs.

The difference between emotions and feelings - the opinion of Alena Starovoitova

Watch this short video in which Alena Starovoitova explains what distinguishes feelings from emotions and why it is important to choose feelings. Difference between emotions and feelings

Watch this video on YouTube

Difference between emotions and feelings

Watch this video on YouTube

When you choose to be honest with yourself, when you give freedom to your emotions to express yourself, when you accept and forgive yourself, you release stagnant energy and give it new life in a new quality.

Persistent interest

A person with a high level of EI does not get hung up on the opinions of negative people. He always asks about something, without fear of seeming stupid or ignorant. He wants new knowledge, which involves removing himself from everything and everyone who might hinder the achievement of this goal.

Such people are not afraid to learn things that can shake their belief system. No, they even enjoy it. They view new information as a kind of promise of enlightening insight, rather than a threat, because they know who they are and that they will not be perfect. They are fascinated by expanding horizons and development.

The only fear that influences their actions is the fear of being on the sidelines of progress, because being the master of your mind means striving for growth.

Illustration: Cathy Delanssay