What causes a person to develop emotional maturity?

[Lillie]

Translation: You are saying that a person's choosing to behavior in emotionally mature ways is what develops emotional maturity.

Lillie, you're really the only person who answered the question of this thread. Everyone else just went on tangents.

I should have simplified it initially. I'm sorry. I tend to be a bit long-winded in explanations to avoid misunderstandings (usually it causes more!).

Experience is what causes maturity?

I would have to disagree with this. Many people who turn out to abuse drugs or continue the cycle of abuse have experienced many, many things; however, they continue to act in immature and selfish ways. It's a conscious effort and begins with sheer willpower.

Ok, here's my two (or four) cents ...I do think it is both nature (genetics) and nurture (upbringing). I do think reasonably emotionally mature parents or role models need to be present, since children very early on learn (and imitate) from the people that are close to them. Later on, to develop healthy social skills with your peers, there need to be healthy friends. And this goes on into adulthood.

Unhealthy* parents/role models and unhealthy circumstances can (and often do) result in unhealthy children who become unhealthy adults. Not all the time, though.

*) EDIT: What I mean by "unhealthy" is socially/psychologically unhealthy.

As far as I agree with you on certain points, it can still be looked at as a conscious effort (especially as you stated that some that do undergo trauma end up fine). I had quite a troubled upbringing composed of physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and other... heavier topics that I will not go into. For a short period, I was very lost and quite afraid of the real world--even the people I had considered close to me were not healthy for me. Thanks to these experiences, I was able to take what had happened to me and translate it to a law of how not to be. And, yes, many people who undergo similar to what I have end up being terrible people, but there are terrible people who have had a seemingly normal upbringing as well. I believe that if you truly wish to mature and grow, you will.

Edit: My psychiatrist is hesitant to diagnose me so early, but he thinks I have a personality disorder known as "avoidant" possibly caused by trauma. I did not know this prior but have read multiple books on how to speak to others, how to be amiable and friendly despite the anxiety, and how to control your emotions (I used to be a rather angry individual, though the anger was directed inward rather than outward). After thinking for a moment, both upbringing and a conscious effort to become a mature individual are both valid. Meaning, there are multiple ways to mature and not one path is the correct one.

 

[DennisN]

I had quite a troubled upbringing composed of physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and other... heavier topics that I will not go into.

I am sorry.

but have read multiple books on how to speak to others, how to be amiable and friendly despite the anxiety, and how to control your emotions.

If you have not heard about this book, I'd like to mention it:
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A guide and map for recovering from childhood trauma by Pete Walker. From what I know from people who are knowledgeable about childhood traumas and psychology, it is widely regarded as a great book on these things.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Lillie, you're really the only person who answered the question of this thread. Everyone else just went on tangents.

FWIW -
@bluemoonKY - That is because there is no ONE inclusively valid answer for humans. Gravity works identically everywhere on Earth. What is normal mature behavior is not the same everywhere, it does not play the same everywhere on Earth. Lillie did answer the question in a limited context. This why the "define maturity" posts popped up.

Example: I lived and worked on the Navajo Reservation a long time ago - taught at a College of Nursing. The PHS (IHS) mental health staff from back East there had big problems helping Navajo patients. This is because what was normal behavior for "mature" traditional Navajos is not the same as it is for us Westerners. Some aspects of well-adjusted behavior do not match up. At all. So the mental health professionals were kind of stymied sometimes. The ones who fared the best were Navajos themselves with college educations, who spoke Navajo.

[aside or "tangent" to help you understand]
It is almost impossible for an adult English speaker to become fully proficient in that language. There are many languages with phonemes (language sounds) we cannot hear because we lost the ability as small children, sounds that were not part of the language our parents spoke. Navajo has two tones. And. Length, pitch and nasalization are phonemic. English does not do this. AFAIK the number of phonemes in Navajo is disputed by linguists. Estimates are all way larger than English.
Try this page on children hearing all phonemes, ones adults can no longer hear:
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics/Development_of_Speech_Perception

There is one Anglo man that Navajos considered as speaking really good Navajo - Irvy Goosen, a Mennonite missionary who lived in the reservation for most of his life - he and Ellavina Perkins, a native speaker with excellent English skills, created the first reasonably complete book on the subject: Goossen, Irvy W. (1995) Dine Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo. Northern Arizona University.
[/aside]

Culture can be thought of as based in your primary language. Cultural norms define maturity. Lose your language as a people, lose your culture. Which is why a lot of native peoples in many places have taken steps to maintain traditional language. Gaelic in Ireland, for example, worked out well.

 

[jack action]

What causes a person to develop emotional maturity?

emotional maturity: to manage one's emotions rather than let one's emotions control one's behavior.

If you consider physical maturity, one could say that you have reach it when your body is fully adapted to respond to your environment. A deer is physically mature when it has the capacity to outrun its predators, a lion is physically mature when it is strong enough to hunt its preys (Of course they are other points as well, like the ability to reproduce itself and such).

So, according to your definition, emotional maturity would be reached when one has control over his or her emotions in a way that he or she is fully adapted to its environment. Enough fear to avoid bad situation without reaching panic, enough anger to defend oneself without turning into rage.

I am asking what causes a person to develop emotional maturity. I used to think that suffering & hardship causes a person to develop emotional maturity. Then I read that incarceration or institutionalization can delay emotional maturity.

Based on my previous statement, emotional maturity have a lot to do with hope and the environment you are accustomed to.

You stated «one's emotions control one's behavior» like it is a bad thing. It's not. If one is confronted to a bad and unknown situation that seems will never end (no matter how you runaway or fight back, the threat seems to never diminish), all hope of better days is gone, you have nothing to lose and panic or rage appears. At this point, your body doesn't need to think, it needs to react quickly.

When you overreact to a non-threatening situation, that is when you are emotional immature, when you cannot adjust your emotional response to the situation. This is because you can't see any way of getting into a better situation. It's being hopeless. Having no hope when a lion jumps on someone who never encountered one is reasonable; Having no hope when you don't get the exact change when you pay for your coffee is not. But someone who have been raised around lions, can know what to do when one goes after him or her and can react in a controlled fashion.

For someone to be emotionally mature, one needs to know how to evaluate the threat level of surrounding situations and how to react to these situations to make them better. Experience is certainly one way, but if one's have suffered to a point that he or she cannot see any hope of getting out of a bad situation, one will have difficulties reaching emotional maturity.

That is why telling scary stories to kids is a good way of teaching them how to react to fear (It's easy to show them there are no monsters under the bed). But telling scary stories is not enough, you need to teach them how to handle those fears. And you gradually increase the threat level of the situations they are dealing with, always while teaching a method on how to deal with that situation. If you go too fast and/or the kid fails too often, he or she will go in panic or rage mode quickly and that could be very difficult to handle when the kid is not a kid anymore.

 

[biohealthlab]

In this thread, I am not asking what emotional maturity is. I am asking what causes a person to develop emotional maturity. I used to think that suffering & hardship causes a person to develop emotional maturity. Then I read that incarceration or institutionalization can delay emotional maturity. Incarceration generally is a hardship. So I think that rules out the idea that hardship alone will automatically, on its own, cause a person to develop emotional maturity.

What causes a person to develop emotional maturity?

Hello
I really enjoyed the post. Mostly, I saw the post about studies and I am happy that you are interested in talking about humans behaviour changes.Basically, emotional maturity linked to depression and anxiety but it also depends on your living style as well.It also caused due to your surroundings. As you know depression and anxiety plays a role in emotional maturity so I want to discuss what is the role surroundings and living style matters.

How living style and surroundings matters in developing emotional maturity?

Sometimes people face emotional incidents in their life and get lessons from that. Few people take such incidents in positive manner and with time they start observing humans and act accordingly. Similarly, such incidents impact hard on few people because they don't have much patience. In a nutshell, it depends on each and every things you faced in your daily life and how early people deal with it. Few people become responsible and few take things non seriously that's why their maturity level would not increase with their respective age and body appearance So, it's not depends on age or any kind of stupid factors.

"Human takes time to perceive thing and set mind to behave accordingly further".

Thanks