How to Respond to Emotionally Immature People in Risk
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
-Ogden Nash
Part 2 of Emotionally Immature People in Risk
This blog post contains major excerpts from Chapter 8 of "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents." The Maturity Awareness Response is described there which will help folks in team and organizations with immature people they have to interact with. It explains a lot why even when someone has been through SYIS, they still don't respond the way they have been taught!
With people who cannot handle emotional intimacy, the best we can do is manage the interactions rather than seek emotional intimacy.
This requires constant giving up of our desires and grieving what we don't have.
It also means that no matter how good you have become at communicating and inter-relating, those who cannot handle emotional closeness simply won't accept your well intentioned overtures but instead feel threatened by you.
So how do you handle emotionally immature people?
(1) Change your expectations, (2) don't react, and (3) observe, observe, observe.
Free yourself from reacting to immature people with these three actions:
Detached observation of yourself and the other;
Maturity awareness
Step away from your old role-self.
1. Detached observation.
Emotionally immature parents in particular promote emotional enmeshment over individual identity. Enmeshment occurs when parents don't respect boundaries, project their unresolved issues onto their children, and get too involved in their children's business.
In families dominated by emotionally immature people, enmeshment and playing roles are valued in order to keep the family "close." There is no such thing as intimate communication and emotional intimacy in these types of families. One cannot be one's true self.
In teams, emotionally immature people are a major danger due to their habit of triangulating their conflicts with people other than the one they have the actual conflict with. They simply cannot go to the person directly.
Engage in observation by describing to yourself how the other person is acting and responding, and describing your own internal reactivity or non-reactivity. Naming it keeps you emotionally detached instead of feeling attacked. When you keep yourself poised in neutral observation, you’ll be less hurt or emotionally ensnared by other people's behavior.
Pretend you're conducting an anthropological field study.
What words would you use to describe other's facial expressions?
What is their body language communicating?
Does their voice sound calm or tense?
Do they appear rigid or receptive?
How do they respond when you try to relate?
What do you find yourself feeling?
Can you spot any of the emotionally immature behaviors described in Chapters 2 and 3?
If you find that as you observe yourself and the other person and you find yourself getting emotional, your distress is a sign that your place of wounding that still needs healing has been activated. It’s a signal to you to return to the observing mode but make an internal note of what you need to work on at another time.
Silently repeat to yourself, "Detach, detach, detach."
Make a point of consciously describing the other person in words - silently and to yourself.
You may also enter into conversation with God, "God, you see me, you hear me, you know me, you understand me, even if no one else does." Repeat this prayer.
If you cannot calm down, make an excuse to end the interaction until you can be more calm, detached, and observational.
Staying observational is a very active process, not passive, and is "the royal road out of emotional enmeshment with another person."
Estimate the probable maturity level of the person you are dealing with. Once you have an idea, it will help make sense of the other person's responses. There are three ways to relate to this person without getting emotionally reactive:
Expressing and then letting go.
Focus on the outcome not the relationship
Manage, not engaging.
Express yourself calmly, and release any need for the other person to hear you or change. What matters is that you expressed your true thoughts and feelings in a calm and clear way. This goal is achievable and within your control.
Focus on the outcome you can control and achieve. If your goal involves empathy or a heart change on the part of the other, stop right there and change your goal.
As soon as you focus on the relationship and try to improve it or change it at an emotional level, an interaction with an emotionally immature person will deteriorate. The person will regress emotionally and attempt to control you so that you'll stop upsetting him or her. If you keep the focus on a specific question or outcome, you're more likely to contact the person's adult side.
Managing, not engaging means setting a goal of managing the interaction, including duration and topics. Redirect the conversation where you want it to go. Gently ease past attempts to change the topic or bait you emotionally. Be polite and persistent.
Manage your own emotions by observing and narrating your feelings to yourself (and God), rather than becoming reactive.
This is not a cold, uncompassionate technique. Remember, Proverbs teachers "Answer a fool according to his folly." This means using the interpersonal communication tools to minimize the pain and foolishness of triggering yours and the other's emotions and spiraling down into a negative interaction.
To be an emotionally mature adult, you must be free to observe and assess others in the privacy of your own mind. It is not disloyal to have your own opinion.
When someone else's emotions are so strong you begin to feel overwhelmed, remember to:
Center yourself by focusing on your breathing Remember that feeling guilty is not an emergency Observe what's going on Silently narrate it to yourself in specific words Mentally describe what's happening.
Doing these techniques moves you from your brain's emotional centers to its more objective, logical areas. Because relationships are not about winning or losing, you will become free from reacting to the emotional contagion of the other person who often triggers you!
This ability to step back and observe the other and yourself is where emotional freedom and maturity begins. Because we can never make "a healing fantasy" come true, we can begin to walk a different path than the same old hurt-filled one we've been walking for decades!
Keeping a grip on our own mind and feelings is possible.
In summary, you need to stay observational, noticing how you're feeling and how the other person is acting. From this perspective, you can retain your own individual point of view and be more immune to the other person's emotional contagion. This relating to the immature person in a neutral way will be more productive than trying to have an actual relationship.
See Also:
