4 Painfully Bad Habits That Interfere With Emotional Maturity

The measure of emotional maturity includes avoiding these bad habits.

Emotionally mature woman in her own bubble Mike von | Unsplash 
Advertisement

Emotionally mature people have a healthy relationship with their emotions, which comes from building healthy habits of mind.

On the other hand, when you have unhealthy mental habits, it tends to produce emotional immaturity. This is a problem because…

Emotional immaturity is a recipe for insecurity, low confidence, poor relationships, and chronic stress.

Here are 4 painfully bad habits that interfere with emotional maturity:

1. Criticizing yourself for feeling bad

Unfortunately, many of the kindest and most compassionate people are incredibly judgmental and critical of themselves. A perfect example of this is how they deal with bad moods…

Advertisement

If a friend came to you and shared that they were having a hard time and were in a bad mood, how would you respond? Probably with compassion, understanding, and gentleness. But the minute you find yourself in a bad mood, you start judging yourself for being weak selfish irrational, or whatever. You criticize yourself, judge yourself, and compare yourself.

Feeling bad is hard enough without feeling bad about feeling bad.

When you judge yourself for your bad moods, you end up feeling bad about feeling bad. And when you compound painful feelings, it’s a recipe for long-term suffering and emotional fragility.

Advertisement

The next time you find yourself in a bad mood, try a little self-compassion before you jump to self-judgment.

“Words matter. And the words that matter most are the ones you say to yourself.”

― David Taylor-Klaus

   

   

RELATED: 7 Tiny Habits Making You Emotionally Fragile, According To A Psychologist

Advertisement

2. Trying to fix painful emotions

Surprisingly, trying to fix or get rid of painful emotions only makes you more vulnerable to them.

See, when your brain sees you trying to get rid of or escape something, it learns to see that thing as a threat. And when your brain thinks something is a threat, it makes you afraid of it. So when you habitually avoid or try to “fix” painful feelings, you train your brain to be anxious about your emotions. And this makes you emotionally fragile.

When you treat your emotions like problems, that’s how they start to feel.

The solution is to learn to approach your emotions — even the painful ones — and welcome them. Because when you do, you teach your brain that even though painful emotions like anxiety or grief feel bad, they aren’t bad things — and you aren’t bad for feeling them.

Advertisement

The acceptance of all feelings is the heart of emotional strength.

“Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can.”

― Vironika Tugaleva

​RELATED: 3 Bad Habits Emotionally Secure People Avoid At All Costs

3. Using other people to feel good

It’s human nature to want comfort and support from others when we’re upset or feeling bad. And for the most part, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a very good thing to surround yourself with supportive, encouraging people!

Advertisement

The problem is when you rely on other people to feel okay.

If you’re in the habit of constantly seeking reassurance and outsourcing your painful feelings to other people, you’re telling your brain that you’re not capable of handling those difficult feelings yourself. And this makes you emotionally fragile.

Your feelings are your responsibility and no one else’s.

Emotionally mature people can ask for help and support as part of a larger strategy of working through emotional difficulties. But if other people are your entire strategy for working through emotional struggles, you will be stuck in a pattern of low confidence and emotional immaturity.

Advertisement

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

― John A. Shedd

   

   

​RELATED: 5 Tiny Habits That Will Make You More Emotionally Fit Than 98% Of People

4. Trying to always be happy

Everybody likes feeling happy. But it’s a profound mistake to assume that you should always feel that way or even aspire to always feel happy.

Advertisement

And the reason is straightforward:

  • Feeling bad is a normal part of the human experience. Sadness, anger, shame, fear… these are all perfectly normal things.
  • You might not like them, but that has nothing to do with whether they’re good or bad.
  • But when you insist on always feeling good and happy, you invalidate feeling bad. And when you’re in the habit of invalidating your painful feelings, you end up feeling more and more miserable and more and more desperate to feel happy. See where this is going?

Insisting that you should always feel happier than you are is a great way to always feel worse than you should.

Ironically, trying to feel good all the time is a recipe for emotional immaturity and suffering because it leads to emotional invalidation.

Advertisement

On the other hand, when you’re validating your emotional pain and unhappiness, it leads to emotional strength, and eventually, more frequent levels of happiness (or at least, less frequent bouts of unhappiness).

It’s not about feeling good or bad. It’s about the willingness to feel whatever you’re feeling.

“Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.”

― Eckhart Tolle

​RELATED: 6 Tiny Habits That Will Make You More Emotionally Sophisticated Than 98% Of People

Advertisement

Nick Wignall is a psychologist and writer sharing practical advice for emotional health and well-being. He is the founder of The Friendly Minds newsletter.