WHAT IS EMOTIONAL MATURITY AND HOW DOES IT DEVELOP? - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The emotional maturity is characteristic of a person with emotional intelligence, social skills, empathy, responsibility and life experiences. It is generally said that a person is mature when she is independent, knows how to think for herself and has experience.

A person with emotional immaturity would therefore be someone with low emotional intelligence, few social skills, irresponsible and with few life experiences. This is someone emotionally dependent.

Although children tend to have less capacity and less need for emotional maturity, once they reach adulthood, this quality is not simply gained through the years.

Emotional maturity is developed by the person through their functioning, experiences, their way of seeing and interpreting the world, and the efforts that they dedicate to enhance their emotional abilities and personal growth.

What is a person with emotional maturity like?

An emotionally mature person would be one who has developed in his thought and behavior a series of attitudes that make him overcome "infantilism" and apply them both to himself and to the environment.

This fact tells us that emotional maturity is not something innate, that is, nobody is born being mature, so maturity is not something that is achieved or is not achieved, but something that is developed or not developed.

This shows that there are a large number of factors involved in the development of emotional maturity. The main one is undoubtedly the personality of the individual, that is, the way the person has to function and relate to the world.

The first requirement to develop emotional maturity consists of having a high knowledge about oneself, knowing one's own personality, as well as being aware of the ways of thinking and the ways of reacting and behaving that we have.

The second highly important factor in the development of emotional maturity is found in the relationships that the person has with their environment.

A person can know himself a lot, know how he thinks, how he works and what emotional reactions he has, however, this personal development will be of no use if he cannot apply it to his relationship with others and the different elements that make up the environment in which he that unwraps.

Characteristics of emotionally mature people

A person with emotional maturity has the following characteristics:

• The person has a developed identity, knows who he is and tries to be true to himself, his values, beliefs and attitudes, and behave accordingly.
• You can distinguish between reason and emotion and, when you wish, you are able to choose rational methods of operation rather than being dominated by your emotions.
• Has realistic goals and objectives in his life, plans and carries out the necessary actions to achieve these goals in a structured and streamlined way.
• They are independent and assertive people, they are able to recognize their flaws and mistakes, as well as their abilities and skills.
• They have a tendency to establish peer-to-peer relationships, without the need to create categories that delimit their personal relationships.
• They are able to control the effect that things have on them. Their emotional reactions are not directly subject to external stimuli, but to the internal elaboration they carry out on them.

How to develop your emotional maturity?

Pay attention to yourself

The first step to begin to develop emotional maturity is to acquire awareness and knowledge about yourself.

People have a tendency to live on autopilot. We have a way of being and functioning but we validate it automatically and exercise it without stopping to think what it is like.

Working in this way is the easiest and simplest, since acquiring knowledge about ourselves does not usually provide us with any direct benefit. However, this way of functioning is also what prevents us from growing emotionally.

Normally, paying attention and analyzing how we are, how we think, how we act, why we do it that way, what skills we have and what defects we have is often complicated, since it involves looking at things about ourselves that we might prefer to change.

However, if you want to reach emotional maturity, you must do this exercise, know well how you are and accept without resentment the characteristics that you like least about yourself and that you must work to change them.

Learn to work out your feelings

Another very important aspect of reaching emotional maturity is learning to work out feelings. All people have feelings, many and diverse, but often we prefer not to pay much attention to them as they can be annoying or too intense.

However, if we do not learn to elaborate the feelings that we have throughout life, we will make a backpack that we will carry on our back and that will be increasingly heavy.

Therefore, it is convenient that when you experience certain feelings, let them surface, give yourself time to know them in depth and invest effort to be able to elaborate and adapt them within yourself.

Analyze your emotional reaction

People have constant and unavoidable emotional reactions throughout our lives. When something happens, our body reacts with an emotional response, which cannot and should not be avoided.

Now, it is important that we learn to modulate our emotional reactions so that they are as appropriate as possible. In order to do this, it is important that you pay attention to the emotional reactions you have in different situations and analyze whether they are really being adequate or not.

Analyze your behavioral reaction

The step that comes after an emotion is a behavior, or at least this is what the body asks of us whenever it reacts emotionally. However, if after an emotional reaction we always carry out a behavior governed by emotion, our emotional growth will be compromised.

People have the ability to think and reason, a fundamental fact for proper functioning and adaptation in our environment. However, when an emotion appears, our primary instincts prompt us to heed the emotional reaction and to eliminate the appearance of reasoning.

So, analyze the way you behave when you react to any situation that causes you an emotion.

The objective is that in the face of emotional reactions you are able to introduce reasoning in order to choose your behavior in a less impulsive way.

Train the appearance of reason

The appearance of reason at all times is of vital importance to be able to function properly. However, we already know that in emotionally intense moments the appearance of reason is usually difficult, and emotion usually has everything in the face to win the game.

So to reach emotional maturity, we have to learn to use reason even in those most emotional moments.

If we manage to do this, we will have greater options to achieve an appropriate behavior that is in line with our way of being, with our way of thinking and with our values ​​and principles, rather than with our emotional reaction.

To achieve this, it is important that you learn to properly identify your emotions each time they appear, and give yourself some time before acting.

You have to take advantage of this time so that your thought comes into action and can modulate your emotional reaction and your subsequent behavior.

Empathize

Emotional maturity does not remain in oneself, but must be extended to the relationship that one has with other people and with the environment. In this sense, the first exercise that must be learned to perform frequently is to apply empathy.

To be able to reach emotional maturity you must know how to empathize with others, know how they feel, know their reality and be able to act in accordance with all this information.

To do this, it is important that you consistently practice the mental exercise of "How would I feel if I were in their shoes?"

If you ask yourself this question regularly and try to imagine how you would feel if you were in the other person's shoes, you will see that empathy will appear instantly.

Empathy is a basic skill for learning to relate appropriately to others and to develop emotionally mature behaviors.

Acquire broader views

Closely linked with the concept of empathizing appears the ability to acquire a broader vision of things. People have a tendency to observe things in one way and give absolute validity to that thought.

However, this way of working often leads to error, as it allows us to see only the tip of the iceberg. So that this does not happen, it is important that you carry out the mental exercise of considering different points of view about things and values ​​each one of them.

By doing so, your vision will become broader and will have a greater capacity for analysis.

Adequately analyze your needs

Often times, we let ourselves be guided by our most immediate needs and it is difficult for us to take into account those that are more long-term. However, being able to carry out an adequate analysis of personal needs is one of the keys to being able to function in a beneficial way for oneself.

Learning to analyze life from a global point of view and not from a focused point of view is of vital importance to develop emotional maturity.

If you manage to analyze yourself, your life, your environment and your needs from a broad point of view, you will have more resources to properly choose your actions and live in accordance with your way of being, your values ​​and your moral principles.

Take into account what your long-term goals are, what things you propose as a person and what behavior you want to be part of your way of being.

Develop assertiveness

The assertive communication style is the most affective and the one that will give you the best results and well-being in your life. It is based on communicating in a way that respects your rights but also respects that of other people.

Develop your self-esteem and accept yourself

Self-esteem is possibly the thing that will bring you the most happiness in your life. Without a positive self-esteem you cannot relate to others or achieve the goals you set for yourself.

References

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4. Seligman, MEP (1995). I can't be taller, but I can be better. Barcelona: Grijalbo.
5. Sherif, M.: "A study of some social factors in perception", Arch. Psychol., 1935, No. 187.