Emotionally immature people are part of a plot of the population that, despite having reached adulthood, continue to embrace behaviors linked to short-term, impulsiveness and lack of consideration for the welfare of others.
These characteristics define very well the way of being and thinking of children who, due to their lack of development of the nervous system, cannot yet think in abstract terms like “community” or “future”, so they are guided for the whims and the avoidance of slightly unpleasant or boring situations. However, in immature people, these characteristics are still present to a greater or lesser extent.
What are emotionally immature people like?
In many ways, the social dynamics of today, very based on aesthetics and appearances, rewards some people for behaving immaturely and individually. Thus, committing to the welfare of the whole society and accepting the taking of responsibilities is seen as a burden, something that limits our freedom and prevents us from giving way to our needs in the here and now.
In other words, accepting life habits that characterize mature people, in many ways, does not count. This makes proliferate a type of people dedicated to prolonging their adolescence indefinitely, both in their personal relationships and in their professional facet. However, this behavior is so widespread and so visible that it has become “normal,” the expected. Paradoxically, immaturity has become so popular that it is difficult to distinguish between truly immature people and those who simply accept this new paradigm of behavior.
How to recognize immature people emotionally? Below you can see its main defining features.
- Lack of empathy
The starting point and main thought reference to someone emotionally immature is the “I”. Putting on the skin of others (capacity known as empathy ) is an exercise that they do not perform so spontaneously compared to how other people do, and this step is often omitted. - Lack of introspection
Immature people rarely spend time reflecting on their own style of thinking. They live ignoring the possibility of self-observing themselves and learning from mistakes without waiting for the negative consequences to come from outside. After all, this kind of experience does not consist of abandoning oneself to intense waves of emotions, just as it might happen when partying or watching a television series. The fruits of introspection are savored in the long term, but immaturity makes us impatient.
- Impulsivity and lack of foresight
One of the main characteristics of emotionally immature people is their inability to regulate their actions depending on the short and long term consequences that can be derived from them. Regardless of whether the effects of an action can be very serious in the future, your tendency to get carried away by emotional outbursts will make your behavior behave without filters those visceral reactions that are based more on irrationality than on logic. This can cause them to get into trouble frequently.
Due to their tendency to assume that the intentions and opinions of other people are unimportant, when they do not behave as expected (bending to the will of oneself), it is common to fall into anger.
- Tendency to self-centeredness
This is another consequence of paying little attention to the psychological dimension of others: since one only thinks about what one wants and thinks oneself, it is believed that others also feel very interested in their own personality, and fall into self-centeredness. In short, it is believed that one is the star around which the others revolve, regardless of whether they have high or low self-esteem. - The appearance of rituals and whims
Things that produce pleasure become of essential importance in the lives of immature people. Many of these actions that produce pleasure are ritualized and will be more important than dealing with other people, arriving at the scheduled time for appointments, etc. In other words, they will have preferential treatment in the daily list of things to do. - The importance of having a good public image
Emotionally immature people tend to worry a lot about situations that may affect their public image, to the point of undertaking projects or going to places simply to improve their popularity. This is because the approval of others is seen as an instant injection of emotions linked to pleasure. - Boredom aversion- As immature people emotionally link pleasure to “sudden injections” of well-being, activities in which they are not present tend to be perceived as a waste of time or, directly, generate discomfort.
If we add to this its lack of foresight of the future consequences of the acts themselves, the resulting product is a type of person who will hardly commit to performing a series of routine actions that constitute a project whose fruits will appear once time has elapsed. That is, that immature people fall into procrastination, or the “I’ll do it tomorrow” syndrome, with relative ease.
Several ways to be immature- Emotionally immature people do not have to present each and every one of these characteristics.
The list of traits is an indicative outline of what defines immaturity. That means that lacking a certain emotional maturity can be expressed in multiple ways, also depending on the cultural context in which each person was raised.