A Little Help For Our Friends
A LITTLE HELP FOR OUR FRIENDS is a mental health podcast hosted by Jacqueline Trumbull (Bachelor alum, Ph.D student) and Dr. Kibby McMahon (clinical psychologist and cofounder of KulaMind). The podcast sheds light on the psychological issues your loved ones could be struggling with and provides scientifically-informed perspectives on various mental health topics like dealing with toxic relationships, narcissism, trauma, and therapy.
As two clinical psychologists from Duke University, Jacqueline and Dr. Kibby share insights from their training on the relational nature of mental health. They mix evidence-based learning with their own personal examples and stories from their listeners. Episodes are a range of conversations between Kibby & Jacqueline themselves, as well as with featured guests including Bachelor Nation members such as Zac Clark speaking on addiction recovery, Ben Higgins on loneliness, and Jenna Cooper on cyberbullying, as well as therapists & doctors such as sleep specialist Dr. Jade Wu, amongst many others. Additional topics covered on the podcast have included fertility, gaslighting, depression, mental health & veterans, mindfulness, and much more. Episodes are released every other week. For more information, check out www.ALittleHelpForOurFriends.com
Do you need help coping with a loved one's mental or emotional problems? Check out www.KulaMind.com, an exclusive community where you can connect other fans of "A Little Help" and get support from cohosts Dr. Kibby and Jacqueline.
A Little Help For Our Friends
Why Are They Acting Like a Child? Understanding Emotional Immaturity
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When your dating a guy who isn't ready to settle down or your friend whines for not getting what she wants, you roll your eyes and think "they're so immature." But what does being "mature" mean, exactly? In this episode, we nerd out over the concept of emotional immaturity, the developmental aspects that contribute to it, and how it manifests in adult interactions. From understanding the signs of immaturity to addressing the struggle of setting healthy boundaries, we figure out what's needed to navigate emotionally challenging relationships.
This episode was inspired by one of our Little Helper fans who shared with us a story of questioning her relationship to her boyfriend who is kind, respectful and loving, but just felt like a "young soul." When she met a man who demonstrated emotional maturity and thoughtfulness, she could only describe it as "he made me feel like a woman." So we were excited to dissect what that line is between what makes someone feel like a "young" vs "old soul." Thank you for sharing!!
We couldn't ignore the role of emotional regulation and empathy in our connections with others. We explored whether immaturity is a symptom of deeper issues like Cluster B personality disorders (borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), histrionic personality disorder (HPD) and antisocial personality disorder (APD)). We’ll also share personal anecdotes that highlight real struggles faced when dealing with emotionally immature individuals.
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Resources:
- If you have a loved one with mental or emotional problems, join KulaMind, our community and support platform. In KulaMind, work one on one with Dr. Kibby on learning how to set healthy boundaries, advocate for yourself, and support your loved one. *We only have a few spots left, so apply here if you're interested.
- Follow @kulamind on Instagram for science-backed insights on staying sane while loving someone emotionally explosive.
- For more info about this podcast, check out: www.alittlehelpforourfriends.com
- Follow us on Instagram: @ALittleHelpForOurFriends
Hey guys, welcome to A Little Help for Our Friends, a podcast for people with loved ones struggling with mental health. Hey, little helpers, today we're going to do a topic that Kibbe and I have been workshopping for a while. The topic is immaturity. Now that I mean, I'm sure everybody like has their own kind of like assumptions about immaturity, or at about about immaturity, or beliefs about immaturity. Kibbe and I are gonna talk about it, I think, from a somewhat different lens, because we've been thinking a lot more about disorders, particularly, you know, the cluster B personality disorders that she and I are so interested in. We've been thinking about this from a much more developmental lens, and so the idea of maturity or immaturity has become really top of mind for us lately, and I think this can be a really rich discussion. So, um, stay tuned. I think this is could be one of our best episodes yet. Um, but kick us off.
Speaker 2:No pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean even just thinking that I think a lot of this topic has inspired by um, our cool of Mind clients and people in our community.
Speaker 2:Because when someone has a loved one who's immature and we're talking about emotional immaturity, so we'll explain what that is in a minute but having a loved one, like a romantic partner or a parent or a sibling, that's emotionally immature and explosive or kind of hard to have a healthy relationship with, that's really what Kula Mind was designed to help.
Speaker 2:So if any of these topics resonate and you go, oh, I'm really struggling with a loved one who is emotionally immature and I need more support, just reach out to us K-U-L-A-M-I-N-Dcom or there's a link in the show notes where you can book a free consultation call just to chat a little bit more about how we can help. But we basically help people learn how to manage their relationship with that loved one, whether it's learning how to respond when they emotionally explode, or figure out how to set your own boundaries or find your own sense of self-worth outside of that relationship. So those are all the things that Cooler Mind is meant to help with, both with one-on-one coaching and community. So I just wanted to mention that up front. But yeah, we've been talking about emotional maturity and what that really means, what that looks like and what happens when someone is not emotionally mature when we expect them to be right.
Speaker 1:I think one thing that really excites me about this topic and as kind of a lens for cool of mind is so and we've talked about this so many times and we've done it ourselves but, like, whenever we break up with somebody, or somebody treats us like shit, there's this temptation to be like they're a narcissist. And if, if the symptoms don't quite meet or, you know, we can't quite bucket them that way, then there's this dissonance of like okay, well, if they're not a narcissist, then what is it that I just went through? And I don't think that we need to categorize people as like the monster or not. I think a lot of times, what we're actually seeing is just immaturity, or another way to put it is just like a stalled development, and that sounds patronizing because we think of developmental disorders as being intellectual disorders, but I think really, an emotional developmental stall is very relevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I think that when we're looking into what emotional maturity is, I was like, what is emotional maturity? Like, what are we actually trying to expect to see? And looking at the research of how emotions and emotion regulation develop over time, it really seems like things that jump out are when you become a more emotionally mature, you are more likely to have be able to hold a bunch of different emotions being emotionally complex, feeling like conflicting emotions, complex, feeling like conflicting emotions, and not just saying I have only one emotion or there's one thing. That's right. It's like it's almost like being able to understand and appreciate nuance and complexity.
Speaker 2:And as you get older, emotion regulation is supposed to be better, mostly because you're selecting environments and situations that make you happier, Right? So I think that that's just to start out. That's like a helpful anchor for me of, like, what do we actually? We talk about immature, immature. What does maturity actually look like? And that's, um, being able to regulate your emotions, like being able to make them work for you, um, and be able to hold a lot of different, uh sides of the situation. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of granularity piece is really interesting. It's actually I was part of for a very short period of time because it was at the end of my tenure, but I was part of some granularity research at Mount Sinai before Duke and it's interesting, right, because that lab focused on BPD and people who are highly emotionally dysregulated and one of the findings, right, is that there's not a lot of emotional granularity. So people don't get very specific about what their emotion is. They'll say I'm enraged, when maybe indignant could be a more appropriate kind of descriptor for how they're really behaving and you know what their action urges are. And, um, it would be like, yeah, like one emotion clouds out all the others, right, so I'm enraged, it's like, okay, is that the only thing you're feeling, or they're actually a lot of different emotional experiences going on at the same time. So that's what you're referring to.
Speaker 1:There is that part of emotional maturity means understanding that you can have a lot of things going on, a lot of different feelings, at the same time, and part of why I think that plays into maturity is that, if you this is what we do in DBT skills, right, is we try to help people understand what exactly they are feeling what exactly is going on in their body?
Speaker 1:Because if they don't, then they can have a kind of a chaotic reaction, because if all they're experiencing is right, then they're gonna react from a place that, instead of a place of, okay, part of me is indignant, part of me is hurt, part of me is sad, um, part of me is hopeful, right, and all of these things are mixing. It's like, you know, this paint is all mixing together into brown and then I don't really know how to like behave from a valued place. So, yeah, I think that's a really interesting part. And then I think another big part is what we were talking you and I were talking about before this episode, which is theory of mind. Talking about before this episode, which is theory of mind, um, so, and I and I, I do think that is an emotional process, but it's slightly different one yeah it's more of a social one.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're talking about how we're reflecting on people who feel immature, like a like when we go oh, that's such an immature thing to do or say, but and what that tends to look like is very self-focused. And it makes more sense when I'm watching my son grow up, right from being a toddler. It's like when they're that young, their emotion and their mind is the only thing that exists. Right, they have a need, they're screaming, and then they're just waiting to see if that need is met. Right. And when they develop a theory of mind, when they develop an idea that they have a mind but other people have minds too then it becomes like oh wait, I have a need, but then someone else has other needs and maybe even limitations, right.
Speaker 2:And so when I scream out like I'm hungry, I'm angry, I'm blah, blah, blah, that other person might not respond right away or they might not respond in the way that you want them to. And so you have to learn like, okay, I have this need, but that other person has another need. And there are people who grow up without really encoding that, without really saying like I have a need and I'm I cannot believe that people aren't meeting that need right away, and so it looks like, I mean, it is very self focused, because when you, when we're, you know, expecting someone to quote grow up, we're expecting them to understand that everyone has different needs, understand that everyone has different needs, and it's about all of us like collaborating together to like equally meet the needs, or like to understand that there's multiple factors at play. Where immaturity is like there's only one, there's only one what I want and whether I get it or not yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a social process that has an emotional development component because, like Winnicott would say, that you know, like baby comes out, it's not like the baby comes out as, like a self-focused Well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the baby comes out as a self-focused terrorist, but that's not encoded into their adulthood, right, like um.
Speaker 1:But what happens is they have this experience of when I have a need, I ask for it, and then it's met, and if it's not met, there's hell to pay.
Speaker 1:But over time, right like they have to learn that whether or not there's hell to pay, they're still not going to get that need met right away. Like, if they're hungry, well, their mom might not be home, their mom might be sleeping, they might, you know, they might have to wait just a little bit. And when they're waiting just that little bit, over time they become habituated to it, they get used to it and they realize like, okay, I actually can regulate my way through not getting what I want right away. You have some babies who the mother, father, whatever can't stand the emotion and they just immediately come in to meet the need immediately, immediately, immediately. And the child never learns delayed gratification, emotion, regulation, and so over time, their, their world schema is just like when I have a need, I get it met, and they get older and older and older without learning how to regulate that. And then we have Donald Trump.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting too, because I was just thinking about how does attachment, what does a healthy parent do? Right? And when we think about it, if they meet it right away, if they meet all the needs of the kids never say no, always say yes. Meet them they become narcissistic, right? That's like what this research shows. If you're overly permissive, that kid might grow up to be immature in the way that like, why don't I get everything I want right?
Speaker 2:but, then there might be the other way of if they don't, if if that baby learns that I'm crying and no one is ever going to bring me what I need, that's going to create something different, right? Maybe like an avoidant attachment, right? So I guess it's like-.
Speaker 1:And it's also great, a nurse has been in a different pathway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it might just be like a healthy development involves like you're not going to get everything when you need right away, but like there's someone there who's going to try their best and they love you and they're going to you know, often, more often than not keep you safe and healthy and and meet your needs, but not all the time. Yeah so having that balance Right.
Speaker 1:Well, the parent, the parent is a mentor. In many ways, the parent is a shepherd through life, and keeping your child safe doesn't mean meeting it's, meeting it's stated needs all the time that the parent has to have an outlook for like, what does my child need to survive in this world? And delayed gratification and regulating frustration is part of that. And so parents have to be able to say I'm going to give you what you ultimately need, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you what you are asking for. Um and I you know, and I'm also going to give you a lot of what you ask for, if I can, but I have to allow you to function through that frustration. And if I give you nothing of what you're asking for, well then yeah, you're right, that's a. That's different circuitry, right? That's going to cause a lot of anxiety, a lot of learned helplessness, a lot of no matter what I do, I can't get my needs met and my care figure doesn't seem to respond to me, and that's a whole other yeah circuitry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then there's like the really tricky balance keeping that balance of giving them what they need, but not all the time, in reasonable ways, and having it develop appropriately to what they can do. For example, a baby should expect that every time it cries I'm going to respond to its needs as best as I can.
Speaker 2:Right, it might not be the moment that he's hungry, but like he's going to get fed, hopefully. And then as he grows up, right now, like as he's a two something year old, he is going to be like I'm hungry and now I could be like, okay, get yourself a snack. Like get, go get that banana. Like go get that banana, right. And so there's a little bit like as their capabilities to satisfy their own needs or their capabilities to understand that I'm limited, yeah, like mommy's busy, can you go get your right? Like then I'm also backing away and allowing for that space, right? So I think the tricky part is what we're talking about when people don't move, like when that progression doesn't happen in a relationship, whether that person refuses to like go get the banana themselves, or the other person keeps meeting their needs immediately, so that the other person goes like, oh, I don't have to, I don't have to learn how to do things myself and regulate.
Speaker 1:This will probably be the last thing I say about when it caught. But yeah, he has something interesting to say here too, which is like at this certain point it's not just the parent that's gonna say go get a banana. The kid is gonna say I want to do it myself, I want to put my shoes on, I want to go to the park alone, you know whatever right. And obviously the parent can't just say okay, fine, you do it, and then leave and never come back. But if the parent says no, no, no, you can't tie your shoelaces yet, I'll just, I'll do it all for you, then he Winnicott would say that the child develops a false self. So basically they never actually get to experience their own autonomy.
Speaker 1:They never get to explore the world for themselves and discover, like you know, what are the limits of themselves, of their abilities and what they need to learn. It's just they develop this false self of oh, things are done for me and the my orientation towards the world is going to be whatever other people want it to be, cause I never got to do it my way. Um and so, yeah, so that's. That's another really interesting piece, I think when we oh no, you go sorry.
Speaker 2:No, I this is. This is interesting that we're diving right into like the the theory and research behind maturing and what that means, and it's like it now, like it really applies to all these different circumstances that we've been talking about, where people are complaining like this loved one is not mature, that's all I'm just.
Speaker 1:I was like wow, we just dove right into the no, it's exciting because, yeah, I I really think that I'm trying to think of the other personality dessert, I think cluster b, maybe minus antisocial, that kind of has always felt like a different sort of, maybe minus antisocial, that kind of has always felt like a different sort of beast, but probably antisocial too. They all really seem like developmental disorders and to the point where when you experience people with BPD, npd or HPD, they feel childlike in many ways, maybe not all of the time, but when the narcissist throws temper tantrums, you know when the person with bpd is is making a new friend, getting very attached to devaluing, idealizing the person with hpd just sort of exists. Um, there's this like childlike quality that I think has incurred both of us to think this really feels more like delayed development than anything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And maybe just I don't know if it's that they've been delayed at different parts of development or in different ways of development.
Speaker 2:I know I'm like this is my obsession now, ever since I have a toddler and I'm like, oh, wow, this feels a lot. I don't want to be mean to people with BPD. I want to call them like they're like childlike. Mean to people with BPD, I wouldn't call them like they're like childlike.
Speaker 2:But there's something about my son turning three that really feels familiar at the core of BPD, like when that person feels like emotional and dysregulated. They feel young, they feel in good and bad ways, like they're they're so loving, they're like the emotions are just out there, right, when they're angry, they're angry when they're sad, you know like there's just like almost no artifice, there's no like, yeah, like changing the way they feel. It's just like it's so genuine. But it feels very like young because it feels very like, yeah, they're throwing a tantrum when they don't get what they want or feel rejected. And then with narcissism, with people with narcissistic personality disorders, it's it's like they're frozen in the adolescent or they're like like, oh, I gotta be better than my peers. What is? What is everyone else doing? I'm so envious. Everyone's looking at me like it's this very like identity focused piece and identity as defined by like am am I the most popular in school Like? And then, when we grow, older, it's like oh, no, we're valuable for other things too.
Speaker 1:You know I see them both that way. It's interesting. I think part of what's gonna be fun about this is you and me playing in a sandbox with this topic a little bit, and hopefully we don't offend anyone. I mean, I think you know BPD is known to be a developmental disorder. It's not always talked about that way but the bio-social theory is like conjoined with it basically, and we've talked about that 8 million times here. But you know we have got a sensitive temperament in the, in the child met with invalidating parents, and so there's no normal emotional development Like that's written in to the story of BPD. And so there's no normal emotional development like that's written in to the story of BPD. And that happens pretty immediately, you know, and it prevents true identity development because again, in a way that kind of Winnicott autonomy slice is happening here in a different way. It's not that their needs are being instantly met, it's that the emotional needs are rarely getting met or chaotically getting met, and so development of coherence is very difficult and identity really needs.
Speaker 1:Identity is coherent, right? It's like what is coherent in me that I can latch onto and say this is me, and if that's lacking then we've already got disrupted development, I think theory of mind becomes really interesting with BPD. I guess the only reason I say like BPD reminds me of adolescence too. That's when people are discovering their identity and they're pretty unsure about it and they're experimenting with a lot of things. It's when actually, for the first time, things aren't coherent, because puberty is coming online and every like big changes are coming in to disrupt everything that has been kind of safe and steady. Um, and then with narcissism, yeah, there it. It's like, in a way, there's something about adolescence that fits, because it's the development of the social identity that feels stalled with narcissism. But that narcissistic temper tantrum feels really young to me, like two years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I mean, have you ever seen an adolescent throw a temper tantrum? True lesson throw a temper tantrum. I mean, I guess what we're talking about is like to try to bring it back to um, like our experience of loved ones with immaturity. Um, there's different levels, that different areas that they could be immature. Right, there's the emotional maturity, where emotional immaturity kind of looks like, um, if you have a loved one who, if they're upset, they get really upset and it's like explosion and like they can't even control or manage the way it's expressed.
Speaker 2:So they're like really, really upset, almost like. Sometimes when they cry or they get upset, it almost looks like childlike, where it's like sobbing and almost like.
Speaker 2:I'm not even. I'm not even managing or like trying to hold it in. It's like all out there and it's like that black and white thinking like all good, all bad, I get what I want, I don't get what I want, right. Like this is good, this is a bad person and this is a good person, right. So kind of like the very simplistic I'm having emotion and I have needs and a lot right. And then there's like that identity piece which comes later, which is like okay, now, who am I? Who am I in relation to other people? How do I relate to it? Am I valuable to other people? Am I valuable to society? And I imagine that if you're stunted at an earlier age with the emotion, you can't get to the and I imagine that if you're stunted at an earlier age with the emotion you can't get to the.
Speaker 1:If you're stunted at the age of three, it's hard to get to age of 13 and develop that sense of self in a good way. I was just thinking. You know, with both of those disorders there's this sense of I need people to treat me in a particular way or I won't be okay. And I think for the emotionally mature person it's a very different story. It's I want people to treat me in a particular way. If they don't, I'll know what to do about it. And there's an expectation people won't treat me how I want to be treated all the time. If I want somebody to bring me cheesecake, maybe that'll happen. Probably not, unless I pay for it. Um, but you know, like I, um, I see relationships as negotiations between my needs and boundaries and the other person's needs and boundaries. And what I kind of consistently got from particularly my narcissistic friends is that that negotiation doesn't exist. It is these are my needs and boundaries, you fit them, or?
Speaker 1:anything yeah, and that's entitlement. But entitlement is also a maturity right, it's. It's not necessarily like you're a bad person. It might just be you're an undeveloped person Because there's something about if you don't get your needs met by another person, then that feels really bad to you. And well, what does that remind you of?
Speaker 2:I mean we could go I'm sure we'll have another discussion about emotional immaturity in parents, which is a hot topic us describing, um, the situation with her partner and her boyfriend who's she? She like said he was great in so many ways, like that he's respectful, he's kind, he's, you know, like they have a good relationship. But she was a, she got a sense that he's just like. She described it as like a young soul, while she feels like an old soul. And, um, um, she was saying that and I was describing like you know what, what did that look like? Well, she was like, well, she would be, you know, be affectionate to him or kind of look at him. And he would be like what are you, what are you doing? And, um, she was like, oh, does this make you feel vulnerable? Or, and he was like, no, it's just weird.
Speaker 2:So he kind of brushes off some of her emotional expressions. But there was another time where she was sad and expressing sadness over him not taking her to an event and he was like, well, I feel like you're just criticizing me, I'm going to. You know, I don't want to have this conversation. And she was just saying like I just want to share this emotion that I have with you. So it seemed like she was trying to just have a conversation I mean the way she was saying it who knows what it looked like but saying like I want to express affection and sadness and all these things. And he kind of, you know, bristled at it or felt uncomfortable and she described also then feeling like he was immature but not really pinpointing it. And then, when she met someone and just had an interaction with someone, with a man who was like it felt more mature, he was older, she was like, wow, I felt like a woman around him.
Speaker 2:Like nothing bad happened, but she's just like she was like oh wow, this is what it feels like to be around a person who's more mature. So what do you think about that? Or how immaturity can show up in like a relationship like that, what that looks like, because it's always bad, right, we're talking about like temper tantrums, but you know, immaturity could like be like oh yeah, I feel like, looking back, like there's so many boyfriends where I was immature. They were immature, yeah.
Speaker 1:When it comes to dating, I guess my thoughts branch out into two things. One is is there an essential delayed development? And the second is are you in a different developmental stage than what is necessary for the success of your relationship? And the second one I don't think is about immaturity, because I think developmental stages can actually happen at different parts of people's lifespans. So, for instance, I think a lot of people have the fuck boy phenomenon where they, you know, they date somebody who's not ready for a relationship. That doesn't mean that that person is developmentally delayed. It could mean that their value system is elsewhere. They value currently in their life different things exploration, whatever. I've talked about that before and I think that that causes a lot of problems because what you're getting isn't necessarily immaturity.
Speaker 1:What you're getting is a values conflict where your needs do not meet the value needs of the other person, um, and so that I think is when like, fuck boys will and fuck boys and girls um will be on serious towards you, won't take your needs into account as much, will play games et cetera, and there might be elements of actual immaturity within that. But I think that's a different beast. But I think people encounter that a lot and then they're like that guy was a narcissist, when in reality it's like no, that person just is off doing their own thing.
Speaker 2:They just don't want what you want, you were sure you want a commitment and you want a type of commitment. And they are not like they don't want that or they're not ready for that, and who knows if that means a maturity overall. You know like, if they're or they're just they just don't want to commit right now, right, and it's like so easy to be like they're just immature, they're narcissists, right, but it's like they just might not want the same things as you do at that time, right, might not actually like communicate that in an effective way.
Speaker 1:So Right, and so that's where there may be elements of immaturity, but that also might be more like, um, they are being told by their culture and society that what they should be doing is being in a relationship, but actually they don't. And so then there's a values conflict about it, and that's very confusing, and they're reacting from a place of confusion, um, and in that I think it's just something you grow out of or age out of, but it's not a developmental wound or delay, yeah, okay. So then when we're talking about a developmental like delay, um, and we don't know which this is, by the way, in this story we don't know exactly what's going on, but there's something about her needs and emotions that feels threatening to this guy, to where he continuously needs to shut them down, not understanding that that's going to have long-term consequences for him, and that could be for a number of different reasons. But this is when, like, theory of mind, I think, is really important as well as like, what?
Speaker 1:What does he? Is he, is he misunderstanding her? Or is he flat-out unwilling to mentalize? Because he might find, if he mentalizes, that her perspective is going to make him uncomfortable or have needs that aren't met, or something like that and so he's consistently blocking her emotional expression and that is going to lead her feeling uncared for and probably like she is the mother in the relationship. And then when another man comes and says, express, I want to hear it, I want to hold it, then she's no longer going to feel like the mother in the relationship, she's going to feel like a quote, unquote woman. Some people will actually say and I feel girlish because I've got someone taking care of me, mm-hmm, um, but it's, it's, it's girlish in a sexual like a, a good way girlish in a sexual, like a good way, like a hot way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I remember one boyfriend who was pretty immature, he was and like I say this, and he was still really nice in some ways he was a little racist, but German boyfriend, um, but we got into a huge fight once because, um, we were at a dinner with a friend who was describing a really painful loss for a dog. Like she was just describing how this dog meant a lot to her and her family and we love, like they loved the dog, and it was just so painful. And he kept saying, oh, there's some, there's some scientists who say that, um, pets don't actually love their owners, their, their families. It's just because they're fed by them that they act in ways that we think that we love them. And I was just like, don't say that right now, like this is not the moment. And he was just like angry and surprised.
Speaker 2:Like he was angry that I was like telling him to shush, but then also like what I was telling her the truth, and I was like like that wasn't the moment because she was like sad about the loss. So hearing that the dog might have not loved her was probably not the moment, the moment, and he just couldn't understand how the truth that he had needed to be held back because of someone else's like wasn't in the same mindset, and so I remember thinking like, how do you know? Just like, read the room. He didn't know how to read the room, so that felt like a more developmental thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we do talk and we do talk about, we do talk about social development too, I mean in social maturity and social development as well.
Speaker 1:And and yeah, I mean all these things are are so interconnected. Um, I think you know, when you, when you are able to properly mentalize, then you then a few things happen, you know. One is that you realize that your needs are at odds with other people's. That's threatening, right, it means you won't get your needs met. And another thing is that you're going to find that other people have different worldviews than you, and that can also be threatening, because the assumptions by which you've been living your life are less secure, and both of those entail emotion regulation in order to accept so, and theory of mind is required for social development and maturity, and so all of these things are so interconnected. So if you don't, if you can't, if you can't regulate your emotions very well, then mentalizing or empathizing, perspective taking is going to be a threatening prospect, and if you can't mentalize properly, you're going to be in situations all the time where you need to regulate your emotions because your needs aren't going to be met and you won't understand why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you, if you don't get that you need to respect that other person, their needs, their limits, their requests, their you know, whatever their resources and what you need to do in order to get them to respond to you, then you're constantly like I'm upset because, like I just come in expecting for you to just like right.
Speaker 2:It should be all about me, it should be all about my needs, and it's not, and that's not okay, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that this might be why that women tend to be more emotionally mature and complain about this in dating, that there's more immature men than there are mature men. Because maybe because we have, women are socialized to think about other people's needs way earlier, right, like it's they're able to, but they're they're kind of told maybe over time like, oh no, like be respectful to this person or help this person out, or you're going to have a baby at some day where you'll have to take care of something and give your body and you know, energy to like another human being and men, or raise, socialize more often to be like, go and find your dreams, you know, be the powerful one. It should be about you, um, and how you're better than everyone, right? So they grow up kind of being like there's no limitation, there's no other people's needs, it's mine, mine's the most important, and like, now that I've found you and I want you to be my wife and girlfriend or whatever you, you get the privilege of satisfying my needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm baking this thought as we speak. Um, but women are. They are socialized to think about other people's perspective and emotions a lot, and but also we are trained to regulate the relationship, wrecking emotions and to express the relationship, eliciting emotions.
Speaker 1:So I mean like tears and anger, both elicit need, like elicit responses from other people that meet our needs, but one of those tends to secure a relationship and one of those tends to push away the relationship Interesting. So anger gets your needs met in the short term but often does not in the long term, and that's what men are socialized to go for. Tears are meant to secure your needs in the short term and the long term because the other person wants to come closer and comfort you and they don't experience themselves as being pushed away, villainized, um encroached upon. You know they experience you as soft and you know doe-eyed and and sweet etc. So I don't know if that plays in where you know, and obviously it erodes actually the woman over time because then they never get to be angry. But it's kind of like the emotional experience they get to have takes into account the other person as well In a way that like a man's emotion doesn't it's what we talk about with emotion regulation.
Speaker 2:It's like we, if emotion is a signal of a need and the way we express it is going to try to satisfy that need. We're going to change the way we express it to satisfy that need. So if I'm angry, if I need protection, I can puff up and be like, yeah, I'm the best, and you could go, you know whatever, and fight. I could also cry and be like I need you to recognize and and you know whatever. And so I'm going to do over time what works to satisfy that need.
Speaker 1:Women tend to be the most, the more emotionally mature ones, because we've been socialized to take into account other people's needs, and I was just adding an emotional element where, like, we also are taught to regulate well regulate all of our emotions, but particularly the ones that push people away. So even the emotional experiences that we get to express more clearly also take into account the other person's emotional experience and tend to secure relationships more. So women tend to be in relationship more than men do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. My priority is a little bit more. Our socialization is more about collaboration and keeping relationships and maintaining them. So we're going to learn how to mentalize, think about other people's thoughts and feelings more than people who are not socialized like that, like men. So, yeah, it's just. Do you, do you remember any glaring signs of emotional immaturity in your dating life, or even? Yourself.
Speaker 1:One glaringly obvious one is when I had a partner who constantly smoked weed and acted very bizarrely when he smoked weed and it was unattractive to me and it had social cost that I was really boyish.
Speaker 2:When he, when he was high, it was very like, like, even vocally it was very like you know using the level equality is really off-putting, really off-putting.
Speaker 1:And I would say please don't do this drug in front of me On your own time. Whatever you want, please do not do it in front of me. And he was like well, if I can't do my medicines, then you can't do your medicines, so you can't take Lexapro. Lexapro makes me more pleasant to be around and weed makes you less pleasant to be around. He was like well, I don't like it when you use your ADHD meds, that makes you less pleasant to be around, so you have to stop those.
Speaker 1:It's like okay, the in his mind and this was set up in so many different places. You know, if I, if I, had a reaction, he had to have an equal and opposite reaction, actually an unequal and opposite reaction. Um, you know, everything had to be quote unquote fair and that isn't. That is the, not the definition of immaturity. But it's such a clear example of immaturity when people are obsessed with fairness, because that is not how the world works. It's just not so. You know, I had.
Speaker 1:This is why I love the DBT rule of effectiveness. This is my favorite of the mindfulness how to be mindful. It's like do you want to be? Do you want things to be fair or do you want to get what you ultimately want? If what he ultimately wanted was sex, attraction, love and affection, then he should stop smoking weed and not make it a fairness game where then I have to go off my medications because that's the only thing he could come up with because I didn't do drugs. But in his mind it's like if you are going to take away one of my wants, then I'm going to take away one of your needs, cause that's what's fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I'll add to that. The obsession with fairness is also like cause. We said earlier that being mature is realizing that there's a give and take. Right, if I want something from you, I'm gonna have to respect your limits, right? Like I can't demand everything from you. It has to be fair in the sense that, like, I could ask you something, you reciprocate some in some ways or you know whatever.
Speaker 2:But it's immature to think that there's only one form of fairness, which is that they get what they want, and if they don't get what they want, then there should be some retaliation. Right, there should be. The other person is either something taken away, whereas, like, there's a different sense of fairness for you, right, like here's, here's what you're that that boyfriend you're talking about wanted to be able to smoke weed all the time, be able to act the way he was, which is, when he was upset, he was very boyish about it and like whiny and pouty and for you to still find him sexually attractive and you know and and not be put off by it, so he can do everything he wants and you have to respond in the way that he would like.
Speaker 2:There should be no consequence. That's it the kind of lack of accountability. There's no, I'm going to act the way I want to and everyone should just be happy with it. That's the fair in their mind, which is not fair in our minds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's oversimplifying a complex situation too, right, like if in his mind it's you take away my toy, I take away your toy, but the reality was he was playing with his toy in an unhealthy way and so he gets he, he loses his toy and I keep my toy. My toy here is my psychiatric medications and his is drugs. But I, you know, I, I see that a lot. It's just like you took some, you took I take. It's like no, we have to think about all the complexities of this and, yeah, about what's going to be effective. It's like how do we want this relationship to be run? And I see this sometimes with friendships too.
Speaker 1:I think people will look at themselves and say this is the kind of friend I am, these are the kinds of things I would be willing to give, and so that means that my friends have to be the same.
Speaker 1:These are the kinds of things I would be willing to give, and so that means that my friends have to be the same. If I'm willing to give lots of gifts, then they should be willing to give lots of gifts. If I'm willing to drive you to the airport every time you want, then you should be willing to drive me to the airport every time you want. It's like that's not how life works. If that's what you want, then what you need to go and do is collect a bunch of people who are willing to drive you to the airport anytime you want. But what's going to be a much more rewarding outcome is if you understand what all these diverse people are willing to give you know, and then can you appreciate that and then have the nimbleness to switch between friends to get different needs met. So I find that that's another kind of sign of immaturity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's okay.
Speaker 2:So what we're circling around is an immaturity that shows up when that person expresses something that they want or need. And then, if the world doesn't give it, how do they understand that, for example, an immature person might think I have a need and it should get met, and if it's not, that's unfair, that's unjust. There's a problem, just entirely right, like it is wrong. That's unfair, that's unjust. There's a problem, just entirely right, like it is wrong, that I didn't get what I want. And I see that in my son, where if he wants like late at night, he's tired, he wants a snack. I'm like no, we already brushed your teeth and it's time for bed. He's like no, like that is, how could you do that? That is so unfair. You know he's acting like I, I violated something, right.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, as he grows up he might understand oh, I really want a snack right now. Maybe I want some chocolate, but I did just brush my teeth, it's late and you know we shouldn't just eat whenever, whatever we want all the time, right? Or? And mommy is not being unfair, she's just like following that right, and some say some situations it might be unfair, that doesn't get the the chocolate Right. It's like if I just felt like I didn't want to give it to him, but I'm like eating in front of him. Then you know he could be like, well, okay, this situation when I didn't get my need met or desire for chocolate, it was like not correct or like you know, and this one is fair. So I guess it's like the maturity is understanding when things don't go your way to understand, like why and how to problem solve. Either either accept that you're not going to get what you want or find other ways to get that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to think of, like if we were to develop a primer right now for somebody to to be able to know whether they're the person they're dating or, yeah, the person I tourism dating, let go there is a mature person or not, yeah, what would we look for? And one of the things I'm again, I'm, I'm I'm actively baking my thoughts right now, so, like I don't I don't know how well formed these are.
Speaker 1:I'd kind of be interested in how they meet their goals. Um are they able to effectively meet their goals? Do they do it by obviously like manipulation? Um are they? Are they able to handle setbacks? Um?
Speaker 2:are they able to understand that other people have their own agency and can say no, right. I think that that's something important, because you can okay, how about this? Let's say I'm dating someone, or we were back in when we were dating someone and, um, that person wants to have sex or something, and we're like yes, I knew sex was because in my mind I was like this is what they want, right? That's like perfect.
Speaker 1:It's the perfect first instance of goal directed behavior that people can look to. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you say no, I'm not going to have sex with you tonight. Yeah Right, and that you could watch to see how they react to not getting something that they want. Yeah, they could be disappointed. People could get be. This is the part of validation that's so important. You could be disappointed that you don't get what you want.
Speaker 2:I feel that all the time, right, like I want something, I want chocolate, and I don't get it. It's like, oh, bummer, right, it's. But then how do they act? They act like it's a it's that you're a person who has the right to say no, who has their own mind, has their own ability to control. Like if I say no, thank you, I don't want to have sex tonight, and they go oh, that sucks. Okay, I understand. And they go home. They're really like upset about it. Okay, or they go, why not? You should? I did that. Like, if they act like this is totally unjust and it's not right for you to say no to them, okay, that's one sign and you just have to watch that happening across. Like do they throw a temper tantrum when they don't get what they want?
Speaker 1:yeah, actually it's interesting because I'm gonna make a. I'm gonna make an argument for why men, why women, should let men buy them dinner. This is a little bit convoluted, questionable. Go for it, okay. What often happens is that a man buys a woman dinner and then he acts entitled to sex and what you have there is a fairness trap. Yet again, the man is showing you what he cares about is fairness.
Speaker 1:I gave you your toy, I get my toy, and that is a sign of definite immaturity, like if a man thinks that treating somebody well or paying for something means that the other person owes them their body and their intimacy. You know, then that is a very big like mistaken one-to-one. It's, it's, it's. It's. It's the medicine and the weed. Again, you know, it's I. I have to give up the thing I want. So you should have to give up the thing you want, even though the thing I want is something that I'm using in an unhealthy way. And the thing you're want, you're using something you need and you're using it in a healthy way. And this it's like because I gave you money, which is just money, um, but you know it, it dinged me a little bit, hurt my wallet a little bit to do that. Then you have to owe me the thing that I decided was worth that money. I decided that, not you, and now you have to give it to me or I'm going to be a dick.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that what that, what that shows, is what does that dinner, uh, get you Right? What did him paying that dinner? Or her paying that dinner? What does that get that other person?
Speaker 2:Well, if, if they're stuck in, I pay for dinner and that is my payment for sex, like, that's the transaction I pay dinner, you sex, um, but the other side, the, the woman in the situation or you know, whatever the other partner might be like no, no, no, that dinner is, let's say, your contribution, payment for, like, getting to know me and demonstrating willingness to be committed, willingness to provide for me, willingness to be generous in you know, so I could evaluate whether we should be together in a more serious way. Right, like this is like oh, no, no, the dinner is part of my, you know my need to get a long term relationship, right, so it's like they're under different expectations for what that dinner gets them. And if the man is like, well, I can't, I can't even believe that the thing that I wanted and the payment that I thought I'd get didn't get me what I wanted, right? Versus like, oh, we want different things right now.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't think that if a woman goes and has sex with a man, that suddenly he was her relationship. Right.
Speaker 1:Maybe back in the day that did. But she doesn't get to decide the price for sex unless she lays it out up front, right? If he said I'll buy you this dinner if you have sex with me, then great that is that is the price. Emotional experience has to be dealt with by another person or has to be validated by another person. That's another thing. Like people should be able to regulate their own emotional experience and ideally, the people who love you will help. But it's not an entitlement, it's yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maturity comes with the agency, right. Like I think that that's such a subtle difference, because it's really tricky. We talk about like okay, if I'm upset, how much is my husband obligated? Or like how much should I expect my husband to make me feel better, right, and like there is some expectation, like if I'm upset, he completely ignores me. I'd be kind of hurt and be like it's kind of part of our relationship that if I'm like really upset, you should like validate it in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, but then it's like why, the understanding of why, right, like I'm in my mind. Hopefully a mature response would be like we are both people who have agency, who could say no and yes to something. We we said yes to supporting each other, right. But if I think to myself like he has no agency and he should, and, as everyone should, just be there when I'm upset, they should never say no. Yeah, I'm dealing with a loved one who I'm struggling with that a lot, and this is where it comes up, where when someone has an emotionally like someone with BPD traits or emotionally explosive or immature loved one and you set boundaries, then they get super upset.
Speaker 2:And that's something I really struggle with because it makes me feel dehumanized. It makes me feel like objectified, like I say no to something that they want, um, and they're like they're treating it like I'm a bad person, that I'm harming them. Yeah, and it it it hurts my feelings because it's like, and they're like yelling at me. They're saying like how could you do this to me? I'm like I, what about me? And what I needed? Like I, I said no to certain things, because to this loved one, because I was going through cancer, I am going through cancer treatment, and there's things I can't do, there's things that I don't have capacity for. And me saying no is asserting like my agency and saying like I have needs and I could say no to something that you want and and you could be disappointed, but like, understand why I can't give you what you want. And the other person's like it's just unjust that you're not responding to everything I want.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing I think. I think the reason we're calling what we're really dancing around is entitlement, and I think the reason we're calling this a developmental problem is not that. It's not that somebody who is entitled is just a designated bad person who thinks ill of others. I think the problem with entitlement is that the person who is entitled truly doesn't know how. They don't have the agency themselves. They don't know how to deal with that situation themselves. So when somebody says you have to meet my needs, it's because they can't meet their needs otherwise or at least they believe that, and so they're in their own bind.
Speaker 1:Right? Like if I say you have to validate my emotions, you have to. You know, help me with this. It's because I don't believe I can do it myself. Interesting, you need to meet my need, you need to have sex. I can't have sex by myself. I don't know how that one works, but it's like I, I, you know, and this is where emotion regulation comes in again, right? Is that? Like, if you don't, if you have, if you don't have matured emotion regulation, then you are going to come across as entitled, because you are constantly going to be seeking it from other people and when they don't give it to you, you're going to be thrown into a state of desperation, and that's going to come across as entitled that's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah to not be yeah. And it just makes like when you picture, like what it makes sense for a kid like young kid, versus an adult, like that kid can't regulate everything, like can't meet all of his needs on his own and it makes sense for him to feel entitled to having me feed him, breastfeed him, right, um.
Speaker 2:And then there there is this sense of like unconditional love that feels like nice but like immature, like he can storm and flip, you know, do this and I'll still love him and be there, um. But then to expect that when he's older, like to storm and thrash around and yell and throw things and the person sticks around, that's, that's not. That's that seems immature. That's like what you get when you're a two-year-old, and I'm sorry if you didn't get that when you're a two-year-old, but, like if you're in adult relationships, you can't act everything you want and get everything you need and this is the bind that cluster b is in is they didn't get it and now they can't do it alone.
Speaker 1:They don't believe they can do it alone, and the problem is is that other people are not going to give it to them. They're just not, at least not for very long. And so then, what do they do? Well, hopefully, they go to DBT and they, they get reparenting and they, they learn how to do it again with a therapist, they learn how to do it for the first time you know um, but that's that's the sad.
Speaker 1:That's the sad thing and, and I think, a huge, maybe motivating factor for people with at least bpd I don't know about NPD, but is that they might if they can accept, like I. What happens when other people don't meet my needs is that I feel an emotion that I can't regulate on my own and then I demand other people do it, because it's the only way I can regulate. They're not going to do it, they're just not, and I have to find another way, and the other way is treatment.
Speaker 2:Or the other way could be other healthy or unhealthy mechanisms of like drinking or, you know, drugs or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right, Right, yeah. So you, yeah, you could opt for. You could opt for unhealthy mechanisms or you could leapfrog from person to person until that you know until they get burnt out.
Speaker 1:But those are the options and I think a lot of immature people aren't going to accept that other people flat out won't meet their needs because they're not going to even do the mentalization to do that. I mean, if I fundamentally couldn't meet my own emotional needs, I don't know if I would either, because I don't even know if I would have the scope for understanding that other people can regulate their own emotions and so therefore have their own agency and boundaries and aren't available to do that for others all the time. Well, I guess the final thing I would say is just to take it down a little bit from cluster B. I had a friend, you know she was telling me about some guy that she really liked and he seemed like he liked her and he like drove three hours to visit her and they were hanging out and but she still didn't know if he liked her. But she was like pretty positive, like who would do that, right? So she texted him after that and was like hey, I just like really wanted to let you know that I like you and yada, yada, yada, right, and he's like oh, I'm sorry, I have a girlfriend.
Speaker 1:And then to me she was like but doesn't it seem like he likes me? I was like. It doesn't matter, he's undeveloped, like. Whether he. You know this kind of behavior. Look for maturity or immaturity. I think that'll serve you better than does he or does he not like me, or is he? Or is he not a jerk? Right? It's like somebody who drives three hours away from their own relationship to visit you, flirts, never talks once about your relationship, but then acts surprised when you say you like them. That is immaturity in action, right, and so I think, like, whether cluster B or not, it can be very helpful to you out in the dating world to just ask yourself am I encountering a mature person? And if I'm not, is it going to be worth me mothering them or waiting until they develop to have a good relationship?
Speaker 2:And we're saying the way to test that is see what happens when they have to deal with a conflict between their wants and needs and someone else's like yours wants and needs, and see what they do with it. Like they could be disappointed. But do they act like they don't even register that someone else can have a different need and want or like that he doesn't that that example you gave, like didn't register that those behaviors like driving to see her or whatever, can give her the impression that he's interested, right. If that, if the other equation is not, if the other mind in the equation is not even entering, then that's immaturity because he's not even thinking about that.
Speaker 1:There's multiple minds going on yeah, I think you can look for I. I think that's the number one thing I would look for is can is this person holding multiple perspectives at one time and demonstrating that? How is this person meeting their goals? Does this person have emotional granularity? That's what we talked about at the start of the episode, right?
Speaker 2:And the whole nuance and complexity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, can they talk about having multiple emotions at the same time and can they pinpoint? How, how do they? What do they do with their emotions? But I don't think you need to pathologize. I think you can just say that this, this person, is in different developmental phase and that's not going to be fun to be with. Yeah, I think that's all I have to say.
Speaker 2:I think that's great. Yeah, I think at some point we could talk about how emotional maturity shows up in parents, because I know that, like a lot of people are interested in that we're mostly been talking about, like emotional maturity and dating, um, and like peer and peers, but like what happens when you're raised by someone who's supposed to teach you maturity and they're not mature themselves. I think that's a very painful. That's even more of a painful situation sometimes. So yeah very cool all righty.
Speaker 1:Well, um, if you guys want to hold multiple perspectives at the same time, um, and give us a five-star rating on ample podcast and spotify.
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