116: The damage of an emotionally immature parent

If we genuinely think about how many of us are emotionally mature before we become parents the number is probably pretty low. The act of caring for someone else, and having to manage our own feelings, can be incredibly challenging, particularly when we were raised by parents who were immature themselves.

Being able to spot the difference between being emotionally immature, and the normal pressures of parenting, can be really helpful. We all have outbursts at times; we're human. The most important test is how we deal with getting it wrong by apologising and taking accountability. The mutual empathy this creates is at the root of building strong relationships.

Definition of emotional maturity on Healthline:

An emotionally mature person manages their emotions well even in difficult situations, takes accountability, is okay with being vulnerable, and shows empathy to others.

THE BOOK REFERENCED THROUGHOUT:
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay Gibson

TYPES:

1: The emotional parent. Ruled by their feelings, often swinging wildly between being over-involved and completely withdrawing from their children's lives.

2: The Driven parent. This personality type is obsessively goal-oriented and perpetually busy. They are on a constant quest for perfection, which includes even their children.

3: The Passive parent. They’re more laissez-faire and often willingly take a back seat to a more dominant partner. This can sometimes lead to physical and emotional abuse both for them and their children.

4: The Rejecting parent. They don’t enjoy any level of emotional intimacy. Their interactions with other family members usually consist of getting angry, commanding others, or completely isolating themselves.

THE TECHNIQUE

1:  Become curious and observe rather than react. Our episode on this: https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/over-reactions-how-to-not-overreact/

2: Think like a scientist. Mentally take note of how your parent or the adult is responding to you. Are they actually listening to you or are they just trying to appease you? Do you recognize any of the emotionally immature behaviors we talked about earlier? 

Once you’ve done this you can begin to employ what Gibson calls the three-step Maturity Awareness Approach. The first step is to express yourself and let go.

1: Express yourself and let go. Tell your parent or the person what you want to say, but don't worry about controlling the outcome. It doesn't matter how they react to you. 

2: Set a goal of what you want to achieve fro

Chapters

• 0:00 Telling the difference between helpful and unhelpful worrying
• 2:59 Desire Pathways and Parenting Styles
• 4:51 Reviews and Defining Emotional Maturity
• 7:04 Emotional Maturity and Intimacy
• 11:51 Types of Emotionally Immature Parents
• 21:24 Coping Mechanisms and Healing
• 22:26 Recognizing Emotionally Mature Parents
• 27:36 Practical Tips for Improving Emotional Maturity
• 28:02 Modeling Mature Behavior for Children
• 33:10 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:01

Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters.

Susie Asli: 0:12

Hi there. I'm Susie Asli, mindfulness coach, mindful therapist and musician, a mother of three teenagers. Two of them are twins.

Rachel Richards: 0:19

Susie, do you know any emotionally immature adults? No,

Susie Asli: 0:25

none. Yes, myself included. Yeah.

Rachel Richards: 0:30

Just yesterday, I was reading a post on threads by a woman who said she is low contact with her mum because of the way she's treated. She says she recently had to make a call during which she put her phone on mute to do the chores and write emails while her mother simply talked about herself. The poster said, I wonder what it would be like to have a mum interested in getting to know me. I began to cry. She either didn't notice or care when I spoke my goodbyes with through snipping. I wanted to say this because it perfectly illustrates the points made in a book that I've been using to research this particular episode. And it's, I'm going to put it in the podcast notes, but it's called adult children of emotionally immature parents, by clinical psychologist Lindsay C Gibson. This is one of the reasons, because I've been looking at this book, I thought, Oh, it's a good episode. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Well, so we'll talk about this, about how we identify maturity and immaturity. It's not always perfectly easy to spot sometimes you're under stress, right different ways you're being immature. It's just that you are,

Susie Asli: 1:32

yeah, and you maybe don't react in good mechanisms,

Rachel Richards: 1:35

exactly how it impacts on us and what can be done to move towards being a better parent, Susie. What about nuggets? Have you got a nugget?

Susie Asli: 1:44

Yeah, have it's a bit more general, but I've been thinking lately about the difference between, for myself, the difference between useful sort of concern slash worrying, and unhelpful worrying, yeah, and sometimes I've been falling into the unhelpful one, so an awareness around that, and it's the one that, you know, the one that loops around and you're trying to fix something. And I've kind of been sitting with it and thinking, sometimes what I'm actually trying to do is to to control something in the future, because I don't, I can't bear the thought of having to feel whatever happens. It's too big, it's too unbearable. So I try and fix and control so that I avoid having to have to feel that. So that's Yeah, so I have these really interesting thoughts, yeah, no. I like that. Instead of trying to get rid of all worry, which is often what's oversimplified or don't worry, worries a waste of time kind of thing. Sometimes it's maybe worry is the wrong word, but, you know, useful concern would to be responsible for your kids. Sometimes that's helpful, isn't it, but it's the unhelpful looping one, yeah, where we're trying to actually control stuff that that we don't like, yes, and noticing that, just noticing that, and allowing it, and maybe sort of stepping into the unknown, allowing it to be it will be fine, yeah, yeah.

Rachel Richards: 3:03

I have you heard of desire pathways?

Susie Asli: 3:06

Rings a bell, but I don't know why. So,

Rachel Richards: 3:09

so for my nugget, a desire pathway is a path that people create which doesn't actually follow the built environment. So just take, for example, you know when they put a tarmac path, and then there's a corner in it, and then you see people have just ignored the corner, and they just, they just cut the corner. Yeah, right, yeah. It's a classic at every school. And then they wear away the grass. And then you end up with a new path, which is called, in this terminology, a desire path, okay? And my favorite was one where this path had become so distinct that they'd actually just put a brick path there anyway, which I think is great. So you like, Okay, well, you're gonna work walk there. And our Mexico listener, Claudia pointed out that this concept is something they have to consider now when they are creating built environments. So why am I talking about this? Well, it made me think about us as parents, because we often think we have a path that we think our kids should be on, or we have an environment with that we want them to fit into. And then sometimes it's really good to actually look at your kid and think, Well, is this, is this the right thing for them? Should I be looking for their own desire path, and perhaps, you know, helping them to work their world around that, rather than just trying to force them. So, for example, in education, where they just end up down this river of education, some kids don't that's not their path, no. And trying to force them into it isn't really going to work. So just looking out for where their passions are, looking out for, you know, they, I think, naturally more inclined this way.

Susie Asli: 4:38

I like that image of the desire pathway that I love it. Yes, it's really useful,

Rachel Richards: 4:42

because it happens everywhere. It happens even in the when I walk through the woods. So all the deer have created a path through the woods, and you can see it because they all just go blah. We like that path. The sheep do it an entire field that's of grass, and they'll all walk down one particular path. And I just like what was a good view. Or something. What is it? Quicker? Probably one quicker. But to wear. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 5:03

very busy. They're going somewhere very important,

Rachel Richards: 5:07

right? Do you have a review?

Susie Asli: 5:09

Yes, I have a review here. I love it. I only discovered your podcast about a month ago from another parent, and I love it. It's helped me so much with my teenage children. So thank you, ladies. I recommend to everyone that will listen to me. I love your podcast. Please don't ever stop listening all the way in Australia, but from the UK. Thank you, ladies, that's

Rachel Richards: 5:29

Tara by model. She messaged me on Instagram. She's great if you want to check her out. Yeah, she's got a really nice, yeah, really great Instagram account. Here's one from Katherine hagland, I've been listening to your audio hug for a while now, and find you so helpful, reliable. Every Wednesday you are there, I try and I trust your advice. Oh, thank you. Let's go back to this topic of today. It's interesting, because if you talk to lots of people, they'll say they're mature. They pay the bills, feed and clothe themselves, drive a car. You know? What is maturity? What? How do we define maturity? Yes, and that's not the sort of maturity we're talking about. I looked up the definition of emotional maturity on Healthline, and it said an emotionally mature person manages their emotions well, even in difficult situations. I think that's really important. Takes accountability is okay with being vulnerable and shows empathy to others. Gosh, that's

Susie Asli: 6:26

a big that's a great definition, definition. So it's being able to emotionally regulate. Yeah, I think we should be taught that as children.

Rachel Richards: 6:32

I do too, and I think it's the stuff we talk about all the time. Yeah, isn't it? Whenever we like, when we say it's not personal, or, you know, it's okay to admit when you get things wrong, all those things, it's that's all about emotional maturity,

Susie Asli: 6:44

because sometimes we get it wrong, don't we? We think that emotional maturity, or emotional regulation, is being able to be calm all the time, and that's rubbish. It's not. It's being able, it's being an awareness, yes, when we when things are difficult, and being able to bring ourselves back, rather than just flying off and going, yes.

Rachel Richards: 7:00

So you could say that we all because we do behave in an emotionally immature way at times, the Emotionally Mature thing to do is to then say, Oh, that wasn't the right response, and perhaps I could have done it better, and to be able to repair. So it's that kind of, what they call a do over,

Susie Asli: 7:17

yeah, repairing is very emotionally mature. It's hard, really important, really hard, and if we practice it enough, we can do it in the moment. But of course, we all slip up in my put my hand up to that massively.

Rachel Richards: 7:28

Yeah, so let's set out the store by explaining why emotional maturity really matters. And I mean, I think that that original column does make it quite clear, but one of the reasons I've come to think it's so important is that from what I read, it's the key to intimacy. And I don't mean physical intimacy, it's emotional intimacy, which means that you feel safe enough to communicate your deepest feelings to

Susie Asli: 7:53

someone. And that's the key, isn't it? It's safety. It's psychological safety. And she

Rachel Richards: 7:57

explains in the book that if we don't experience emotional intimacy, we can end up with a deep sense of loneliness that. And you know, it's a biological need, as we talk about all the time. And to create emotional intimacy, we need to be able to listen to someone and to be able to voice our own emotions without pushing them away. Yeah, really tricky stuff. Really tricky. It's really tricky, you know. And a lot of teenagers, really, they need practice at this. It's very, very hard, and

Susie Asli: 8:21

we have to practice being able to hear stuff that maybe we don't like, not reacting it's yes or reacting in a, in a in a whole hearted way, rather than a flying off the handle

Rachel Richards: 8:31

way, be able to sort of just sit and listen to some feedback that doesn't sound comfortable, yeah, so

Susie Asli: 8:35

that they know they can come to us with anything and we might not like it, but we're not going to react in a In a way that will shut them down. Yes.

Rachel Richards: 8:42

And so when they're actually talking to us and telling us something that sounds really awful, rather than overreacting, because we have got an episode on overreacting, but is actually being able to go, okay, because then what you're doing is you're saying your emotions aren't too big for me and I can cope. Yeah. So according to the book, people tend to exhibit certain negative characteristics repeatedly. That's when it's an emotional immaturity. So it's not just you do it. You fly off the handle and you're being immature. You can say, Oh, you're being immature, but actually, we're talking about something that's a bit bigger than that, and and what makes it worse is that most emotionally immature people don't actually realize that,

Susie Asli: 9:18

no, they're in a state of reactivity all the time, and there's a reason as to why they haven't been able to develop them their emotional skills, and they are living in a state of reactivity, probably in survival mode, a lot of the time, and which is fight flight freeze. And that sounds very extreme and maybe a bit drastic, but a lot of us do live in Fight, Flight freeze, you know, quite a lot of the time. And that is not a place of maturity, that's a place of reactivity, which is it's bad in lots of ways, yeah. So

Rachel Richards: 9:47

it's unconscious, and that mother, who, you know I outlined right at the start, probably has no idea and doesn't mean the way she's behaving is very upsetting for her daughter. So emotionally immature parents all tend to have. Similar personality profiles. They seem narcissistic, insensitive and have a limited tolerance for genuine emotional intimacy. That's quite damning, isn't it? Yeah, and it can. It can make it really difficult to talk to them at all, because you have to tiptoe around their feelings. I know people like that. It's very, very hard to have a relationship with them.

Susie Asli: 10:20

It's all about them. Everything's about them, because they are immature, and then they're still in the state of development where the world revolves around them. Yeah, and,

Rachel Richards: 10:27

I mean, I'm pretty sure my dad never experienced real emotional intimacy, because I can see he ticks a lot of these boxes. And I think that's really sad, and I worry that a lot of people, I'm going to put it out there, particularly men who never get encouraged to really sort of work on these skills, or unless somebody around them is helping them, because it gets suppressed, they're going to struggle with that. And that's that loneliness that then creeps in, which probably relates to a lot of the suicide cases that we see

Susie Asli: 10:57

that's really sad, and it's often there's this really beautiful, um, sculpture. I don't know if you know it, and I can't remember who did it or what it's called. So that's really helpful. I'm going to describe it, and because it makes me think of inner child work all of this. So we have in in that world, just really, basically, it's a, we have an we all have an inner child. And that can be if we don't, if we don't recognize that, and it's the bits that we haven't sort of finished developing. They've maybe been shut down when we were little. And it's that part of us that's still actually calling the shots. They want, it wants to be seen or heard or needed in some particular way that it wasn't as a child. And that's still running the show if we're not aware of it, and if we don't heal it. And there's a really beautiful sculpture, which is, I think it's a metal to two adults facing away from each other. They clearly cross with each other. I can't remember if they've crossed arms or something, and then inside them, because it's, it's just a, like a metal transparent thing. Are two children, and they're down below, and they're reaching out towards each other, like trying to hold each other's hand. And I think that's a really beautiful it's very powerful sculpture of what is actually happening a lot of the time is that we're trying to connect, the chill, the children in us, the one that needs, that needs to be loved and seen, is trying to connect, but not in a very good way. And then it's constantly hungry. Yeah, the never gets fed and yeah, never gets fed and never gets healed. So it's really important healing work. Yeah, and the

Rachel Richards: 12:24

types of parents that we're talking about, according to the book, they often tend to play favorites with their children. So if you feel like your parent treated your sibling better than you, it's likely that the favorite sibling was also emotionally immature, and this low level of emotional maturity can pull people into a relationship of mutual enmeshment. I've witnessed that. Yeah, interesting. These parents will want their children to mirror their own harmful behaviors or play a role that they feel is appropriate. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 12:56

and they're unaware of it. It's just easier to be with that of that other person,

Rachel Richards: 12:59

absolutely and they thrive on the idea of each family member having a specific role, because it helps them oversimplify complex issues, rather than having to think them through and emotionally engage. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it really interesting, because it's actually really painful for them. Yeah, yeah. So there are different types of emotionally immature parents. Again, according to this book, there's the emotional parent who's ruled by their feelings often swing wildly between being over involved and completely withdrawing from their children's lives, and they can be really unstable, so you have to be walking on eggshells around them all the time, damaging the driven parent. So that type obsessively goal oriented and perpetually busy and they're constant, have a constant quest for perfection that they demand of their children as well, and they've limited amounts of empathy, and they want to control their children's lives, the passive parents, so they're more laissez fair, but they they they don't want to get engaged with anything emotional, because it might upset them, yeah, and so they hang back, but they can Sometimes, lead to physical and emotional abuse, both for them and their children and then the rejecting parent, and they don't enjoy any level of emotional intimacy, and their interactions with other family members usually consist of just getting angry, commanding others or completely isolating themselves, and those parents just think, well, why did You have a kid, right?

Susie Asli: 14:22

Well, they don't mean it, do they No, and they're all, they're all avoidant types. All

Rachel Richards: 14:26

avoidant, yeah,

Susie Asli: 14:26

avoiding like they we have different we have different attachments, styles, and avoidant is the one who it's too painful to feel it. So yes, you make, you make up ways of being to cope with, not with, with the fear of having to feel that, that horrible thing inside, yeah, you you want to avoid that at all costs. So you have all these, these coping mechanisms. So

Rachel Richards: 14:47

I'm just interested, for anyone listening to this who thinks, oh, hang on a second. I know that person. Or just message us if you, if you want to sort of reflect on this and you've got any kind of stories to tell, because I'm very interested. It's a

Susie Asli: 14:59

general. Nothing as well. Very much. Yeah, I think the our parents generation, it was we. They didn't talk about this stuff, and it was, it was very, very different. So it's also important to not be too judgmental about it. But that doesn't it doesn't mean that the the repercussions of it aren't painful or difficult, and

Rachel Richards: 15:16

that will continue unless we kind of think this through, which is why we're doing this now, and what are the coping mechanisms? So there are two distinct personality types that can arise from an emotionally neglected childhood. Interesting, again, it's all from this one book. So, and I've tried looking at other things, and I thought, no, I really like what she's saying on this. So externalizes draw their energy from being plugged into the grid. So they tend to be highly reactive and take action before they really have a chance to think that is the outcome of having a having that kind of parent. Yes, they're not willing to be self reflective. They usually seek support from others, and they'll blame their problem, blame other people for their problems, validation. Yeah, they and those people, that the best thing they can do if you feel that you're like that is to try and work on gaining some self control, knowing that it's not everybody else who is responsible for this. It's actually trying to gain some inner control. And then you've got the internalizes, who come with batteries included, and they look for solutions within themselves, and they may seem to need less attention. But in actual fact, they're highly sensitive, naturally perceptive. They can see what's going on, yeah, and then they try and fix it themselves, and they have to learn how to look for help from other people.

Susie Asli: 16:31

They can get exhausted and burnt out, and it's all there's often. I mean, I'm just hearing you say this. I haven't heard this before in this particular way, but it's like externally driven and internally driven, and internally driven isn't it's always, there's always some self worth issues. Yeah, at the bottom of that, because if you've had an avoidant parent who hasn't seen, heard and loved you just as just as you are, you are going to probably have some self worth issues. And if you're looking for external validation, that is because you are unable to find it within yourself. And if you're only thinking you have to, you know, do everything yourself. That's, that's, even though it doesn't sound like it. Then there's, there's you you're not trusting. Yeah,

Rachel Richards: 17:09

yeah. And again, it makes it hard for you to actually reach out and gain connection with people. And

Susie Asli: 17:14

we all have traits of all of these. So it's important to say that I think, isn't it? People listening aren't going whoa either. We're all really messed up or, yeah, or we have traits we have, we dip in and out. Yes, it's

Rachel Richards: 17:26

just an easy way of framing things. And what's really tragic is that most kids who grow up with these sorts of parents will create healing fantasies about how their life will be better someday, yeah, if they can just get their parent to love them and see them. And this, I've seen this over and over again, yes, and this woman herself, who is just like, I wonder what it would be like. Wonder would it be like if my mom saw me? Yeah, my mother died with me, wondering, yeah, what it would be like if she really kind of just talked to me? Yeah.

Susie Asli: 17:58

I mean, people in their 60s and 70s, even if their parents are not here anymore, they're still because we internalize it, still looking for their mom or dad's approval.

Rachel Richards: 18:06

So as a parent, thinking about this, one of the just the best things we can do is just see our kids for who they are. They just that's just what they want, isn't it? So how to use the maturity, awareness approach that she talks about in this book? So here's the technique, because as you become older and more aware, you can become more capable of coping with it. So what she talks about is, number one, become curious and observe rather than react. And I think we've talked about this again, how not to overreact is this kind of just stepping away a little bit and almost being like a scientist Mentally take a note of how your parent or the adult is responding to you, and what's their body language like? Do they seem calm or irritated? Are they actually listening or they just trying to appease you? Do you recognize any of these immature behaviors we've talked about earlier? So it's almost like rather than getting sucked into the behavior, stand back, yeah, just try and observe it, yeah.

Susie Asli: 19:05

And when we're standing back and observing, we can start to notice what kind of patterns they're going into. That I find thing that can be really helpful. Like, for example, one of the things you can use is looking, are they in fight, flight or freeze? Yeah. What pattern do they have? Oh, look, because thinking of if somebody's, I don't know, flying off the handle at you, and you look at them and take it all very personally. It's very hurtful, which is a valid response. Or looking at them going, Oh, they've gone into their fight. Are they in fights? They're out of balance? Is we have a very different response to that can be really helpful. Yeah,

Rachel Richards: 19:34

I like that. Once you've done this, you can begin to employ what Gibson, the writer, calls the three step maturity, awareness approach. So number one, express yourself and let go up. We'll put this in the podcast notes. Tell the parent or that person what you want to say, but don't worry about controlling the outcome. You can't you cannot make this person grow up, and you cannot control how they're going to respond, but you can tell them, which might be a relief.

Susie Asli: 20:00

Yeah, and often, I think if people are very immature and maybe sort of on the narcissistic spectrum, which is a spectrum, it's very badly representative in media, they can react really badly, and they can get louder and louder and louder, because maybe you're changing your approach and maybe you normally respond in a particular way that, yes, that feeds their emotional immaturity. And if you change your behavior, then sometimes they shout louder, or they do their, you know, avoidant behaviors in a louder way to get the same because it's like a fix. They need to be, they need to, they need to feel good again. And, yeah, familiar. So yes, that can be hard. It's not a one time, it's

Rachel Richards: 20:39

not a one time fix. And it's, but it's, it's like, how do we so setting a goal for that conversation is really important. So rather than trying to fix the whole relationship by having that conversation, it's like, what do I want to get from this conversation? You may say, I just want to tell them yeah, how I feel, yeah,

Susie Asli: 20:55

and then not expecting them to go right? Thank you for telling me

Rachel Richards: 20:59

they won't, because they won't, and then manage them rather than engage. So again, emotionally engaging with immature people can be exhausting. Yeah? So freeing yourself of that obligation to constantly fix your relationship with your parents and just going, okay, I can see what I've got here. Yeah, I can't fix it, yeah, and I can express process. It's a very hard thing to accept,

Susie Asli: 21:24

because we that's what we really need and want. Yeah, it takes

Rachel Richards: 21:27

time and and forever, your whole life. This is what we want. Yeah, no question about it. And again, coming back to ourselves, if we feel ourselves reacting when someone's trying to tell us something, it's trying to ground ourselves and notice and say, Oh, am I going into a pattern that it comes from my own childhood, comes from my own desire to get away from these really uncomfortable emotions which human beings will all feel Yeah, and that I need to just get more comfortable with accepting, yeah,

Susie Asli: 22:02

and that can be super hard in the moment. That takes a lot of practice. So the next best is to we react in a way that we've always reacted in the moment, and then we were easy afterwards, we repair ourselves, we reflect upon it. That's the That's a good first step. Yeah, that's

Rachel Richards: 22:18

the one we're doing. And actually, yes, if it's too big a step for you to have to try and not to react, because you just just say yet then actually going, all right, now I need to go and repair, at least that's something, because that person who's had that apology or that, okay, I can see that wasn't quite right. That's incredible. Yeah, that will feel incredible to them. That it not, it's acknowledgement, yeah, it's sort

Susie Asli: 22:40

of a distance to observing the patterns, like you said, at the point when observing the patterns that are going on and they don't happen overnight. And I think our parents and our kids are the most triggering people on the planet for us, for very good reasons, as civil survival. So it's, it's, it's a, it's a tricky process,

Rachel Richards: 22:56

yeah, and I think when you we see in our kids, sometimes this behavior, because I have had, you know, where one of my kids was doing everything she could not to experience an emotion, and just noticing that and knowing that it's really, really hard, and actually just helping them saying, you know, it's it can feel very hard to experience the emotion, but actually it's better to go through it than to avoid it, because the things we set up around us to try and avoid the emotion can actually just make life much harder in the long run. It's

Susie Asli: 23:28

like the coke bottle shaking, isn't it? We need to undo the lid a little bit at a time, yes, and fizz it all out at once. Yeah.

Rachel Richards: 23:34

So we can do that for our kids as well by having those conversations. How do you recognize an emotionally mature parent, mature, yeah, yeah, mature. This time, let's go. Let's do, let's

Susie Asli: 23:45

talk mature. Yeah, to know. So,

Rachel Richards: 23:49

so, so I done the definition at the top. So let's just go back over some of the things that I dug out so there's realistic and reliable. So they don't expect you to be perfect every time. We don't expect to be perfect, and we can rely on them to go, Okay, I'll be here. I'll do this. They can see problems and then try to find a real solution, rather than deflecting. So they're not easily offended. So they instead of fixating on how they think things should be, they're able to go, okay, that's I can see there's a real problem there, so we need to try and find a solution, not that's just accept it the way it is. Yeah, yeah, flexibility, yeah. And the laughing at yourself, which we'd both like to practice a lot, yeah,

Susie Asli: 24:30

that's super important. Yeah, that's super important. I mean, the other end, I think maturity can appear as being silly and and immature sometimes, like my my son often says to me, mum, mum, you're 4949 like I say something silly at dinner, but that's, that's nothing to do with the immaturity that we're talking about. Yeah, it's mucking about.

Rachel Richards: 24:49

They're just mucking about and but also just being able to say, Oh, well, you know, this is, you know, I'm, I'm not perfect. Be make jokes about yourself, because that's one of those ones where. I know that the older generation often struggled with that. It was very shameful to you'd made a mistake, yes, and just being able to laugh at yourself, yeah.

Susie Asli: 25:10

And also to admit when you're wrong. That's we've talked about that a million times. It's, you know, in the little things, I think it's also just as important in the little things as in the big things. Like, for example, a silly example, I took the cat to the vet this morning. My daughter said she thought he's not very well. He'd lost weight again. And I was like, I don't think he has. I think he's all right, but let's get him checked. I need to check anyway. And she was absolutely right. So the first thing I said to her was like, You're absolutely right. I was wrong. He has lost weight and just those little things. It's like, it's a respect, isn't it? It's a

Rachel Richards: 25:41

respect. And I have actually actively gone and and apologized to my husband when I'd accused him of something, and then realized it was me who did it in front of my kids, yes, purposefully, because I wanted them to see Yeah, that's okay, yeah, sorry, yeah. And I just said, oh my goodness, I you know, I told and he said, Yeah, it was really weird that you thought I'd done that, yeah, but it, but that your modeling stuff that is very helpful for them, because they go, Well, that's how that works, yeah.

Susie Asli: 26:08

And otherwise, you're kind of building a shell, aren't you? Maybe emotional immaturity is also that, like you're building like a shell around yeah, actually are and yes, and then it's really, you know, spend a lot of energy keeping that shelf, that's the thing. Yes, that's the thing. And it's, it's really not helpful. Yeah. And so being wrong and being silly and doing all the things that make us human, we're not allowed to do them, but we have to do them,

Rachel Richards: 26:33

yeah? And being genuinely interested in the unique inner experience of somebody else, yes. And I, I do see this in older men, particularly where I've mentioned it before, where they'll go out and spend time with somebody, and they'll never discuss anything other than, you know, the sports scores or the even when their friend's life is just kind of crumbling because it's they feel uncomfortable about asking because they don't know what the response is going to be, yeah.

Susie Asli: 27:02

And they often don't want to upset the person. Let's not talk about it. They think it's better for the other person if they keep it all inside, because if they cry, that's obviously a bad thing. Whereas we go crying is quite good. It's

Rachel Richards: 27:14

fine, yes, yeah. And they just basically enjoyable to be around. So that's why you're fun.

Susie Asli: 27:20

Oh, well, I wouldn't put my hand up and say it was completely emotionally mature. I think we all do, you know that that sculpture, the, you know, the inner child thing, we all have work to do on that, because we're all human beings, and have had imperfect parents, whether they were massively imperfect or a little bit imperfect, they all are, because we're all humans, and we work on what, what's going on in this, in this moment I'm reacting, in a way, what's going on? Is it like the younger part of me? And that sounds a bit weird if you've never had this this kind of work before, but once you get used to the idea it's actually super useful, is this my little little person kind of going, Oh, I'm sad, come and sit with me. I need a hug kind of thing. As a little person, and need healing as opposed to needing a hug. There's nothing when we want a hug. Or is it, is it my, the higher version of myself? Is it the mature part? And we can kind of learn how to access both. And so if I'm faced with a decision or a problem, I will sometimes sit and go, Okay, what would the like the mature one of me, the wise part of me respond right now, and it's often not the same, but it's a better way of being, and we can play around in those in those places once we once we practice it a bit. I don't know if that makes any

Rachel Richards: 28:34

sense. Yeah, it does. So what? So you're saying that if we so, a thing that we can practice at home is to try and identify when you've got a child inside you that's getting

Susie Asli: 28:46

some support, yes, yes, and often, and that's the one that comes up quickly, fast and reactively and wants to be extinguished immediately, not fixed. Yeah. And then we can go, Whoa, hang on a minute. And that might be valid, and it might be fine. And then there's, you know, we work with what we've got. But sometimes when I've done when I go, Oh, hang on a minute. What would if I was to call in the wise part of me? Where is she today? She's gone on holiday, or the mature or the higher self, what have you. They've got loads of different names. What would? What would she say? And and, ah, okay. And then it's suddenly a bit clearer, and it's less reactive, and it's less tantray, and it's less toys out the pram kind of behavior, and maybe a better way of being in the world. But yes, and

Rachel Richards: 29:29

I also think about that mother that I started out with, and I honestly think that that these people who are like that, because I've had somebody like that, that I've dealt with, I actually think that they their little child is wanting to be seen all the time. They're talking, talking, talking because they want to be seen, but nothing they say is really being seen. So that's why they're constantly talking about because I feel like they haven't accessed a deeper self, no that people can then connect with. What do you think? I just feel like they're just constantly trying to. Talk about something. None of it means anything. We

Susie Asli: 30:02

all are because they're trying to be whatever the whatever their issues are, whether it's external validation being seen or heard, there's a need in there, isn't there? There's a need that maybe is off balance. Otherwise, a you'd notice that the other person isn't listening, and if you were, if you were healthy and in balance, if, if the other person wasn't listening, you would either ask them, you know you, are you okay? Or do you maybe don't want to talk right now, or you just stop, wouldn't? You wouldn't keep going. So there's a need that's driving that that is a bit out of balance, definitely. So

Rachel Richards: 30:32

my favorite emotionally mature person that I've been looking at is Dolly Parton. Oh, okay. Dolly Parton, that woman, wow. It's so funny, because I had, she'd never really been on my radar, but she'd done so much work for sort of schools and encouraging literacy, but she's completely dull to the nines. And she's one of those people who you could misunderstand, yes, and she's always like, don't take my kind of fake exterior for being smart, super smart and super emotionally, you know? And she has fun love Dolly Parton, Oh, I

Susie Asli: 30:59

like that, wrong? Yes, I think we can notice it when we do it. And I've done this a million times, is when we if we have a reactive child, and they will have their own patterns, don't they did? We have a reactive child if we find ourselves spiraling with them, and, you know, being a teenager with them, you know, arguing in an immature way, then that's not our higher self, for example. That's not our mature self, that's little teenage self, going, Yeah, but I want to be right. And then we can notice that and go, Oh, okay, maybe next year

Rachel Richards: 31:31

I'll just stop Yes. And before we go, I wanted to mention that, you know, I've been, you know, when you've got younger kids and they're in relationships or or, when I say relationships, just talking to other people, the opposite sex, or whatever. And you know, I have, what I have noticed is where, you know, one of my daughters has been talking to a boy, and the exchange where, oh, he's he's been really, really emotionally mature, and she's gone, god, that's amazing. Thank you so much for expressing yourself that way. And he says, yes, I've been working on it. And then he comes on too strong, and she's like, Ah, don't like this. I don't, I don't want that. And so she aired him, and I said, No, no, you have to tell him, give him that feedback. And she did, and he went, Oh, thank you. But it's the way that we do it. If we actually say, actually that, you know, you're, you're expecting too much from me. And I can't really, I need to put a boundary in there. I think encouraging those sorts of conversations in our young people, rather than going because there's too much airings, too much, Oh, didn't like that. It's too uncomfortable to have this conversation. The more we can say to our kids, tell them,

Susie Asli: 32:34

yeah, that's really important. We can model that. Can't We? We can communicate in a mature way with them and go to actually your behavior or my behavior, and give them them, and give our own feedback to them in the everyday, and then it's a norm for them to do the same. Yes, absolutely,

Rachel Richards: 32:50

that's it. So I don't know if we found that. If you found this useful, please share it right now with at least one person. And probably better not to say you need this podcast that wouldn't

Susie Asli: 33:02

be very mature. I wouldn't

Rachel Richards: 33:06

here's an episode on your emotional immaturity anyway. Yeah, fine. Take note, perhaps do it in a nice video. Give the podcast five stars or even a review if you could. And if you have any thoughts or ideas about this topic, do send a message on teenagers untangled@gmail.com check out the other episodes in the podcast notes and on the website, www, dot teenagers untangled.com Susie puts a lot of information on LinkedIn, lots of thought pieces. She's available for her so if you've got a workplace that you feel could actually help, be helped by thinking about some of the issues we talk about, or other mindfulness they've got loads of topics. Yeah, yeah. How do people contact you? Probably easiest

Susie Asli: 33:47

to go to my website, which is www dot, a mindful hyphen life.co.uk, and all my links are in that fantastic.

Rachel Richards: 33:56

Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss anything. That's it for now. Bye, bye, you.