This may surprise you but, a lot of so-called adult people in today’s world still behave like teens and children from an emotional viewpoint.
This is due to the fact that they have not processed their experiences to the fullest during their earlier years. Why is it so?
Because when we’re in pain, it’s rare to get good advice. We’re given pills. We’re told that it will pass some day. And the less we pay attention to our surging thoughts and emotions, usually by distracting ourselves in different ways — the more deeply they get into our subconscious mind, until eventually, we barely remember them.
Not remembering them however doesn’t mean they’ve been dealt with. In fact, it’s the actual opposite. From behind the scenes, those emotions and thoughts combine and form limiting beliefs that govern our lives.
Let’s have an example.
When you or I was younger, our parents wanted us to be as good if not better than the neighbor’s kid; why? Perhaps because the neighbor always beat them at poker and now they wanted to prove the neighbor that they were better than him.
So everyday, they keep drumming into our ears:
Beat Charles (the neighbor’s kid) at school
Outsmart him in math
Don’t let him win at sports
We will show them who we are, just you wait darling!
Etc.
Kids are easily influenced. That’s why, as parents, we’re instinctively driven to protect them. Nature made it so that they lived, but also so that they quickly learn our ways in order for them to keep going if something happened to us parents.
To be properly influenced, and learn quickly, we need our subconscious mind. And that is why children’s brainwaves are slower, in the theta range, until around seven years of age.
Being easily influenced therefore means having all those things our parents/teachers/influences go into our subconscious mind — forming the person we eventually become.
Now, here’s the thing: Charles is a genius in math, Charles is as fast as a rabbit, and Charles is kind. A rare combination.
On the other hand, we like Charles. But we hate math. And we couldn’t care less about sports; we’d rather sit in the bus and play video games.
Sure, we would love to please our parents. But no matter how hard we try, we can’t do it. So we start feeling bad about ourselves. Our self-esteem is hit.
And at the dining table, because our parents keep losing their poker games to the neighbor, we keep hearing:
Why can’t you beat him?!
You’re always playing video games. This ends today!
Look at them, all pretending to be the perfect family. Meh!
I’m not happy about you. You’ll study on weekends now
And so on
While funny for us; for a kid, those words mean something. They go deep. The child starts to feel unlovable, he has a hard time accepting himself, and his perception about himself becomes greatly distorted.
As he grows up, others perceive him as handsome, skilled, radiant. But he doesn’t. All he perceives himself to be is the unlovable, unacceptable, and a not good enough kid that couldn’t make mom and dad happy.
And despite the fact that he smiles a lot, you can always sense tension in his facial muscles. He is sad. But we don’t know why.
His emotions and thoughts have not been dealt with.
Now they form his self-image.
And this self-image is stuck in time, in his childhood.
He grew up to be a great man everyone adores, yet, he has a dark side. He becomes wild for seemingly unimportant reasons. He has strong triggers. He often argues with his parents.
Outwardly, he has matured. Inwardly however, the child still needs to be told that his parents didn’t know how to handle their egos, and he received collateral hits.
This example has for purpose to illustrate the bigger picture.
Coming back to the subject; emotional maturity naturally happens as we dive deeper into ourselves.
As we look at the construct of our sense of self, examining our limiting beliefs, and seeing how our past has dictated how we live our lives in the present — we discard the story that fooled us for many years. We realize that we are good enough, that we deserve to be loved, and that people make mistakes and that there is no need to keep blaming others.
As we integrate our denied feelings, relinquish our limiting thoughts, and accept ourselves as we are; as we recognize that our growth required us to go through these experiences, and thank all those souls that participated in our growth — naturally, a sense of peace and understanding envelops us.
We may still love video games, and whine at times — that’s fine, yet, deep inside, we have a light heart and we fully live from this heart. We are human. We accept ourselves, and we do our best.
Inside each one of us, regardless of our age, there is a child. We must honor this child, and honor the person we grew up to be.
Both our aspects are meant to work together, in harmony, and through this synergy — we live as we were designed to, and participate into bringing a healthier world for our fellow human beings.
We never know what people have been through. It’s easy to hide our darkness, especially in a world where people rarely look away from their nose. Let’s do our best not to condemn others. And understand that their ways come from their past, and when they will be ready, they will deal with it.
I hope this piece brought you some clarity. If you have any question, put them in the comments.
As a final note.
If you would like to learn how to do the above, I wrote a book to help you release limiting beliefs, heal mental and emotional wounds, and mature spiritually. You can give it a look here.
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