What is emotional maturity?

Post Reply New Topic

I've heard that autistics are emotionally immature. What does that mean?

it means that we continue to soothe ourselves in ways that adult society does not accept, but we keep doing it because we dont notice and/or dont care what adult society accepts.

i am thirty-one and i sleep with a teddy bear. my therapist, of all people, asked me if i considered this normal behavior. heh. as if i care if it is normal.

when i hear 'maturity,' i think 'conformity.'

Emotional maturity generally refers to the ability to recognize one's own emotions, correctly attribute them, regulate them, react responsibly to them, et cetera.
An "emotionally immature" person might fail to recognize that he's getting emotional over something, might fail to put his own emotions in the correct perspective, or might express them in a socially unacceptable way.

I think of it as a lack of ability to control our emotions up to our biological age. Like for me, sometimes I get argumentative or have emotional moody bursts which is inappropriete for someone of 24 yrs old.

It can also have alot to do with how we react to other people's emotions. For example I remember one of my workmates started crying and I didn't know what to do. Thankfully someone else was there to talk to her. I just went blank.

Emotionally immaturity means even though I'm inteliigent beyond my years I am frequently called a whiner because I find it very hard to calmly express my emotions. I can act like a teenager in terms on emotional outbursts despite my age. I find it VERY hard to control my emotions and two weeks ago at work, I completely blew up and called out my entire department using very colourful language.

I think it means how we respond emotionally or act emotionally in situations and how we handle things. Like as a child I get told I was acting like a (insert young age here or young grade level here) and I always get scolded for it or get into trouble. Mom would tell me "Oh stop it" or "Stop crying like a two year old" as if I was doing it on purpose and all it did was taught me to hold in my emotions. I had learned that crying was bad, getting upset is bad, I am not to express myself. Then by 6th grade, I had a nervous breakdown. It was the combination of lot of things and one of them was holding it all in.