When you think of emotional immaturity, you might call to mind examples of teens feeling they have license to express themselves in any way they choose, without any ability to regulate or manage their emotions. But the truth is, there are many emotionally immature adults as well.
Maybe you’re in a period of self-reflection, and wondering if you display some aspects of emotional immaturity yourself. Or maybe you’re trying to figure out if someone in your life—a partner, a friend, a boss, or even a parent—exhibits traits of emotional immaturity.
Read on to understand how to spot the signs and how to cope.
What is emotional immaturity?
Emotional immaturity, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is “a tendency to express emotions without restraint or disproportionately to the situation.” Often the term “emotional dysregulation” is used to describe people with emotional immaturity, and it means that people have a hard time regulating their emotions—whether it’s through angry outbursts or really low lows when they don’t get their way.
Emotional immaturity can look different for everyone, but here are some common signs:
- A tendency to overreact in situations
- Trouble with impulse control; acting on impulse rather than thinking through their decisions
- Escalating conflicts by screaming at others, or otherwise intimidating them
- Bullying and name-calling during disputes, or having temper-tantrums
- Demanding that things are done in their preferred way
- Resistance to compromise or taking others’ ideas or wishes into account
- Needing constant attention, including in inappropriate circumstances
- Avoiding responsibilities that mature adults can typically manage
- Denying their role in conflicts and placing blame on others
- Lying to get out of uncomfortable situations
Emotional immaturity can result in a lack of acceptance in social circles, which can lead to loneliness. “It could be hard to develop social relationships if you’re very dysregulated,” says Dr. Patrick McGrath, PhD, the Chief Clinical Officer at NOCD. “There could be fewer and fewer people that want to talk to you, be around you, and hang out with you. You might notice that the people at work all go out after work, but you don’t get invited—or if you have a party at your house, there are a lot of declined invitations.”
What causes emotional immaturity?
There’s no clear-cut answer to what causes someone to be emotionally dysregulated. One of the reasons for this is that emotional regulation is not a diagnosable mental health condition—rather, it’s a pattern of behavioral traits.
That said, there are some factors that may contribute to emotional immaturity, including:
- Having an insecure attachment style where it’s difficult to trust others
- Neurodevelopmental disorders, like ADHD, that hinder social skills and impulse control
- Untreated addiction and mental health issues that can exacerbate emotional dysregulation
- High-conflict personality disorders, like narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder
What’s more, some research has found there may be a connection between how the brain develops as a result of being neglected or mistreated as a child and emotional immaturity as an adult.
What if you had an emotionally immature parent?
Of the toughest experiences involving emotional immaturity is having an emotionally immature parent. Parents who shy away from their own feelings, fear vulnerability, aren’t mature enough to handle the emotional needs of their children, and those who are “emotionally inconsistent” may all fit the bill. If a mother consistently escalated everything into a screaming match, their child might have mimicked that behavior. It may not be until adulthood that they realized how distorted their parents’ reactions were and how that affected their own emotional development.
As a result, kids who grew up with emotionally immature parents might struggle with their own emotional issues—although this might look different for everyone. Some become self-sacrificing and overly sympathetic to others’ emotional needs while ignoring their own. Others develop maladaptive ways of soothing themselves because they didn’t receive the proper modeling on how to do so.
Emotional immaturity vs. narcissism: what’s the difference?
Narcissism has become somewhat of a buzzword in recent years. While many people can exhibit self-involved tendencies from time to time, a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) takes this to the extreme. People with NPD typically are devoid of empathy, believe their opinions supersede everyone else’s, and lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. This may sound a bit like emotional immaturity, but there are important differences.
When you’re dealing with a narcissist, these behaviors are more strategic. For instance, someone with NPD may use bullying as a manipulative tactic, whereas an emotionally immature person might resort to name-calling because of a genuine lack of emotional development. Other factors—ones that are not intentional—may also be at play and lead to emotional dysregulation or immaturity. “Maybe their medication’s off, maybe they’re having hormonal changes, maybe they’re experiencing some stressors that are going on and this is the thing that just finally broke the camel’s back,” Dr. McGrath says.
Things that might seem like emotional immaturity but aren’t
Before you immediately label someone as emotionally immature, there are some things to be aware of.
The first, says Dr. McGrath, is the importance of not being culturally insensitive. Imagine you’re at a party hosted by someone from a different background than you; people may act totally different from what you’re used to, but “that’s not necessarily immature; it’s just how they celebrate,’” Dr. McGrath explains.
We have to be better at deciding what is cultural versus what is a notion of immaturity that we might be biased on.”
Dr. Patrick McGrath
Next, you want to be careful not to confuse emotional immaturity with actual mental health disorders that are characterized by emotional dysregulation. Take obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), for instance.
OCD is a chronic mental health condition that causes repeated unwanted thoughts, known as obsessions, followed by the urge to do something over and over again as a way to deal with distress and anxiety (these are known as compulsions). One very common compulsion is reassurance-seeking—the need to check in with someone repeatedly to make sure everything is okay with respect to a particular worry or obsession. Dr. McGrath explains that this is one of the reasons OCD is sometimes perceived as emotional immaturity. If you’re always asking someone, “Is this okay? Am I okay? Am I bad? Will something bad happen to you or to us?” that may come off as a lack of maturity.
Someone with relationship OCD—a subtype of OCD marked by intrusive thoughts and intolerable doubts about one’s relationship—may repeatedly ask their partner to send them texts or stay home with them instead of going out with friends in order to get the reassurance they’re after: that they won’t be abandoned, for instance. Essentially, that intense fear that a partner may leave can trigger overwhelming emotional responses that may seem like emotional immaturity.
What’s more, when OCD is an underlying factor, often the person exhibiting these patterns really wants to change—but feels at a loss about how to do so. As one person posting to a Reddit OCD forum said, “I think that I am very mature when it comes to certain topics, but emotionally I tend to be very immature and have trouble understanding others’ feelings and what impact my actions have. I feel bad for this and I want to change but I don’t know how to because I feel like I am wired this way.”
Fortunately there is a way to change, but that requires effective treatment for OCD. Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is a specialized therapy supported by decades of research and can break the cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Working in direct partnership with a therapist, people learn that there are ways to respond to compulsions that don’t involve compulsions, which only provide short-term relief at best.
Think OCD might be leading to emotional immaturity? Learn how ERP can help
How to cope with emotionally immaturity
It’s important to remember that being emotionally immature doesn’t make someone a bad person. It just means that they need help learning emotional restraint.
One of the first things to keep in mind is that it’s rarely, if ever, helpful to actually tell someone they’re being emotionally immature. “Just go on YouTube and look at videos of ‘Karens’ making excessive demands, and you’ll see people who are just absolutely emotionally dysregulated,” says Dr. McGrath. “Do we call that immaturity? I guess we could. I just think that dysregulated is a more encompassing term—and much less pejorative than saying to someone ‘you’re acting like a child’ even if that is kind of how they’re acting.”
That said, if someone in your life—like a partner or a close friend—is acting emotionally immature, it’s absolutely okay to express your feelings. Rather than being combative or labeling them in a way that they might get defensive, let them know the impact that their behavior has on you.
Sometimes what’s needed is really firm boundaries. Let’s say your partner has little patience at restaurants, and tends to throw a tantrum when the food isn’t what they ordered. You can set a boundary around this—which may include not going out to dinner—if the emotional outbursts can’t be managed.
Finally, it’s a very good sign if they’re interested in getting help for their behavior. “It’s not like this is something that you have to do or manage on your own,” Dr. McGrath says. “There are people out there that specialize in this and who know what they’re doing to be able to help.”
