全书的一些摘录

写得很棒的一本书。可以陪伴人疗愈。我只能想象emotionally immature 的人成为家长会是多么恐怖的事！ 我好奇的是：Do emotional immature people have a “wait, it sounds like me” moment when they read books describing their coping mechanisms? 

[excerpts]

Emotionally immature people don’t step back and think about how their behavior impacts others. There’s no cringe factor for them, so they seldom apologize or experience regret.‼️

Emotionally immature people don’t deal with stress well. Their responses are reactive and stereotyped. Instead of assessing the situation and anticipating the future, they use coping mechanisms that deny, distort, or replace reality (Vaillant 2000). ‼️They have trouble admitting mistakes and instead discount the facts and blame others. Regulating emotions is difficult for them, and they often overreact. Once they get upset, it’s hard for them to calm down, and they expect other people to soothe them by doing what they want.

Impaired empathy is a central characteristic of emotionally immature people, as is avoidance of emotional sharing and intimacy. Being out of touch with their own deeper feelings, they’re strikingly blind to how they make other people feel. 
Empathy isn’t just a social nicety, like being tactful. It’s a necessity for true emotional intimacy. You can’t have a deep relationship without it. My favorite definition of empathy comes from infant attachment researchers Klaus and Karin Grossman and Anna Schwan, who described empathy as a sensitive mother’s ability “to see and to feel states and intentions from the baby’s point of view” (1986, 127). This definition includes being aware of both emotions and intentions. Beyond just sympathy, it entails correctly reading people’s interests and how their will is being directed.

However, the intense emotions and anxiety that emotionally immature people experience can decrease their ability to think at this higher level. Since they are often at the mercy of their emotions, their higher thinking can easily fall apart under stress. In fact, their frequent lack of self-reflection comes from this tendency to regress and temporarily lose their ability to think about their thinking. ‼️When emotion-inducing topics come up, their minds fall into rigid black-or-white thinking that rejects complexity and precludes any cross-pollination of ideas.

Another cognitive sign of emotional immaturity is overintellectualizing and getting obsessed about certain topics. In those areas, emotionally immature people can conceptualize well—indeed, excessively. But they don’t apply that ability to self-reflection or being emotionally sensitive toward others. ‼️Their preoccupation with ideas distracts them from emotional intimacy. They may discuss their favorite topics at length, but they don’t really engage the other person. As a result, they can be as hard to talk to as overly literal thinkers. Although they can think conceptually while communicating their ideas, they’re only comfortable if things stay on an impersonal and intellectual level.

Mature people take on the emotional work in relationships automatically because they live in a state of empathy and self-awareness. It’s impossible for them to overlook the fact that someone they care about is having a hard time. Doing this work allows them to successfully navigate all kinds of interpersonal situations without stepping on other people’s toes. Both at work and at home, emotional labor promotes goodwill and good relationships.

Self-reflection is the ability to analyze your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors over time. People who focus mostly on the present moment don’t have enough of a time perspective to engage in self-reflection. Instead, with each new moment they leave their past behind, freeing them from any sense of responsibility for their actions. Therefore, when someone feels hurt by something they did in the past, they tend to accuse the person of dwelling on the past for no good reason. They don’t understand why others can’t just forgive, forget, and move on. Because of their limited sense of the continuity of time, they don’t understand that it takes time to heal from a betrayal.‼️

Most emotionally immature people tend to be externalizers who don’t know how to calm themselves through genuine emotional engagement. When they feel insecure, instead of seeking comfort from other people they tend to feel threatened and launch into fight, flight, or freeze behaviors. ‼️They react to anxious moments in relationships with rigid, defensive behaviors that alienate other people, ‼️rather than bringing them closer. Anger, blame, criticism, and domination ‼️are all signs of poorly functioning skills in seeking comfort. Externalizers simply don’t know how to reach out for soothing.

After all, she’s been living like this for years. Your openness and honesty are more than she can handle. Think of it as though your mom has a snake phobia. You keep plopping a big, fat, writhing snake right in her lap. She can’t stand it, no matter how meaningful it might be to you.” Emotional closeness demanded a level of emotional maturity her mother simply didn’t have.

The rest of this chapter explores how to handle an emotionally immature parent, as well as other people, by changing your expectations and replacing reactivity with observation.‼️

Once you’ve gotten the hang of being observational rather than relationship oriented, you can turn your attention to maturity awareness. This approach will grant you emotional freedom from painful relationships by taking the emotional maturity of others into account. Estimating the probable maturity level of the person you’re dealing with is one of the best ways to take care of yourself in any interaction. ‼️ Once you peg a person’s maturity level, his or her responses will make more sense and be more predictable.

Let me be crystal clear: focus on the outcome, not the relationship.‼️ As soon as you focus on the relationship and try to improve it or change it at an emotional level, an interaction with an emotionally immature person will deteriorate. ‼️The person will regress emotionally and attempt to control you so that you’ll stop upsetting him or her. If you keep the focus on a specific question or outcome, you’re more likely to contact the person’s adult side.‼️

Instead of emotionally engaging with immature people, set a goal of managing the interaction, including duration and topics.

Afterward, Annie summed up her experience with her mother by saying, “I’m finally figuring out that this is who my mother is—this is her personality. It’s not about me. I’m glad I didn’t get sucked into how she’s the one who’s been hurt. I’m proud that I’m able to separate her behavior from my sense of worth.”

In the end, the overall dynamic remains the same. Your parents will be emotionally available to you in inverse proportion to how much you feel the need for them.

Emotionally mature people will respect your individuality. They never assume that if you love them, you’ll want the same things they do. Instead, they take your feelings and boundaries into account in any interaction. This may sound like a lot of work, but it isn’t; emotionally mature people automatically tune in to how others are feeling. Real empathy makes consideration of other people second nature.

Compromise doesn’t mean mutual sacrifice; it means a mutual balancing of desires. In a good compromise, both people feel that they got enough of what they wanted. In contrast, emotionally immature people tend to pressure others into concessions that aren’t in their best interest, often pushing a solution that doesn’t feel fair.

People who are in unhappy relationships often say things like “Relationships are about compromise, right?” But I can tell by their facial expressions that they aren’t talking about compromise; they’re talking about feeling pressured into doing what the other person wants. Real compromise feels different—as though your needs were taken into account, even if you didn’t get everything you wanted.

The sooner temper shows up in a relationship, the worse the implications. Most people are on their best behavior early in a relationship, so be wary of people who display irritability early on. It can indicate both brittleness and a sense of entitlement, not to mention disrespect.