CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - How To Be More Emotionally Mature

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

In this episode of the Calling Home Podcast, Whitney Goodman shares concrete steps you can take to become more emotionally mature. She explores various aspects of emotional maturity, including self-awareness, accountability, emotional regulation, empathy, and vulnerability. Whitney provides practical insights and strategies for listeners to enhance their emotional maturity and navigate relationships with emotionally immature individuals. Chapters: 11:03 The Importance of Accountability 16:20 Emotional Regulation Techniques 25:29 Empathy and Understanding Others 31:24 Vulnerability in Emotional Maturity Join The family Cyclebreakers Club at Calling Home: www.callinghome.co/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the calling on podcast. It is officially the new year. It's 2025. That feels wild to say. But I'm so excited to be back recording today for the podcast. I first want to thank all of you for listening, subscribing, leaving reviews, leaving comments on Spotify, following the podcast on Instagram. All of this has made it possible for us to row and continue the show this year, and I would like to continue for that to be possible.

There is, of course, a lot of work and labor and effort that goes into this show for so many people that the more of you that subscribe, like, leave reviews, comment, subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, that listen to this podcast, that download the episodes, the more episodes we can make for you, and the further we can take this show this year. So thank you all so much. If any of you are new to the show, I want to give you a little bit of a breakdown on how things are going to go this year and what the episodes are going to look like. So we release a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday. I really don't take a lot of breaks from the show, probably like two weeks off a year. So you can always get an episode. On Tuesdays,

it's either a solo episode from me or an interview with someone that I love and I really want you to hear from and to meet as well. And I release all of the episodes on YouTube and Spotify, Apple, wherever else you got your podcast. So if you'd like to watch them with video, that's also possible. You can also join the Calling Home community on our website at www.com.com. All of the episodes of the podcast follow the same topic schedule that we have at Calling Home. So if you ever want to dive deeper into a topic, the best way to do that, is by listening to the episodes and then going to the community and doing the work in our groups and as well as with our content. Every Monday, we release a new worksheet, video, script, and

article. And you can get access to all of those resources through the cyclebreakers club at callinghome.com. And I will link that in the show notes as well. This month inside calling home. We are working on emotional maturity and how to deal with emotionally immature people. I love talking about dealing with emotionally immature people as much as the next person. And I know that all of us, myself included, have the ability to be emotionally immature and we can always learn to work on our emotional maturity. And so that is what we are going to be focusing on this month. We're going to be talking about how to increase your own emotional maturity, how to identify when you've been emotionally immature, how to deal with emotionally immature people. I'm going to give you a lot of

scripts with how to respond, how to evaluate what you've said, all of that. And so you're going to get so many new resources every Monday inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, and I'll be diving a little bit deeper in these podcast episodes to some of these topics. So let's go ahead and jump in today. I'm going to be talking about emotional maturity. Let's talk about what emotional maturity is. So emotional maturity is the ability to understand, manage, and express emotions effectively while considering the impact on yourself and others. And I think this piece about considering the impact on others is one of the most important pieces. A lot of people that struggle with emotional immaturity really struggle because they cannot see how their actions

are impacting others. And this is one of the best skills that you can develop as an adult is the ability to consider yourself, consider others, evaluate the intent and the impact of your words, your actions, your behavior. Consider who needs to be prioritized in that moment, yourself, others, or both whose opinions are important in certain moments, and when you might need to kind of dig a little bit deeper into how you are responding to something and less about what somebody is bringing up in you. And I think what I want you to really take away from this episode is that emotional maturity is a skill. I don't think all of us are able to achieve it on the same level across every situation. Certainly there are personality traits. There are

diagnoses that are going to make it more difficult to achieve emotional maturity in certain situations, and we all have the ability to improve. We also all have the ability to become quite emotionally immature when we are triggered or activated by certain people, places, or events, and things like trauma, PTSD, certain types of nervous system dysregulation that are associated with different diagnoses are certainly going to make it more difficult to access some of these more emotionally mature skills, but that doesn't mean that we can't all learn, try, and become a little bit better. Also, there are always going to be situations in life that evoke certain things we would associate with emotional immaturity, and sometimes those

reactions are necessary and warranted, but it's always good to be able to be rooted and to come back to this place where we can access what our most emotionally mature versions of ourselves would do because those are the versions of ourselves that are going to make probably the correct decision, the decision that's in most in line with our values and that is going to serve us most. If you want to be emotionally mature, you have to have a level of self-awareness. And that really just means that you are able to reflect again on how your actions, your words, your behaviors, your decisions are impacting other people. And when you are self-aware, you're able to be reflective with yourself, right?

You can ask yourself these questions that I'm going to list and you'll have some type of answer to them. So what triggers negative emotions for me? How do I typically respond to stress or criticism? What types of events tend to make me react in ways that I don't like? How do I behave when I am stressed, anxious, angry? Has anyone ever given me feedback on my behavior in these types of situations. And it's also important to remember that it's not just these quote unquote like negative or stressful situations that can make people move into more emotionally immature states. Some people become quite emotionally immature on days or during events that we would deem to be like very happy or positive, like special events, holidays, birthdays, all of these

types of things can also be triggering, disregulating. And maybe you even have certain types of reactions when you are supposed to be quote unquote happy that cause you to react in ways that you don't like. And so being self-aware is really about understanding what are the patterns in your life? What are the things that you do that cause other people to want to pull away from you or that cause you to behave in ways that you do not like that throw you off the path that you want to be on, that have caused you to lose relationships, that have caused people to be unhappy with you. What are the things that you struggle with most? And you may even want to sit down and think about what are moments in my life where I have really struggled to be the person that I want to be?

When have I become so angry or overwhelmed that I acted in ways that are not in line with my values? When have I become so insert any emotion, sad, anxious, overwhelmed, that has led me to act in ways that I don't like? And really thinking about, can I become more aware of myself, how I behave, how I choose to act in certain situations, so that I can break some of these patterns. self-awareness really will help you break patterns of emotional reactivity, of self-sabotage, getting in your own way, of certain patterns that keep showing up in your relationships. And when you're developing self-awareness, you can also think of who is someone that I really trust and love and what kinds of things do they point out to me.

Now, if you have been in a relationship with a partner or a parent or a sibling or someone, a friend, who is maybe abusive towards you, who is always being hypercritical, they may not be the one that you want to draw on. And some of you might have become almost too self-aware as a result of being in these types of relationships where you actually become quite self-critical or way too analytical of your behavior. The next piece that I want to talk about when it comes to emotional maturity, and I think this is the most important piece we're going to talk about, is accountability. Accountability means owning your feelings and your behavior. When something is your fault or your responsibility, you show up, you recognize it, you take accountability, you do

something about it. And most emotionally immature people really struggle with accountability and that is why it is hard to be around them and it is hard to maintain relationships with them. So when someone is emotionally mature and they can own their feelings. They might say, I was angry. I got angry because of something that upset me. An emotionally immature person will say, you made me angry. If you wouldn't have done X, I wouldn't have gotten angry and thrown that plea at the wall. They cannot own their feeling and their behavior. And that's not to say that other people can't bring up feelings in us and that we can evoke. feelings in other people. But we have to be responsible and take accountability for the things that we do when those feelings come up in us. And so I talk a lot about relationships between adults and their

parents. And this is a perfect example of where emotional immaturity might stop any type of resolution from happening. If an adult comes to their parent and says, mom, when you criticize me every time I come to your house, it makes me not want to come over. I really don't like when you pick on my weight and my size and how much I'm eating. It's upsetting. And I'm not going to come around if you keep doing that. And the parent says, oh my gosh, I'm just trying to help. You're always calling out everything I say.

I can never do anything right. I'm the worst parent ever. There's no accountability there. You're not sitting back in self-reflecting and saying, huh, maybe I do do that. Let me think of some examples of what they might be talking about. Let me ask them what they're hearing from me. Can I think about how I act whenever my child walks into the house? What's the first thing out of my mouth? Do I greet them or do I criticize them? And really getting clear on what my I need to take accountability for in this situation. Accountability also requires

you to be really self-reflective. And so it's the ability to look back and say, oh, I shouldn't have said that to you in that moment. I was feeling really stressed and I apologize. Here's what I wanted to stay instead. Can I try that again? Can I rephrase what I wanted to say? I understand why me saying it that way hurt you and I'd like to see if we can start over. So accountability is really the best way that you can practice emotional maturity. And you can even think about, especially if you are in a relationship, you're a parent or even at work or with your friends, like sitting down and thinking about, were there any situations this week where I feel like maybe they didn't understand me or someone expressed that they were unhappy with me. I acted in a way that really wasn't in line with

who I'd like to be. I yelled. I swore at someone. I insulted them. And I want to take a step back and say, I'm sorry that I did that to you. On course when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days, delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost?

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Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. I wish I would have said it this way. I want to know how it felt for you when I acted that way. I'm really trying to think of different situations in your life where you can reflect back and repair. And the more you use this muscle and practice accountability, the easier it will feel when you have to do it because you won't be so overcome with shame and guilt for messing up. You will know that being accountable, saying you're sorry, and changing your behavior is just a part of being in a relationship. It's normal. And you'll build trust with the other person each time that you do that. People will also start to know that a lot of times when you are reacting in a certain way, you're not acting that way because you deliberately want to be cruel to them. And they will be able to say, oh, I wonder what's going on with John today. He seems really stressed. He doesn't normally act that way towards me. Instead of believing, wow, John's a really bad guy, he always acts this way towards me. He never apologizes. He never says he's sorry and he only

makes excuses for his behavior. And that will ultimately make you feel safer in your relationships. it makes people feel more secure with you, and it's extremely helpful. The next part of emotional maturity that's very important is emotional regulation. And the more in control of your emotional regulation you can become, the less accountability you usually have to take because you're not messing up in these big, overwhelming, destructive ways all the time, because you have a handle on your emotions and you're not reacting in ways that are so harmful. Emotional regulation really begins with having an understanding of the ways that you react and how your feelings manifest and what you're calling them. I think you'd be surprised

and maybe you're one of these people, but you'd be surprised by how many people actually don't even know what they're feeling and what they would call it. And this is one of the first things that I look out for whenever I'm doing therapy with someone is like, Like, do you have a lexicon of feelings? Do you have a solid, you know, 10 to 20 things that you can label and have an understanding of what those things feel like in your body and what they feel like in your mind and how you behave when those feelings come up? So a really easy example of that would be like someone who feels their heart beating very fast, a kind of uneasy feeling in their stomach, and maybe their palms are getting sweaty, and they're having trouble focusing.

So when I describe those symptoms to you, what would you call that? I would probably, for me, call that anxiety. I might also think, have I eaten enough today? Did I drink water? How did I sleep last night? Is there anything stressful coming up? I might call that stress. as well. But that is a known feeling to me, that subset of bodily sensations. And I label it in

one of those few ways. Because I know that when that set of symptoms comes up, I usually package it as one of those labels, anxiety, stress, lack of food, lack of water, lack of sleep. Now, there are some people that they don't know what that feeling is. You might even be saying like, oh, I feel that sometimes, but it could be a lot of things. Or I just try to push it down when it comes up. Or I say it's not a big deal and I move on or I just go to sleep or I drink alcohol or I smoke. Like I do something to push that feeling down because it's quite uncomfortable. And you can't really regulate your emotions without knowing what they are, what they feel like, what you need to regulate, what's coming up for you. So that's one of the first steps. And we have the Emotions 101 course,

which is one of the first courses that I created that I used to sell for like $400 to a very limited group that's now available on the Calling Home website. And you can get that just from joining the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Callinghome.com. You get access to all the workbooks, videos, everything in that course. And that course breaks down for you on like a very small level, what an emotion is, what it feels like, how you can label your emotions, how to tell the difference between something that's happening in your head and in your body and how to integrate those feelings. So if you're listening to this and you're saying, oh gosh, I really don't know if I know how to label feelings, how to tell what's going on in my body, I definitely

recommend getting access to that course. If you're already a member, go on. You can access it under topics courses and find the course there. and it will help you a ton. But that's the first step, I think, to really learning how to regulate your emotions. Then you need to figure out what strategies and skills really help me. For some people, this might be developing a meditation practice for others. That could be anxiety provoking. Some of you, breathing is going to help. Breathing has been something that's been very helpful for me. Going to therapy can be a great emotion regulation source. I think for people who don't have a good handle on how emotions feel and what they call them. Getting like a journaling practice where you even just jot down in your phone, like, okay, this happened, felt butterflies in my stomach, felt sweaty, overcome, disoriented, did not know what to do next. Like start writing these things down, start figuring out patterns of what you feel, what happens next, how you're reacting, because you need to really create an emotional map and like world for yourself because we all have

different ways of reacting. We all have different triggers. We all have shorter fuses around certain things. And you need to get some data to work with before you can start figuring out what is going to work for you. The other thing you can do is like, you know, different grounding techniques. So being able to look around the room and name things that you can see, you can touch, you can smell, you can feel, even like putting a piece of hard candy in your mouth and focusing on those sensations can be a great way to learn what you feel like when you're totally being absorbed into a certain feeling or sensation or moment. It's also great if you have a partner or trusted friend, a family member that you can sit and talk about this stuff with and say like,

okay, what do you notice in me when I seem like out of sorts? Do you notice any patterns? maybe they notice that you start shaking your foot a lot, you're biting your nails, you start to get really distracted, you have trouble focusing, you become really short with your words, like can the two of you do this in a way that's totally compassionate and non-blaming, but just getting like some feedback and some data on things that you may not notice about yourself can be really helpful. But again, do this with someone that you don't feel like is super critical of you or that you feel on edge around. And I always recommend that you start practicing your emotional regulation in low stakes situations at first so that it's not so challenging. And then you can start to build up

more and more. But ideally, you're practicing emotional regulation skills all the time, not even when you're just 10 out of 10 stressed, but using it at like minor annoyances, a 1 out of 10 type of scale. A personal, like, anecdote that I'll share for you is that when I became a mom, one of the hardest things for me was, like, the overstimulation of it all, like, noise, sounds, smells, sight, like, just getting all my senses overwhelmed all the time. And I would get really flooded very easily if one of my kids was crying for a long period of time while also, like, touching me and someone else was talking to me and I had to do other things that I really had to practice breathing, grounding myself, stepping away, trying to find ways to keep myself calm while

all of this was happening so that I could be present for my child. And I've noticed that the more that I practiced this, I said this to my husband the other day. Like one of my kids was screaming and I was helping them and hugging them. And I noticed like I wasn't reacting at all. Like my heart wasn't racing anymore. I wasn't stressed about when it was going to end or feeling like I was always going to be stuck in this moment. I felt very much like at peace and like I was able to just be a sturdy anchor for my child in that moment. And that was a result truly of practicing these emotional regulation skills of labeling what I was feeling, normalizing it, talking to somebody else about it, reading about other people or listening to podcasts like this about

other people who get overstimulated by touch and sound at the same time from their kids and not being able to fix what's going on, processing it after the fact, coming up with things that would help me cope before and after that moment was very helpful. But practicing this regularly over time and then suddenly you just have this moment where you're like, whoa, I reacted so differently than I would have because I've been practicing this. It does not happen overnight. The next part of emotional maturity that I want to talk about that is key, is empathy and understanding others. So this is part of self-awareness. It's part of accountability and it's part of emotional regulation. Emotionally mature people are really able to understand that the way that they feel

is not how everybody else feels. They're able to look at someone else's situation and their feelings and say, okay, I want to understand how that feels for you. It may not make perfect sense to me. I may never feel that way, but I have an ability to look at you and understand why that could feel that way for you. We can understand that people have different ways of managing things, dealing with things, and really know that we can extend empathy towards others that are different from us and who have different experiences and different ways of moving outside of the world. Practicing empathy with others in an emotionally mature way really just includes being able to ask people, how does that feel for you? Can you tell me more about that? Listening to them

actively, trying to understand, show compassion and understanding without truly taking it on yourself, making the other person's feelings, your feelings, making them have to match. But just saying, okay, I could see how that would be possible. Listening, nodding, being curious about how another person feels. All of these can be great ways to practice. empathy and understanding and then being able to step back and say like, you know what, I don't have to agree with how you're feeling. I don't have to necessarily agree with the exact way you're handling this situation. I can set boundaries with you and I can have empathy and understanding for how you're handling this. Another thing that's really important about emotionally mature people

is that they are able to be adaptive and able to change. And they don't have such a fixed black and white mindset. I think when we talk about emotionally immature parents, this is a big piece of it too. It's that it's very hard to hold two truths at once for some people. It's either I was a good parent or I was a bad parent. I tried my best or I didn't try at all. And emotionally mature people understand that there are a lot of nuances and a lot of shades of gray to all people and all situations and that we can look at things and say, okay, this was a little bit good, this was kind of bad. I can be a good person who messed up. I can be a good person that did a bad thing. Someone can see that I tried really hard here, but I also messed up a lot over here. And we have this ability to adapt,

to change, to be open to new information, new ways of thinking, and to say, okay, I I can see how maybe I got that wrong there. Or now that we know this new information about trauma or this new information about abuse or emotions that maybe we've learned something new and we should reflect and think about that in a different way. And so if you're trying to develop more emotional maturity, a lot of that requires stepping away from having such a black and white mindset and instead being open to Shades of Grey. Emotional maturity also requires being able to communicate in a healthy

manner. And so that means trying to use things like eye statements, taking accountability for how you feel, telling people how you feel without using labels, criticism, contempt, not using the silent treatment, telling people when you need a break or when you need space, explaining your feelings in a clear manner, asking people questions before assuming what they mean or what they're trying to say, trying to stay calm and composed when the other person is doing that, trying not to call names, curse people out, really just communicating in a way that you would like others to communicate with you. And that doesn't mean that you don't get angry and you don't fall out of this. But again, that goes back to the accountability piece. All of us are going to

communicate sometimes in ways that are not quote unquote healthy or perfect. But can we reflect back and say, you know what? I really want to say that again. That's not what I meant to say. I was rude before. I would really like to try to have this conversation again. And modeling for others the way that you would like to be spoken to is very, very important. And the last thing I want to touch on when it comes to emotional maturity is how important vulnerability is in safe relationships that allow you the ability to be vulnerable. I think sometimes we think that emotional maturity, I used to believe this at least, that emotional maturity was being like a rock. No one could get you upset. No one could make you flustered. You were always calm, cool, collected. No one was ever going

to get a rise out of you. And that's what made you emotionally mature. And that's really not totally accurate. Emotionally mature people can be vulnerable. They can tell people when they're upset. They can express their emotions. They can be honest while still being kind. They can show they're upset and their feelings without hurting other people, they can make their feelings known even when they are not the most palatable feelings. Emotionally mature people have the ability to feel the breadth of the human experience while being accountable and kind and compassionate and empathetic. But they are allowed to have feelings. And I think when you grow up around emotionally immature people, you don't want to be like them so much. You don't want to be volatile or reactive

that you kind of turn into someone that doesn't have a lot of feelings. And you shut everything down. You become very guarded and even like stoic or robotic or cold as a way to safeguard yourself from becoming like that. But you can be emotionally mature and have feelings. So I don't want you to listen to all of this and think like, okay, I can't show anything. I have to always be calm, cool, collected, composed. That's not what emotional maturity is. When you think back to all the things that I've listed here for you, emotional maturity means having feelings, knowing what those feelings are, being able to talk about those feelings and share them. Being accountable for the behavior that you exhibit when you are having big overwhelming feelings because no matter how

emotionally mature you are, you're going to have them. Being able to call people out when they're hurting you in a kind, collected way and staying in line with your values, but still being able to make your feelings known. You can tell people, you've hurt me in these ways. And this is what I'm going to do about that. This is how I'm going to set a boundary or protect myself or keep myself safe. That's all so important that as we, you know, work on emotional maturity this month at calling home as you join our groups, I want us to become equally skilled at identifying when we need to repair for ourselves and when others are being emotionally immature with us. And I think a lot of people who have been around very emotionally immature people their whole

life have developed a lot of emotional maturity for themselves, but sometimes at the expense of being able to share their own feelings and talk about their own feelings with others. And so that's something that we're also going to be talking about in our groups and in the content this month at Calling Home. So I would love to see you outside of this podcast. As always, you can visit callinghome.com and join the Family Psycho Breakers Club there. We will be meeting every Wednesday. this month for a group about emotional maturity and dealing with emotionally immature people. And I will be back with another episode on Thursday. That'll be a Q&A episode where I'm answering some caller questions. As always, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please

do not forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of the podcast. That's what allows me to keep the show going. Thanks again for being here and I will see you again on Thursday. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.