This blog post will look at the long and messy journey to being a mature individual. It looks at what an immature person looks like. It discusses the essential path to maturity: expression of all feelings. It includes my own messy journey of how I was to finally arrive at maturation.
Maturity Vs Immaturity
To start this blog post, I just want to mention that Dr Gordon Neufeld discusses the epidemic symptoms of the immature in our society:
“…polarization, tribalization, impulsive behaviour, dogmatism, black-and-white thinking, lack of consideration for context, lack of patience and grace, lack of perspective, lack of appreciation of the complexity of issues, lack of regard for fellow human beings…” (see his editorial about maturity here).
To reach maturity, Dr Neufeld discusses at length about the major importance of feeling all emotions. He is one of the few psychologists who explains that emotion differs to feelings. If you picture an iceberg, the ’emotion’ is the huge part underneath the surface of the water. The emotion underneath the surface may not be felt by the person. Regardless of whether it is felt or not, the emotion is always there. However, the ‘feeling’ is the tip of the iceberg, the part of the emotion which can be felt. If the emotion is ‘felt’ then it can be expressed and released from the body and mind.
What Are Common Feelings
I was interested to try and work out what the main feelings we have are. I came up with a list, which is not exhaustive. In light of the importance of expressing all feelings, I began to watch my children’s expression. I was looking for which ones they ‘lacked’ so I could offer a safer space for them all to ‘feel’. I can’t remember specifically which course Dr Neufeld discusses the different types of feelings people have, since I wrote up notes from a few of his courses. On the back of his courses, I made a list of all of the feelings and emotions we have.
I broke the list of feelings I was observing into two. The first, I could notice being expressed and felt by my children. The second list, I wasn’t always seeing the feeling in action, where a situation called for it. For example, sometimes my children would not express thankfulness or show appreciation, when society would expect that to be expressed.
I also paid particular attention to what feelings may be missing in a narcissist, since my mother has narcissistic traits. The feelings of responsibility were clearly lacking in my Mum. She found no way of making things better with us, did not express remorse and was not protective of me. As I was researching the expression of feelings, it became clear that someone who lacks these ‘responsibility’ feelings is a higher likelihood of being a narcissist.
Which made me stumble across an article about primary vs secondary emotions. Key points were:
- If the primary emotion is not felt, a secondary emotion is more likely.
- Primary emotions are instinct; secondary emotions are societally constructed through our family and wider society. In the example of ‘Appreciation’, the instinct would be to feel fulfilment e.g. delight in something someone has given you. The secondary emotion is societally created as you would be expected to ‘say thanks’. If someone observes closely after doing something kind, they would not need the ‘thank you’, as they would see the primary emotion of a happy child.
- I concluded that the emotions I was seeing my children feel could mostly be classed as ‘primary emotions’, and the second list seemed to be more ‘secondary emotions’.
The ‘secondary emotions’ would be something that develops as a child gets older. A baby could not be expected to show care, appreciation, responsibility, shame or embarrassment. Somewhere along the line, presumably with the development of the prefrontal cortex and further integration into society, they would develop the ability to feel these secondary emotions too.
A further question I thought is whether a narcissist is just an adult who never developed the prefrontal cortex sufficiently, or who had a block where those secondary emotions are just too painful for them to feel. For example they may find the feelings of guilt and sorrow too unbearable, and so they learn to block the feelings. Whether the emotions are there but blocked, or whether the feelings were never be there in the first place, would presumably result in a similar personality disorder.
Unschooled Journey To Secondary Emotions
I have left my kids to be as free as I could manage. Free of my societal standards, free of pressure to perform, free of praise etc. They haven’t been to school and are so shy they mostly haven’t interacted with people outside of our family of 5. They are ages 6 and 8, and are now showing signs of caring (although not for everything – but very strongly for some specific things). For example they randomly decided to become litter pickers, and we walk around the block or to the park holding boxes or bags for them to clear up our streets and parks. Their reason? To save the birds. If they see litter they tut and say ‘why would someone do that! It could harm a bird!’.
Adolescence
Dr Neufeld also does an eye-opening course on adolescence and what it means to ‘grow up’. This course allowed me to reflect on my teenage years, since my children haven’t reached puberty yet. In one of the modules, he discussed how essential aloneness and sadness are. In my teenage years, I suppressed a lot of the loneliness I felt. I was bullied for a year at secondary school, which left me alone on the playground. I was rejected by my older sister during that time too, and never felt safe to go and tell my parents how alone and sad I was. Instead, I acted successful and brave. Basically, I blocked the primary emotion of loneliness. This grew into a belief there was ‘something wrong with me’ (the secondary emotion of shame). In hindsight, this belief continued on / off through my adults years, usually triggered when someone ignored me at a group or through social media.
Since making friends after my year of being bullied, I never had an issue making lovely friends at school. At university I had Volleyball friends, music friends, course mates, lecturers to chat to, dining room buddies, dormitory friends, you name it. My social life was buzzing. I moved back to where I lived in my late-teen years and reunited with wonderful school friends. I also made kayaking friends and Salsa friends. I moved country to do a Masters course and made a wide range of friends there too, as well as Salsa friends, as this continued to be my favourite hobby.
Acceptance of My Aloneness
Which threw me forward into realising how alone I was in Bristol. Since having kids I stopped being able to do Salsa dancing as my husband still hasn’t mastered the bedtime routine alone, and all the nearby sessions are in the late evening. There’s no old course mates, soul mates, school or university friends local to me either. As a result, I suffered with a significant amount of aloneness.
My oldest is now 8 years old. For the whole of her life, I was essentially going round meeting new home ed parents and thinking ‘Oh they’re nice! We both home educate! I’m sure we will become friends…’ to then be met with a cold message or no reply to a message at all. I found this very strange and unsettling. My brain struggled with trying to understand ‘why’.
I couldn’t face the loneliness that raising my children without friends or family felt like, so I internalised. ‘There must be something wrong with me. Surely all these Mums I have met can’t all just ignore (or forget) someone in this way!? And surely all of those people can’t have been so offended to just blank us either!?’ I thought maybe it was because my kids are so shy; perhaps people want their kids to be around the extroverted social butterfly kids? So many thoughts raced through my mind every time a similar end of a possible friendship came.
After a long 8 years of feeling socially rejected among the home ed community, I decided to leave social media. I deleted Facebook a couple of years ago, and have recently deleted Whatsapp. I would rather focus on going to activities that the kids enjoy and chatting in person to people than to have a few pen-pal equivalents who turn out to not be interested in meeting very much.
For me… for some years… I shed a few buckets of tears over how alone this world feels since becoming a Mum. Through these tears, I have recently found a place of peace. I am so peaceful not worrying about meeting people, not feeling judged, and just knowing wholeheartedly that I am the best person for my children. My children are the best motivation to take care of myself too, which I was unable to do when I felt so rejected.
So the journey to being comfortable with my aloneness looked like a very messy, emotionally challenging, borderline embarrassing one to those who witnessed some of the mess. But when you reach the peace, and your mental health meets a mature version of you, you realise how grateful you are to be alone right now, in this moment, celebrating that you have finally reached maturity. Even though I am 40, I feel this is a great age to have gone through the maturing process. It’s also close to when my children will start the maturity process themselves and so at least it’ll be fresh in my memory bank. I’m sure that will help me embrace all the emotional mess that is yet to unfold with them.
Let’s Celebrate Reaching Maturity
My childhood was not filled with play, freedom, healthy attachments or expression of all feelings. From a baby I was filled with school activities, after school clubs, comparisons, praise, punishments, peers… And only when I suddenly had 3 babies on my own for the majority of the time did all of that pressure drop from my life and system. It literally disappeared, some instantly and some I tried to cling onto for dear life but they eventually dropped too. And now, in hindsight, I am convinced this fullness of tears, loneliness, sadness and fear were essential stepping stones into reaching my maturity.
Gentle Parent 