Regrets of Youth

Ron Johnson Connection, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness

We all have regrets. If we don’t have them, we should have them. They are an important part of life, especially as we get older and look back at life. I have been doing a bit of regretting recently. The older I get, the more I notice the many regrets I have acquired over my 73 years. Regrets can come at any time of life, from toddlerhood to the senior years. Most of my regrets are related to the words, judgments, and decisions I made as a youth. I’d like to talk about what regrets are, how they come in various sizes and kinds, how they help us, how they hurt us, and how we can accept regrets as a normal and necessary part of life. But before I wax eloquent on such matters, let me tell you, as a way of my own self-examination, a few of the regrets I have, mostly in my youth.

Childhood: I regret…
 Throwing a toy metal gun at Danny Mallet. I hit him on the head and he went home bleeding. Danny was my best friend at that time and lived just a block away. I had seen cowboys in movies do such things when they ran out of bullets. It seemed like a good thing at the time. It wasn’t. I think I was about eight.
 Telling Suzie Blanchard that she was adopted. I was in third grade, I think, and Suzie was in fourth. Some of her friends and she were teasing me about something that I have long forgotten. I was simply hurt, and reacted out of hurt. I threatened Suzie that I would tell her something about her that she didn’t know, but she egged me on and so I blurted out the fact that she was adopted. Obviously it was unwise of my parents to tell me this family secret in the Blanchard home, and probably unwise for Suzie’s parents to tell my parents, but that is not the point. I was the one who inflicted the pain on someone who was a good neighborhood friend. My action was very unkind.
 Insisting that my mother make a different Halloween costume because I didn’t like what she had made. She accommodated like she often did and indulged me, sewing furiously on Halloween night so I could go out trick-or-treating. This insistence of mine, while typical of many children, was simply selfish. I wish I could have just worn the batman costume she had already made for me.
 Talking out of turn and talking too much. This, of course, is part of my extraverted nature and is understandable. Over the years I have I have, over the years, said too many things that I now regret: silly things, stupid things, kid things, loud things. Thank goodness my teachers had a bit more liberty “back then” to smack me onside the head or rap my knuckles. This speaking without forethought, much less the possible negative effect of such talk, has been a theme of my entire life. I regret the content, volume, and timing of many of my words over the entirety of my 73 years.

Adolescence: I regret…
 Failing to work hard in sports, like working out, practicing shooting baskets, being more physically aggressive in football practice: just getting better. My athletic skill was a bit above average, but I didn’t improve on it even though I went out for seven different sports in high school. The consequences of this lack of working hard at athletics were several, mostly that I was never particularly good at anything; just above average in several things. I didn’t make the basketball team as a senior because I didn’t practice enough; I played football for four years, but didn’t make a letter because I didn’t hit harder. I didn’t improve my golf from bogey, which it still is 60 years later. I didn’t develop a good backhand in tennis. And having just watched an old favorite movie of mine “Chariots of Fire”, I am reminded that I certainly didn’t work at the hurdles in track.
 Lack of an adolescent sex life. I dated profusely and was usually going with at least one girl all the time. I had too much interest in girls without consequent sexual involvement. I wanted to have some kind of sexual contact just like any other normal adolescent boy but I wouldn’t let myself actually seek it. The best I could do was a bit of kissing and hand-holding. I used to pride myself in this lack of adolescent sexual activity thinking that such is promiscuity. I think quite differently now. I think my absolute abstinence hurt my personal, relational, and sexual development.
 In a related development in adolescence, I regret going steady during much of my senior year. I would much have preferred to have dated the 25 girls that I had planned to do. (I got teased about this statement that was printed in the school newspaper when I answered what I wanted to accomplish during my senior year. I also wanted to make four sports letters and get a 4.0. Didn’t succeed in any of these endeavors. I did, however, have four dates in one day getting progressively later to each date as the day wore on.)
 Being tardy to my classes. This is also a lifelong problem and a lifelong regret. I was late to class and even later getting my homework done, and particularly late getting my term papers done. I did quite well in high school nevertheless, like mostly A’s and a few B’s. C’s were unacceptable although I got a C in psychology of all things one quarter. This tardiness came directly from my tardy-inclined family; I say I inherited it. But I knew it was irresponsible. My tendency towards tardiness began in childhood and continued into college and well into my adult life. After a 4.0 my first semester in college, I got a 1.73 three semesters later, largely due to my tardiness in studying, preparing, and planning.
 Being too “good”. I didn’t swear, drink, smoke…”or go with girls who do.” I made these decisions out of my evangelical Christian orientation thinking such abstinence was the right thing to do. I’m glad for many of the results of this early decision, like not smoking during these addiction-prone years, but I regret thinking that such choices made me think I was better than other people or a better Christian.

Young adulthood: I regret…
 Continuing to be less than consistent in my college grades. After starting with that 4.0, I failed to work diligently at my classes and graduated with very mediocre grade point, a fact that limited my graduate school possibilities.
 Getting around requirements, whether in undergraduate or graduate studies. Jim Kirk of Star Trek fame once said that he “cheated death” until it hit him in the face. I cheated on some things like really learning Statistics and a foreign language…this despite having studied some seven different languages, none of them with any proficiency. I wish I could speak fluent French or read Latin. There is so much richness in language.
 Failing to marry my first love, Bonnie. She was my first friend, starting at age four or five, but then with absences of years or a decade, she came back into my life. Unfortunately, I was unable to untangle myself from another relationship and trust my true feelings.
 Getting married at 22. I didn’t want to get married although I think I loved my first wife (who knows when looking back 50 years). But the reason I got married was largely due to the fear of her disapproval and hurting her. I have called this “men’s greatest fear” in another blog (fear of female disapproval). This was false guilt and I didn’t manage it. I might have married Sandy later, but I doubt it. We were just too different in many important ways, like cultural background and ways of evaluating the world.
 Failing to get divorced when I really didn’t want to stay married. False guilt again. From one bad decision to another bad one.
 Having only two children. I wished I could have had a dozen…well, perhaps four or five. These early life decisions are so important and often made without thought, much less deep feeling.
 Going to the wrong seminary. Seminary was very good for me but I chose to go to a very conservative one, transferred to another one slightly less conservative for my last year. I ended up fighting (I thought it was discussing) with professors who couldn’t deal with my wider theology and philosophy. Not their fault; they were good men (men, of course). I should have left these conservative seminaries and found a place that could accept my broader view of life help me broader my view of life. I wasted too many too many years trying to justify my developing theology rather than finding teachers who could assist me in this development.

Later adulthood:
 Not much here, interestingly. I took a couple right turns that should have been left turns, but I don’t seem to have much regret for the past 40-odd years. I should have left my first marriage much sooner; I should have pursued writing sooner; I should have left Council Bluffs sooner, and many other thing I should have done sooner.
 We literally did buy the swamp land, but it happened to be in northern Wisconsin, not Florida. Luckily, buyers’ remorse set in overnight and we canceled the purchase and then went on to find our lovely cabin farther north.
 I continued to struggle with some of the themes of my earlier years, like tardiness and fear of disapproval, but these have largely faded.

The nature of regret
When I read about people who have felt regret, expressed regret, and moved beyond regret, I am impressed with what appears to be their character development: they can admit to their mistakes. I believe John Kennedy was the last President we have had who admitted to error and regret, namely the flawed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Interestingly, our country has not recovered from this presidential mistake 60 years ago. We have lost 60 years of contact with a good neighbor, albeit a neighbor that has a different political persuasion. Other Presidents have been less inclined to admission of error and regret, much less restitution.

As we consider the nature of regret and perhaps how to profit from regret and overcome it, we need to look at the different kinds and sizes of regrets, the lasting effects of the regrets, the effect of other people’s feelings about the things you regret, and any possible restitution for the mistakes that have led to regret. The hallmark of a person with developed character is the ability to admit to error.

Kinds and sizes of regrets:
 Things said
I have noted the many things I said over my 73 years, somewhat stimulated, but not caused, by my extraverted nature.
 Things not said
Introverts are more inclined to regret having failed to speak rather than wishing that they had not spoken.
 Things done
Here also we have a personality characteristic, namely being a doer. Doers (like me) tend to do too much, ask too much of other people, and die earlier. Doers tend to make mistakes in doing too quickly and too rashly. The doers of the world simply do more than people of other personalities, like dreamers. Doers do a lot for the world, but they tend to do too much.
 Things not done
The opposite characteristic of the doer is the dreamer. Dreamers tend to think of what they might do but fail to take a chance of doing something that might be wrong. Interestingly, it is the dreamers of the world who have made profound differences in the world, making the world a better place. Sadly, most dreamers of the world do not have the wisdom and courage to truly do their dreams.
 Big mistakes
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a big mistake. So was the Viet Nam invasion. So was the Iraq invasion, and probably Afghanistan. Big mistakes can also be marrying the wrong person or be buying the wrong house, perhaps in the wrong area of the city or in the wrong city. A bigger mistake might be keeping the house or the spouse. Big mistakes can be these life’s mistakes, or they can be mistakes that brought significant harm to another person
 Little mistakes
These are like buying some swamp land in Florida or Wisconsin because it seemed right at the time. Or even buying a car that seemed pretty and fun, and then realizing that you needed something more practical. Other little mistakes can be ordering something for dinner that didn’t really suit you because, perhaps, it was cheaper, or working too hard to make the boat motor work even though you rarely use the boat.

The lasting effects of things regretted
 We Americans yet suffer the result of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Viet Nam invasion, and the invasions in the Middle East: millions of people dead or wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, and countless lives ruined.
 I know of many people who were married for the wrong reason, like getting pregnant, “being in love” without out any awareness of marital responsibility, or “because the invitations were already mailed”, God forbid.
 And there may be the lasting effect of simply having sex with someone, perhaps the wrong person who pursues the partner because of false guilt or false love.
 There are many lasting effects of mistakes made with one’s body, like working too hard or too long, or in the wrong job for the wrong reason, like making a lot of money.
 There are lasting effects of having married the wrong person and for the wrong reason, as I did. There is even a larger regret of having married at all, like many gay people do because they want the typical family.
 There are lasting effects on other people, particularly their feelings of hurt. I wonder how many people are yet hurt (and angry and resentful) for things said or done years in the past. I know of many people who still lick their wounds from events long past. Others’ hurt and resentment can have an effect on the person who caused the original hurt. I wonder how many people I have hurt over these 73 years….

Restoration, restitution, relationships, and reflections
 Your own restoration is based primarily on honest regret. The initial stage of regret is one of sadness. I have previously written about the centrality of sadness in emotional maturity, and my wife, Deb, and I have recently published a book on the subject. You are restored when you are initially sad at the mistake you have made and have a certain amount of sadness. As we have written, sadness is born of love. If you regret what you have said or done (or not said or not done), you admit that you loved something and lost it. You may love truth but told a lie, perhaps lying to yourself. Or you may have hurt someone, or hurt yourself. In all these cases you have lost something you loved, whether it was something physical, someone personal, or some idea you had. You are restored when you no longer feel sad. This doesn’t mean that you no longer regret your error. It simply means that you have finished feeling sad, and now have only the memory of your mistake.
 You may need to make some restitution for the error of your ways. This might simply be an apology or words of sorrow for your mistake. Or it may mean some kind of physical or financial restitution. You can even make restitution when you can’t afford to repair the hurt or harm you have done because the essence of restitution is not in bricks or mortar, much less money. It is a feeling of regret borne of love and shown in kindness.
 Relationships are not the core of regret. In fact other people’s feelings should not be the primary reason you regret your actions or words. You may have hurt someone, but his or her feelings are not the primary reason for feeling sorry. You should regret what you said or did because it was wrong in your eyes, not someone else’s. Furthermore, you may regret something that the other person thinks was just fine, or you may not regret something that he or she thinks was just terrible. To truly regret something is to mature. As you mature, you become better at relationships: more honest, more loving, more generous, and also more limiting. Maturity is giving freely, not dependent on what your friend wants you to give, not dependent on your friend’s feelings. The more mature you become, the fewer regrets you have. Maturing through regret requires honest reflection on your past behavior so that you can be a better person.

Reflections:
 Reflections on regret lead us to more honest self-disclosure and can often turn out for good, or even for the better.
 The regrettable things I said and did as a child taught me that I have the unfortunate capacity to hurt and harm people. It has been painfully hard to learn to keep my mouth shut, and when I open it, to use care and wisdom. Likewise with what I do.
 While I regret not having married Bonnie, I believe she was (and is?) happily married but did not conceive biological children. I did have two wonderful girls, but perhaps might not have had this opportunity if I had married Bonnie.
 It is very likely that I still play sports somewhat because of my lack of high school consistency in sports. I play very active basketball as well as a bit of golf, swimming, and hiking. And when lucky, a bit of waterskiing (Thanks, Bud). And I even work out.
 My lack of adolescent sex at least prevented some kind of sexual addiction, and possibly an STD.
 My abstinence from alcohol in high school and college, despite my membership in a fraternity, kept me from any kind of alcohol-related difficulties. I love a glass of wine, but I have never been drunk.
 There were many things I learned having been wrongly married and having stayed wrongly married for too many years. These learnings have made me a better person , a better husband, and a better therapist
 I have conquered my lack of quality in things that I do (like my former lack of improvement in sports), and evidently I needed the better part of my 70 odd years to learn the value of planning, thinking, and quality.
 Many people have been served by the things I have learned through my mistakes and the consequent regrets. I know I am good at what I do, and I am limited and flawed as well.
 Importantly, looking at the good things that have resulted from my mistakes and consequent regrets does not justify these mistakes, nor does it take the pain associated with them away. Only sadness, true sadness, finishes the mistakes and losses we have in life.
 I am reminded of the Apostle Paul’s statement, “All things work out for God for those who love God.” Or as “Papa” in The Shack said, “I don’t cause the bad things that you do or the bad things that happen to you. I make them useful to you.”

Further reading:
 The Positive Power of Sadness by Deb Brock and Ron Johnson. Available through our office, at most book stores and at Amazon.
 Previous blogs on sadness and Men’s Greatest Fear
 The book or the movie, The Shack

I’m Glad that I’m Sick

Ron Johnson Mental, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

Who in the world would say such a thing? Who in the world would want to be sick? Surprisingly, many people would. It’s not that they actually want to be sick. Rather, they want to have a reason for why they feel so bad. Having a reason why your stomach hurts answers the questions, “What’s wrong with me?” So when your stomach hurts (or your leg, or your chest, or your back), you want to know what is wrong. That seems reasonable, but the reason part of reasonable gets lost when it encounters our present healthcare system that focuses on what is wrong rather than focusing on what is right. I frequently have people tell me that they have some sort of back problem, usually described as a “herniated disc” or a “slipped disc” or some kind of twist in their spine. Unfortunately, they don’t feel any better physically, but somehow knowing what is wrong helps them understand why they hurt so much. Remarkably, it is very possible for two people to have the very same spinal abnormalities with one of these people having intense pain and the other one having no pain whatsoever. Why is that? The answer to that question is yet very illusive.

I felt compelled to write this blog because of an experience I had a few days ago. A man came to see me in my office who has been suffering from what he described as “OCD” (obsessive compulsive disorder), and has been in intensive hospital-based treatment for this alleged disorder for months. Furthermore, he has probably suffered from OCD-like symptoms and other symptoms for years. He told me that he had been making some headway with this very challenging difficulty under this intensive treatment. More recently, however, he said that his wife and he had come across the diagnosis of Asperger’s Disorder (AD), read about it extensively, and began to think that he may really be suffering from AD, either primarily or in addition to his OCD. He asked me if I could test him for AD to determine whether this diagnosis would be an answer for what was “wrong” with him. In fact, Jack (I’ll call him Jack) was quite hopeful that I would diagnose him with AD, thinking that such a diagnosis would lead to some kind of effective treatment. In a sense, he wanted to have Asperger’s Disorder, odd as that sounds. But it isn’t really odd because he just wants an answer to his distress. Can’t blame him for that. Unfortunately, finding a diagnosis like AD does not give him an answer. He might find symptoms consistent with AD, but that doesn’t mean that he has this disorder. Furthermore, many people who have AD-like symptoms are not suffering from Asperger’s just the same as how people can have the very same physical condition with one person suffering immensely while another person with the exact same condition does not suffer. Why is that?

The reason one person with a very specific physical difficulty has great pain compared to another person with the same difficulty with no pain is…we don’t know. In fact there is certainly more that we don’t know than we actually do know. We don’t know, for instance, how cancer starts. We know where it starts, like in the liver or the colon. We know what seems to be some of the reason it started in the first place. We know, for instance, cigarette smoking tends to lead to lung cancer. But what about those people who smoke for 75 years and never have cancer? We don’t know why they seem to be immune to it. We know a lot of things about physical illnesses in the way they progress, like liver cancer tends to progress fast, while lung cancer progresses at a slower pace. But we don’t know why cancer starts in the first place. And we don’t know why cancer starts because we don’t really know why a cell grows and multiplies into two cells. If we really understood why cells tend to multiply, we would know why cancer cells grow too fast and create too many cells. We know a lot about the physical body and how it functions, but we still don’t know everything. In fact, we really don’t know much about how the body functions. Thank God we know enough to correct some of the diseases that infect humankind. Yet, even though we don’t know much about the cause, the course, and the cure for many of these diseases, people still rely on their doctors to tell them what is wrong, why it is wrong, how long it will be wrong, and what can be done about it. Most of us have heard our good doctors say something like, “I am not sure” as an answer to these questions. Physical problems are just too complex to give exact answers to these questions.

We know even less about psychological difficulties, and as a result, there are even fewer answers to the why, how, and when questions although we have a few answers about the what questions. We know for instance what depression is. For instance, we know that depression has certain symptoms, namely disturbances of sleep, appetite/eating, and energy. When people are depressed they usually have sleep problems in the form of insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping too much). Even more importantly, depressed people have low energy or motivation that we call anhedonia. We also know what anxiety is, but perhaps a bit less. We know, for instance, that people who suffer anxiety worry about the future in a variety of ways, that they can’t overcome this worry with rational thinking, and that they suffer some kind of physical symptom of anxiety, usually chest pains or shortness of breath. There is some neurological evidence that suggests that the brain operates differently with depressed and anxious people as compared to people who don’t suffer these maladies.

We know a bit about the symptoms of depression and anxiety, but we don’t really know why people get depressed or seriously anxious, how they suffer these problems, or when they start to suffer. There is a good deal of theorizing about the causes of depression and anxiety leading physicians and others to talk about a “chemical imbalance” in the brain that can theoretically be corrected with one or more medications. Unfortunately, these so-called chemical imbalances are not well understood in themselves, not universally agreed upon, and only rarely corrected with medication. Certainly, there are brain changes when someone suffers from anxiety or depression, but this is not the magic bullet people want it to be. Informed physicians will say that antidepressant medication helps about half the people who suffer from depression, but we also know that a placebo will help nearly a third of that same group. The difficulty with the medical-cure theory of depression and anxiety is that it certainly does not cure these ailments. Medications help treat the symptoms of such difficulties, but not the problem. Most people know friends and family members who have gone from one medication to another, and sometimes from one on top of another, all with minimal assistance, and certainly with no cure. And on this matter of cure there is fierce debate.

The oddity of this matter of the what, when, why, and how of so-called mental health difficulties leads people to find the magic bullet even though there is no magic in this vastly diverse field of psychology. I have previously written about the magic associated with mental health treatment: magical diagnosis, magical treatment, and magical cure. There is no such thing. There is no magic in what effective therapists do in their offices, and sadly there are not too many effective therapists in the first place. There are many therapists who are very good people, and very often well trained and intelligent as well as truly compassionate. But we often find that therapists these days are more familiar with identifying what is supposedly wrong with people than they are in finding out what is right with these people. There is even a burgeoning subcategory of psychology called “positive psychology” that purports to examine the right things about people. We have studied much of this positive psychology literature and find it valuable, if quite incomplete. And very few therapists of any stripe and degree are even familiar with any sort of positive psychology. Helping people overcome the difficulties in their lives, requires a depth understanding of psychology, certainly the mental health difficulties like depression and anxiety, but more importantly, the strengths and abilities that people have. It is these strengths and abilities that get us into trouble, much more than the so-called diagnoses.

After hearing from Jack who “wanted” to have Asperger’s Disorder, I told him (with his wife present, by the way), that I thought there may be a different way of looking at what was wrong without thinking that there was something wrong with him. This, by the way, is a statement I say to patients on a daily basis and sometimes on an hourly basis:
“There is nothing wrong with you. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with the people you work with or the people you live with. And there is nothing wrong with the world. There is something wrong with the interface between you and people, work, and the world. For some reason, you don’t seem to fit. So you have concluded, unfortunately that there must be something wrong with you, work, people, or the world. There is nothing wrong with anyone.”

There are, however, grave difficulties between people just as there are between countries, denominations, and political parties. There are even greater difficulties between tribes of countries that are more tribal than America. It is hard for Americans to grasp the profound differences between Sunni Muslims and Shitte Muslims that has been violent for centuries and has led to the creation of ISIS and other fundamentalist groups in the world. ISIS and its cousins have taken the stand that their philosophy or theology is right…for everyone. So we have these terrible atrocities that ISIS commits in the name of Allah because they know that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Believing that nothing wrong with someone is very different from thinking that there is nothing wrong with what that person does or says.

It is easier to believe that I am right in what I believe than it is to consider that there is nothing wrong with me. Importantly, no one is always right all the time. But you can believe that there is nothing wrong with you as a person while also seeing that you say and do things that are wrong. It is easier to believe that there is something wrong with me or something wrong with the world than it is to admit that I might be wrong with what I said or did. But this is not a distinction that most people make, and it is a distinction that is the hallmark of personal maturity. The more one firmly believes that he or she is not a wrong person or a bad person, the more one can admit to errors of words or actions. Believing that you are a good person at heart, truly believing that, gives you the opportunity to see mistakes you make, misspoken words you uttered, and misunderstandings you created. And then apologize. But you are not apologizing for being a bad person. You are apologizing for failing to communicate, for hurting someone unintentionally, or for neglecting to gather all the facts before you shot your mouth off.

How does all this philosophizing help Jack who came to my office “wanting” to have Asperger’s Disorder? I needed to be quite careful with Jack because he had found some important hope that he could conquer the difficulties in his life by finding an exact diagnosis like Asperger’s. I explained what I do and how I do it, namely finding people’s strengths first and then finding the limitations and excesses of these strengths that cause problems. Within a couple of hours, we were able to come to an understanding of a different way for Jack to look at himself, one that looked at these strengths and limitations that led to his life’s problems. This is a beginning, a new beginning, a way that looks for hope in the positive and healthy rather than the negative and unhealthy. Now comes the hard work of helping Jack sees both his strengths and limitations and find ways to enhance these strengths and acknowledge his limitations in order to make a life for himself. But this is hard for Jack as it is for everyone. If I seek to replace the magic bullet of some kind of mental health diagnosis and replace it with a strengths-based “diagnosis,” I then have to help the person face the limitations of these strengths in order face the even harder task of seeing the opportunities of making the world a better place. For the moment at least Jack is excited about finding and enhancing these strengths than in finding a way to cure him of some magical disorder with some kind of magical treatment.

Further Reading
 My previous blog, The Magic of Psychotherapy
 Our current book, The Positive Power of Sadness (Brock and Johnson), Praeger Press.
 Articles and books written on Positive Psychology (Seligmann and others)

I Don’t Want To Grow Up

Ron Johnson Children, emotional maturity, Feelings, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

I found myself saying something to a patient the other day that was one of those “My mouth said that” statements (note a previous blogs on this phenomenon). In other words, I didn’t know it until I said it. The statement was this: “You want to be grown up. You don’t want to grow up.” This means that the individual wanted to be a person of (emotional) maturity, but he didn’t want to go through the growing pains of growing up; he wanted to be grown up. You can’t just “grow up” in a heartbeat. You need to go through the growing process, which is always painful. It is painful for people to go through the process of giving up an addiction, like alcohol, food, or gambling, but no one wants to give up these things; they want to have them given up. The difference is this: having given up is an idea; giving up is reality. I am not primarily interested in giving up addictions or bad habits in this paper. I am more interested in the whole process of growing, or growing up. More specifically, I am interested in the lack of emotional maturity. The lack of emotional maturity is the heart of the psychological problems that people have. As I see it, no one wants to grow up; they want to be grown up. Furthermore, no one is perfectly emotionally mature. We all have pockets of emotional immaturity. But what is “emotional maturity”?

Emotional immaturity
Most of the people I see have some kind of immaturity. Instead of saying that they are “immature,” I prefer saying that haven’t grown up…in some way. People who haven’t grown up have failed to mature in the arenas of emotions, and ultimately in social engagement. We refer to such people as suffering from “emotional/social” immaturity. In a previous blog I discussed what I call the “4-8-12” phenomenon. Most of the kids who are brought to me have this phenomenon in their make-up. The 4-8-12 phenomenon is this: the kid is eight years old physically, but he is very bright, so he is 12 years old intellectually. In other words, he has the knowledge, vocabulary, and abstract reasoning of a12-year old. Unfortunately, he has the emotional development of a four-year old, and hence he has the social maturity of a four-year old.

I saw one of these kids yesterday. He is actually 14 physically and about 18 intellectually. He doesn’t do homework because it is “stupid.” When I hear “stupid,” which I call the “S word,” I usually am in front of a person who smarter (intellectually) the people around him. He probably feels smarter than the other kids in class and very possibly smarter than his teachers. I met with his mother and him together for a few minutes, and it was obvious to me that he was smarter than his mother. I have never met his father, but his mother reported that this young man’s father is very argumentative and challenging like his son. Thus, it is likely that his father may also have the 4-8-12 phenomenon going on in his life. Maybe the father is 40 physically and 60 intellectually. It also likely that the father’s emotional/social maturity is significantly below these numbers, maybe as low as age four (emotionally and socially). It is very difficult to be smarter than the people around you, something I told this young man in the presence of his mother. After his mother left the office, I invited Tom to play something. He suggested chess, a game he has evidently played once or twice. He remembered some but not all of the allowed moves of the various chess pieces. I helped him a bit at the beginning, but after a very few minutes, he was beating me in chess. Now I am far from a grand master of chess, in fact much less than that, but I have probably played several hundred games of chess over 60-odd years. But this kid beat me having only played once or twice. That suggests that he is very bright: he learned quickly, both from his mistakes and from mine.

Unfortunately for Tom, his emotional/social maturity is far below his 14 physically and 18 intellectually levels. I place his emotional age to be eight at best, but frankly some of what he says and does is more like what we would expect from a four-year old. So this young man is 4-14-18. Can you see how this constellation of emotional, physical, and intellectual development can be problematic? It must be difficult for Tom to be in a class with a teacher who doesn’t have the intelligence that he has but perhaps has more emotional/social maturity. In History class, for instance, he might understand the historical facts quickly, and then wonder, for instance, how America justified the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, the Philippines, or Mexico. Discussion of the justification for these wars and invasions might be very stimulating to Tom. He might be more interested in the Why of these wars than of the What. So he might ask questions in class that don’t have much to do with what happened as they relate to why they happened. This might be genuine intellectual curiosity. But if Tom is forced to write a paper on what happened in any of these wars, might demur that assignment because it is obvious what happened, whereas it is far from obvious why it happened. So Tom might avoid doing this what assignment or forget it altogether. Or he might ask why questions in class that could be frustrating to the history teacher who thinks it is more important to know what than why.

Tom might forget to do his what assignment, or refuse to do it. He might even put up some kind of fuss in class, talk to some other kid in class, or look at his cell phone. Any of these things could get him in trouble. He might do the same thing at home, refusing or forgetting to do his homework assignment. Furthermore, he might be irritable, disagreeable, or otherwise difficult because the history/homework is somewhere in the back of his mind and he is fighting off the feelings he has about the what assignment. Likely, Tom doesn’t even know why he is irritable. He just doesn’t like something. He might say that History class is stupid, or he might say that school is stupid; he might even feel that he is stupid because he can’t seem to do an assignment in History class. None of this, however, does he say. He just acts like a four-year old having some kind of tantrum or resistance or avoidance the way four-year old kids naturally do when they have to do something they don’t want to do.

Emotional maturity
So what does it mean to be emotionally immature, and what is emotional maturity? Emotional maturity is this:
 Knowing how you feel
 Expressing how you feel
 Communicating how you feel
 Governing your expressions of how you feel
 Then:
o Knowing how other people feel
o Giving them liberty to express their feelings
o Valuing other people’s feelings…even though you don’t agree with them

The first order of business is to know how you feel. Emotionally immature people rush right into expressing some kind of feeling without knowing how they feel. What happens with 4-8-12 kids, as well as many emotionally immature adults, is that they jump right into some kind of emotional outburst. The 4-8-12 kid (or adult) doesn’t really know how they feel. Rather, they just rush right into some kind of emotional expression, usually anger, although sometimes silence, withdrawal, anxiety, or depression. So knowing how you feel is the beginning. This means knowing the four basic feelings:
 The love feelings: joy and sorrow
 The defense feelings: fear and anger
When you know how you feel, you will notice one of these feelings. It is easy to know and appreciate joy. It is much harder to know sorrow. Most people rush right through the sorrow and end up with one or both of the defense feelings of fear and anger. But if you know that you love something and know that you have lost it, you will know that you are simply sad about the loss. You have a “love problem”: you feel something (sad) singularly because you loved something and lost it. This is where most people get lost. They don’t know that they have loved something and they don’t know that they have felt sad when they lost this something. They just know that they are anxious or angry, usually angry. Emotional awareness starts with knowing what you love and knowing when you have lost something you love.

Note that there is a difference between expressing your feeling and communicating your feeling. Communicating “feelings” is extremely difficult and something that most people fail to do successfully. The problem with communicating feelings is that feelings aren’t words, and they are not thoughts. There are what we call a “third force” of human existence. When I “feel” something, there is always an emotional component, but there is also a physical component. When I feel something, I “feel” it in my chest, or my head, or maybe even my hands. Think of a time you felt “something” in your chest, hands, or head but you couldn’t put your finger on what this feeling was. This was a “feeling”: partly emotional and partly physical. But feelings also have cognitive components, and there is the problem with communicating feelings. We all try to put our feelings into cognitive words, and it rarely works. I just can’t find the right words to communicate my feelings because the words aren’t quite right. So I say things like, “I have this odd feeling but I can’t put it into words.” This “odd feeling” may be very important or just a passing fancy. So when I try to put my feelings into words, it is a struggle. This struggle is what makes human relationships so difficult. If I could magically put my feelings into words that the other person really understood, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. However, putting feelings into words is exceedingly difficult. Unfortunately, most people think it is easy, like, “I feel it, I say it, and you should understand what I feel.” Rarely, almost never. Communicating feelings is difficult and always will be. Keeps me in business.

And it keeps poets, musicians, and all artists in business. These are the guys and gals who really know feelings and don’t try to put these feelings into cogent words. Poets have “poetic license” when they write, and they work diligently on communicating feelings with words. They are the best with the possible exception of musicians who put feelings to words and music. Better yet might be the sculptors and painters who put feelings in clay and canvas. You want to learn how to communicate feelings into words, read poetry. You want to learn how to communicate feelings even better, take a pottery class or learn to play the Irish tin whistle. Or take a karate class, which puts feelings into physical action. Karate, poetry, and music lessons have helped me learn about communicating feelings without words.

After expressing feelings, and doing the hard work of communicating feelings, the job of emotional maturity is not done. Once you know your feelings, express your feelings, and get better (never perfect) at communicating your feelings, you need to learn to govern the expression of your feelings. I just spent a weekend with several family members. During these various visits I keep most of my feelings to myself. Why would I do that? Because it would not be possible to express my feelings when someone else was expressing theirs. Furthermore, the expression of my feelings would have been hurtful, or even harmful to these people whom I love. I was often sad because I so wanted to say how I felt, but I knew that I could not do that successfully because these family members would have misunderstood my feelings or concluded that I didn’t care for them. So my “containing” my feelings meant just that: I knew what I felt; I could have expressed it; but I concluded that I couldn’t adequately communicate my feelings; so I kept them to myself. Then I felt sad…because I couldn’t/shouldn’t express my feelings. And then I got over feeling sad. And now I can just love these family members.

Finally, if I contain my feelings (after knowing, expressing, and communicating them on earlier occasions), I can then move into social maturity, where I learn how to actually relate to other people. Psychological growth and emotional growth is not all about me. It is ultimately about other people. When I truly care about other people, I am socially mature. But this is another topic for another time.

Further reading:
1. The 4-8-12 Child, hopefully published this year, or you can read my blog
2. The Positive Power of Sadness, published this month (Praeger Press) written by Deb and me.
3. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman