Most of us at some time have felt guilty, hopeless, anxious, depressed, jealous, vulnerable, rejected, hateful, inferior, stupid, angry, grumpy, fearful, etc.

If you are emotionally immature or have little emotional intelligence then you may often jump to the wrong conclusion about your feelings and that of others.

You may jump to a wrong conclusion based on insufficient evidence and react inappropriately emotionally.

Psychologists use fancy terms such as emotional reasoning, mind reading, and personalization to try and categorize different responses which are inaccurate readings of emotions or circumstances but they are all basically an impulsive, faulty, incomplete, wrong, or untrue reading of or reaction to reality.

If you sometimes feel a little guilty, moderately guilty, and very guilty then you probably have relatively good gut or impulsive guilt reactions but if you feel very guilty almost every time and frequently then your sense of emotional and physical reality may be bad.

Similarly if you have different degrees of anxiety or any emotion for that matter then you are probably emotionally healthy but if you feel very anxious or very emotional almost every time and do so frequently then your sense of physical and emotional reality for anxiety and other emotions is probably bad.

Another sign of emotional immaturity is if you see another human get mad, angry, hateful, grumpy, etc. and impulsively almost always feel that it is probably due to something that you did or said and it is your fault. Simply asking what made you mad, angry, hateful, depressed, grumpy, etc. will often get to the real cause of the emotional expression. Often you may not be involved at all and definitely you are not responsible for another’s emotional state or reaction.

If you feel insecure then you may have real justifications for it such as working at a job after working at 6 different jobs in a two year period. A feeling of insecurity in a relationship may be justified by a spouse who was promiscuous before marriage or had 3 prior divorces. A male may feel insecure if he marries a beautiful woman whom men are constantly hitting on or flirting with. Another major cause of justified insecurity arises from bad financial management which results in great financial stress and a feeling that you are always on the verge of bankruptcy.

Some are burdened with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity and may feel that they are stupid, boring, or are lacking in some personality department.

There are unfortunately few fast fixes and becoming better employed, more competent, more educated, more interesting, more sociable, etc. takes time and courageous determination to change your lousy circumstances and flawed personality.

Just making optimistic affirmations and thinking about your bad circumstances will not solve your emotional problems. What it will really take is some courageous determined action with selfresearch, selfeducation, expert advice, and actually changing your bad habits into better ones and developing better selfcontrol over your emotions.

Good parents and role models, other siblings, and much exposure to many different kinds of personalities or humans is the ideal way to mature emotionally. Leading a life largely isolated from other humans will handicap you emotionally but there are still many basically introverted humans who lead successful happy lives and aren’t overly concerned what others may think of them and don’t feel emotionally trapped or insecure. Introverts tend to be more selective in the humans that they associate with and are usually not concerned with being socially popular.

If you assume too much and have a tendency to jump to conclusions without actual complete evidence or often react impulsively emotionally by assuming what actually is not true or reality, then you have a serious problem where simple advice will not be enough such as just saying to yourself- don’t be so impulsive or think before you react emotionally.

Emotional immaturity takes long to overcome and the longer that you have been immature the harder it will be to eventually mature emotionally.