Affect phobia can lead to an inflexible, narrow personality based on rigid defenses against certain feelings. As adults, these emotionally immature people have an automatic anxiety reaction when it comes to deep emotional connection. Most genuine emotion makes them feel exposed and extremely nervous. Throughout life, their energy has been devoted t

Instead of having a well-integrated sense of who they are, emotionally immature people are more like an amalgam of various borrowed parts, many of which don’t go together well. Because they had to shut down important parts of themselves out of fear of their parents’ reactions, their personalities formed in isolated clumps, like pieces of a puzzle t

When internalizing children have self-involved parents, they often think that being helpful and hiding their needs will win their parents’ love. Unfortunately, being counted on isn’t the same thing as being loved, and the emotional emptiness of this strategy eventually becomes apparent. No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-i

For emotionally immature people, all interactions boil down to the question of whether they’re good people or bad ones, which explains their extreme defensiveness if you try to talk to them about something they did. They often respond to even mild complaints about their behavior with an extreme statement, like “Well, then, I must be the worst mothe

They’ve developed enough self-awareness to be comfortable with their own feelings, as well as those of other people.

Their main sources of anxiety are feeling guilty when they displease others and the fear of being exposed as imposters. Their biggest relationship downfall is being overly self-sacrificing and then becoming resentful of how much they do for others.

They Resist Repairing Relationships Problems are bound to come up in any relationship, so it’s important to know how to handle conflict in ways that help the relationship weather the storm. It takes confidence and maturity to admit to being wrong and try to make things better. But emotionally immature people resist facing their mistakes. People who

Communication with emotionally immature people usually feels one-sided. They aren’t interested in reciprocal, mutual conversations. Like young children, they crave exclusive attention and want everyone to be interested in what they find engaging. If other people are getting more attention, they find ways to draw attention back to themselves, such a

When Meaghan finally realized what she really wanted from a relationship, she shyly told me, “I want to matter the most to someone. I want someone to want to be with me.”