Spotting Emotional Immaturity: Teach Clients to Understand Emotional Immaturity
- Importance of describing over-diagnosing
- Projective identification and the Emotionally Immature Relationship System
- Characteristics of emotional immaturity and maturity
- What relationships feel like with emotionally immature people
- Emotional loneliness and the fear of non-being
- Good coping, emotional suffering; polyvagal effects
- Self-disconnection and distrust of the inner world
- The four horsemen of self-defeat
- Loss of emotional autonomy and mental freedom
- Healing fantasies, role-self, internalizer vs. externalizer styles
- Why clients find it so hard to break free from exploitation and emotional neglect
- Why CBT and psychodynamic approaches aren't enough
- Exercises to help clients express themselves without anxiety
- Teach clients to simultaneously disengage and become relationship leaders
- How to define and use values as guideposts for the future
- Phrasing suggestions, encouraging agency, and showing how it's done
- The emotionally immature person's "distortion field"
- Emotional coercion: how clients can spot and deflect control maneuvers
- Communication skills to establish boundaries without guilt
- When to sever ties with someone
- Techniques to release clients' feelings of personal "badness"
- Interventions to address fears of being selfish and incapable of love
- Tuning into energy shifts to track safety, unreliability, and threats in others
- Repurpose self-doubt, shame, fear, and guilt
- Practicing experiencing emotionally intimate connection
- Using countertransference effectively
- Honoring personal style
- Invitation, collaboration, and celebration vs. direction and persuasion
- How to phrase suggestions
- Research and treatment limitations
