EMOTIONAL MATURITY WRAP-UP

"For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it" (James 2:10).

"Functioning based on principle requires a tolerance of anxiety and a willingness to focus on self. Functioning based on feelings and subjectivity succumbs to the pressure for a quick reduction in anxiety and is aimed at changing others rather than changing self" (Kerr/Bowen, p.133).

I hope the series on emotional maturity has been helpful. I've tried to keep it simple. There are so many variables to consider that emotional maturity can become a very complex subject. I decided to do the series for three reasons:

1. So that you readers can see the lens through which I view individuals and families. All counseling is really family therapy. Each individual has dynamic connections to those with whom he has blood, marital, fellowship and work relationships.

2. To do some conscientiousness raising about how emotion works. Not everyone displays his emotions in the same way. A person experiencing stress may appear to be nonreactive, but his inactivity, or hypoactivity, is as much an emotional response as the person who becomes hysterical and hyperactive. Indecisiveness and dysthymia are good indicators of high emotional reactivity.

3. To deal with self-righteousness. "She had the affair, I didn't" a husband might insist, thinking she is the cause of the problem, there's nothing he needs to change. Both contribute to the problem. Both must understand what they do contribute. It also must be understood that the same emotional process that leads to an affair leads to gossip, obesity and addictions.

Restating the best means of dealing with high levels of emotion:

1. Trust in God; faith in Christ.

2. Fellowship; hanging around good people.

3. Exercise. This wasn't in my first list; I thought that I should separate it out of education.
Exercise burns more than calories; it can burn stress too!!

4. Education.

Grace&Peace;
Tom