A Roadmap To An Emotionally Immature Society
I was asked to give a webinar in one Motherhood Community on the topic of "How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child?" This got me thinking of how exactly an emotionally immature society develops.
What do YOU think?
Where do we go wrong?
We will take a moment to reflect on that now. Bear with me.
People are at different levels on the emotional intelligence scale. Unfortunately, the vast majority have not learned real skills to understand, manage, and express their emotions or communicate non-violently, because it is neither done at home nor taught in school. We simply don’t know how!
On a larger scale, this results in a rather childish society (“Why the hell are you tailgating me in that Skoda? Just drive already!”) and a massive number of broken relationships and families.
If you always feel "okay" or don't perceive what's going on inside you, or if you're used to suppressing or escaping your feelings (through distractions, substitute activities, etc.), you can be sure you're still in the early stages of learning emotional wisdom.
We have a distant relationship with our emotions. Change can only happen one person at a time. A childish society is made up of individuals whose bodies are grown, but whose emotional intelligence, awareness, and communication have not kept pace, because these aspects were never given attention.
But how exactly does this shallowness and lack of skill manifest, and what automatic behaviors, blind spots, and structures reinforce it?
PREGNANCY: A miracle is here! And no one means any harm. But both the mother, her loved ones, and doctors often treat the unborn baby as if the child isn’t awake and aware – they don’t communicate directly with the baby. The mother’s own fears and desires are often also not fully acknowledged, even by herself.
BIRTH: The baby is born and treated like a patient. There is no one in the room who perceives the baby's true divinity, essence, and specific needs. The atmosphere is more practical and medical rather than attuned to the newly arrived soul. The baby's immense sensitivity is neither understood nor noticed, and the baby, already overstimulated in the hospital, has to shut down many of their senses just to survive.
SEPARATION: The baby is separated from the mother, either in the hospital or later at home. The baby’s feelings and experience of this separation are disregarded. The sympathetic fight/flight/freeze nervous system becomes even more strongly activated. The baby must adapt to the environment and external rhythms, while their own rhythms and needs are ignored. "You are not important. Your feelings are not important." This can be really subtle at times.
GROWING UP: As the child grows, their desires, “no’s,” emotions, and needs are overlooked or dismissed. The expectation is that the child will adapt and submit. In institutions, this is systematic and intentional, while in homes, it is more habitual. In many cases, people think the child is too young to understand. (Examples: the child doesn’t want to stay at daycare without their mother, but the mother leaves the child crying anyway // a grandparent dies, and no one deals with the child’s emotions. // The child is forced to cope with the parent’s difficult emotions, but their own are not supported. // A child never sees an emotional grownup and learns that emotions are not normal.)
AVOIDING EMOTIONS: The child is surrounded by an attitude of “everything’s fine.” The child’s emotions are “managed” through distraction and the ignoring of actual feelings. "Crying? Look how pretty this flower is, want to play? Eat something?"
SUPPRESSION OF EMOTIONS: Emotional expression is punished, suppressed, or judged. In the most extreme cases, physical punishment and isolation are used. The cumulative effect of such actions may manifest in completely different situations years later, where the body simply starts "reacting" – panic attacks, shock states, rage.
INTERNAL DIALOGUE DEVELOPMENT: By the age of 5-6, at the latest, the child has developed an effective method of “suppressing” feelings – they do what is expected of them. Their quietly developing internal dialogue starts telling them, "It's nothing, you'll be fine, look at the flower instead." The child learns to override their trauma. This results in an adult who says, “I’m fine” but has no real idea of how they truly feel.
SCHOOL: At school, not only are emotions suppressed, but also creativity, the need for movement, the body’s natural eating rhythms, the instinct to learn, the instinct to communicate, personal autonomy, and authority. The extent of this depends on the school, the country, the curriculum, and the people involved.
If you read this and are thinking, “Ah, Ida’s exaggerating, it’s not that bad,” then social conditioning has done its job well on you too. If we look at statistics on children's well-being and happiness, the mental health crisis, waiting lists for psychologists, divorce rates, court cases, and all the people yelling in traffic, and passive aggressive and dishonest tendencies of “really nice people”, I’m not exaggerating – it really is that bad. These are important issues. They all boil down to emotional well-being, which in turn comes down to emotional skill – intelligence.
This results in adults who smile, who are friendly, who “fit in.” Adults who almost never connect with their feelings in their bodies and who don’t know how to look beneath the surface. Adults whose relationships are chaotic or non-existent or superficial. Adults who override their emotions with addictions: fantasies, books, information, alcohol, drugs, exercise, tea, work, relationships, sex, adrenaline, novelty, gossip, and more. Adults who ignore and downplay their personal trauma, their true pain points, desires, and needs, or who blandly blame others. Adults who “settle” for situations, people, and mismatches far too quickly, living a “pretty okay life” until life shakes them – one way or another. But the shake-up may not help because these adults don’t know how to truly analyze or grow themselves. They often get stuck in loops of stories, patterns, and automatisms, experiencing autoimmune diseases, sleep problems, chaotic or overly controlled eating... And when someone around them feels emotions, this adult feels great discomfort and immediately wants to “fix” the other person or leave the situation, change the topic, avoid delving deeper. It’s uncomfortable! There is a lot of blaming others: loved ones, politicians, the weather, circumstances, and so on. The more sensitive “specimens” end up depressed, suicidal, with mental health disorders, trauma reactions they can’t explain. Some turn to crime. But most simply drift through life with a certain numbness. Occasionally, they may explode or curse.
Emotional intelligence begins with the courage to feel and recognize your own emotions, to validate and allow them. It does not involve suppression, putting them aside, or acting them out. Communication is actually an additional layer that comes later. If I don’t know what I feel, if I feel at all, where I feel it, how I feel, and why I feel, then I am in chaos. To avoid chaos, I grasp at distractions that suppress my awareness (blaming others is one of them).
If we are not in touch with our emotions and cannot simply BE with them without fighting or fleeing, then our life is like a shallow surface ripple, rarely able to dive deep through the layers of mud and reach the crystal at the heart. The essence. The true power and creative force. The center of transformation and change. We cannot experience true lasting happiness or moments, hours, and days of joy. We don’t feel the aliveness of raindrops or our own divinity.
Hi! I’m IIDALA aka Ida Materasu, and I’m a professional therapist, writer, spiritual mentor, mother, woman, and human being, who has walked the path of healing for more than 20 years. I facilitate breathwork and nondual healing groups, offer courses, subscription programs, and silent nature walks as well as receive clients one-on-one live and via zoom. I’m based in North-West Ireland, but work internationally. To book a session or get more info on NONDUAL courses or programs, feel free to explore the website or contact me directly.