Have you ever walked away from a conversation with a colleague, family, or friend, feeling like you were speaking different languages? No matter how clearly or politely you expressed your needs, the other person completely missed the point. Maybe they even saw it as an attack on them, even if you only brought up one behavior. The explanation lies in how we developed our brain patterns.
Understanding these patterns can transform how you navigate challenging people in every area of your life. After all, who we are at work, at home, and in our communities should align, because emotional intelligence isn't something we should compartmentalize.
The Brain Science of Emotional Immaturity
Neuroscience reveals that emotionally immature, highly reactive people operate from a different brain pattern than those who've developed emotional maturity. To understand this, we need to know how our two brain hemispheres work.
Your right hemisphere is like an emotional artist—it processes feelings, empathy, intuition, creativity, and meaning-making. It's where we experience wonder, deep connection, and find meaning in life's complexity. When babies and mothers bond, they communicate through right-hemisphere resonance.
Your left hemisphere operates more like a logical accountant—it categorizes, analyzes, problem-solves, and thinks in concrete terms. It loves facts, plans, and black-and-white answers. It's essential for getting things done, but it can't access the full spectrum of human experience, particularly feelings.
Here's the key insight: emotionally mature people actively use both hemispheres, shifting fluidly between logical analysis and emotional understanding. Emotionally immature people, however, have learned to over-rely on their left hemisphere while their right hemisphere remains underdeveloped.
Psychologist and coach, Dr. Lindsay Gibson's says this often stems from early attachment experiences. If caregivers didn't safely receive a child's emotional world, they unconsciously learn that their right hemisphere—the feeling, intuitive side—is dangerous territory. When they would go there as children, they would hear: Stop crying! Don’t be such a baby! You’re too sensitive! So they stay in the "safer" left hemisphere, becoming hyper-logical but emotionally disconnected.
What Emotional Immaturity Looks Like
Emotional maturity is like having access to a full orchestra. Most of us can call on different instruments as needed—sometimes we need the precision of a violin, other times the depth of a cello. Emotionally immature people are like musicians who only know how to play one instrument, even when the music calls for something entirely different.
They struggle with empathy, not by choice, but due to neural wiring. Empathy requires the imagination to step into someone else's experience. When your right hemisphere is underdeveloped, you can see someone, interact with them, even care about them, but you don’t easily access that inner sense of what it's like to be them. Imagine trying to understand a symphony by just reading the sheet music—you miss the emotional experience entirely.
They're concrete thinkers in an abstract world. Ask an emotionally immature person about feelings, motivations, or the deeper meaning behind something, and you'll often get a response like "What's the point of this touchy-feely stuff?" “It’s exhausting talking about feelings!” They're not being dismissive to hurt you—they genuinely do not understand the need to explore these territories because their brain has gotten used to avoiding those emotional pathways. Remember, they were conditioned to see this as a danger zone.
Everything circles back to their perspective. Try discussing your experience with an emotionally immature person, and watch how quickly it returns to their viewpoint. Dr. Gibson describes this as having a "3-degree arc of perception in a 360-degree world." They know their small slice extremely well, but struggle to see beyond it. Road rage is an example: “Idiot driver, now I can’t go faster!” They fail to recognize that the other driver could be lost, or there may be other possibilities we can’t know, but they’re not out there to ruin your day.
They interpret reality through their emotional reactions. Tell an emotionally immature spouse: “I wish you’d talk to me more gently, it hurts me and makes the kids uncomfortable.” They might respond with "Fine, everything is my fault! I’m the worst!” They're interpreting your practical request with their emotional vulnerability to shame. Perhaps they were often shamed as a child, and that’s their trauma response.
The Universal Challenge: Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short
Whether you're dealing with this pattern in a team member, spouse, or family member, you've probably discovered that typical relationship strategies fall flat. Heart-to-heart conversations that require emotional vulnerability, feedback sessions that ask for self-reflection, or attempts to explain how their behavior affects you—these approaches often backfire because you’re asking someone to use capabilities they haven't fully developed. Simply suggesting a conversation may infuriate them.
The key insight? You can't coax or coach someone to use tools they would struggle to hold. It's like trying to teach poetry to someone who is still learning to read—the foundation simply isn't there.
A Different Approach: The Space Strategy
Instead of trying to change emotionally immature people (which won’t work unless they're internally motivated), focus on creating space—space for yourself to operate from your full emotional range, and space for them to function within their current capabilities.
I love what Dr Gibson says about managing our expectations: "If a person wants to understand what you're saying, it doesn't matter how you say it." The key thing is, say what you need to say. Shutting up for the sake of peace only enables their poor communication habits. Here are three things you can try:
1. Set boundaries like you're establishing a new system. Dr. Gibson's clinical and coaching research suggests that boundary-setting with individuals who are emotionally immature requires a distinct approach. Keep it simple, concrete, and repetitive. Don't over-explain the emotional reasoning behind your boundary. Simply state what you will and won't do, and prepare to repeat it consistently.
“I feel disrespected when you shout at me. Let’s talk about this again when you’re calm and ready to listen." Then stick to it, conversation after conversation. At some point, they may change–but that’s a choice only they can make. How often you are willing to repeat the message is up to you.
2. Manage your nervous system first. Before important conversations with emotionally immature people, do a quick internal check. Are you feeling reactive? Frustrated? Desperate to make them understand? If so, you're not ready. Take time to regulate your emotional state—they'll sense your reactivity and either shut down or become defensive.
Remember, when we're stressed or activated, we all become emotionally reactive. Your job is to stay in full-brain functioning so you can respond skillfully rather than reactively.
3. Expect the boundary to be tested repeatedly. Emotionally immature people often fail to honor boundaries because they lack understanding and respect for them. They may eventually accept them when they learn that testing boundaries doesn't work. It's like water finding the path of least resistance; they'll keep pushing until they discover the new norm.
You decide how many times you’re willing to have your boundaries tested. What is healthy for you, your family, or your team?
Practical Strategies for Every Relationship
In the workplace: Focus on concrete deliverables and clear processes. If someone struggles with open-ended dialogue, provide detailed agendas to facilitate effective communication. If they have difficulty with emotional feedback, focus on specific behaviors and tangible outcomes. Leverage their analytical strengths while protecting your own need for meaningful connection.
In family relationships: Remember that you can't force someone to care about your inner world, but you can stop exhausting yourself trying to make them understand. Create space for your own emotional needs through other relationships and activities. Keep interactions focused on practical matters when that's all they can handle.
In friendships: Accept that some people will meet you in the deep end of emotional intelligence, while others will always prefer the shallow end–they’re just around to have fun. Both can have value for you, but they require different approaches and mindsets. Which friendships are valuable for you to tend to, and how willing are you to adjust?
The Integration Challenge: Using Your Whole Brain
The most liberating insight from Dr. Gibson’s work is that you don't need emotionally immature people to change in order to have a workable relationship with them. You just need to understand their operating system and adjust your approach accordingly.
More importantly, you need to protect your own access to both hemispheres of your brain. The biggest risk in dealing with emotionally immature people is that you'll start operating at their level to maintain harmony. Let’s just keep to our left brains and keep things drama-free! When you do this, you lose access to your empathy, creativity, intuition, and sense of meaning—the very qualities that make you an effective leader and a kind human being.
The goal isn't to make everyone emotionally mature. It's to create conditions where you can thrive authentically while maintaining deep-to-merely-functional relationships with the full spectrum of human personalities in your life.
Sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing you can do is accept someone's limitations and work skillfully within them. Let them decide to do the inner work–or not.
This means having deep, meaningful conversations with some people in your life while keeping things practical and surface-level with others. It might mean finding your emotional nourishment from multiple sources rather than expecting one person to meet all your needs. If it’s impacting your mental health and happiness, what difficult decision do you need to make?
Your Next Steps
Start by identifying the emotionally immature people in your life—not to judge them, but to adjust your approach. Notice which relationships leave you feeling depleted or frustrated, and ask yourself: "Am I trying to use strategies that require tools they don't have?"
Then, practice creating space. This isn't about building walls—it's about meeting people where they are and building sustainability. How can you show up authentically without exhausting yourself trying to force connections that aren't possible?
Remember, developing emotional maturity is a lifelong journey for everyone. We all have moments when overwhelm or fatigue causes us to operate from a limited emotional range. The difference is that some people have learned to recognize these moments and return to left and right brain agility, while others remain stuck on the left side, protecting themselves.
Your job isn't to fix anyone else's emotional development—that’s their work to do. Your job is to nurture your own growth while creating conditions for everyone to give their best within their current capabilities.
What relationships in your life might benefit from this reframed approach?
Want to Dive Deeper? Essential Reading from Dr. Lindsay Gibson
Dr. Gibson's has helped millions of people understand and navigate emotionally immature relationships. If this article resonated with you, her books offer more strategies and insights:
"Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" - This bestselling book is the perfect starting point if you grew up with emotionally immature caregivers and want to understand how those patterns still affect your adult relationships. Gibson provides practical tools for healing and breaking generational cycles.
"Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents" - The follow-up guide focuses specifically on the recovery process, offering step-by-step strategies for building emotional resilience and creating healthier relationship patterns.
"Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People" - Her newest work expands beyond family relationships to address emotionally immature people in all areas of life—colleagues, friends, romantic partners, and community members. This book is especially valuable for leaders navigating these dynamics professionally.
Each book builds on the brain science principles we've discussed here, providing detailed case studies, practical exercises, and proven strategies for protecting your emotional well-being while maintaining functional relationships.
