Stop Trying to Make People Grow Up
A therapist explains the power of focusing on your own maturity
When anxiety is high, the more we fixate on the behaviors of others. Maybe you try to teach your partner to dress better, or lecture your father on how to be a better listener. You’re more likely to be embarrassed by your children’s bad behavior or frustrated with a colleague’s inefficiency. If you’re not careful, you’ll exhaust yourself trying to drag others towards maturity.
As a therapist, I help people think about how to work on becoming more differentiated in their relationships. Differentiation is your capacity to think and act for yourself, but also to let others do the same. A less differentiated person is more likely to treat others like an extension of themselves. Their families often operate like one giant emotional blob, where an individual’s functioning depends on the entire group behaving better and calming down.
Working on differentiation looks like shifting from focus on others to focus on oneself when anxiety is high. To stop directing, and to start reflecting maturity.
Directing others can look like:
- Needing others to behave so you’ll feel calm.
- Lecturing or criticizing others.
- Needing people to think or act…
