TW: some brief mentions of abuse and sexual assault.
This list of ten traits of the emotionally immature adult (or the childish adult) comes from Psychology Today (I only used the list and didn’t excerpt the article to stay within fair use—I left the internal links that came with the list—they lead to other, relevant, Psych articles. I did fix one spelling error. A small chuckle for self-centred me—the article was published on my birthday.):
- Emotional escalations: Young children often cry, get mad, or outwardly appear petulant and pouting. Grownups seldom do.
- Blaming: When things go wrong, young children look to blame someone. Grownups look to fix the problem.
- Lies: When there's a situation that's uncomfortable, young children might lie to stay out of trouble. Grownups deal with reality, reliably speaking the truth.
- Name-calling: Children call each other names. Adults seek to understand issues. Adults do not make ad hominem attacks, that is, attacks on people's personal traits. Instead, they attack the problem. They do not disrespect others with mean labels.
There is one exception. Sometimes adults, just like firefighters who battle forest fires, have to fight fire with fire. They may need to use "fire" to manage an angry child or an out-of-bounds adult, in order to get them to cease their bad behavior.
- Impulsivity—or as therapists say, "poor impulse control": Children strike out impulsively when they feel hurt or mad. They speak recklessly or take impulsive action without pausing to think about the potential consequences. Similarly, instead of listening to others' viewpoints, they impulsively interrupt them. Adults pause, resisting the impulse to shoot out hurtful words or actions. They calm themselves. They then think through the problem, seeking more information and analyzing options.
Again, some instances of acting on impulse can be hallmarks of mature behavior. Soldiers and police, for instance, are trained to discriminate rapidly between harmless and dangerous situations so that they can respond quickly enough to protect potential victims of criminal actions.
- Need to be the center of Attention: Ever tried to have adult dinner conversations with a two-year-old at the table? Did attempts to launch a discussion with others at the table result in the child getting fussy?
- Bullying: A child who is physically larger than other children his age can walk up to another child who is playing with a toy he would like and simply take it. The other child may say nothing lest the bully turn on them with hostility. In many cases, it's safer just to let a bully have what he wants. Adults, on the other hand, respect boundaries: Yours is yours and mine is mine.
- Budding narcissism: In an earlier post, I coined the term tall man syndrome for one way that narcissism can develop. If children—or adults—can get whatever they want because they are bigger, stronger, or richer, they become at risk for learning that the rules don't apply to them. Whatever they want, they take. This narcissistic tendency may initially look like strength. But in reality, it reflects a serious weakness: being unable to see beyond the self.
Psychologically strong people listen to others, hoping to understand others' feelings, concerns and preferences. Narcissists hear only themselves and are emotionally brittle as a result. They operate like children who want to stay out and play—even though dinner is on the table—and who pitch a fit rather than heed their parent's explanation that the family is eating now. Their mindset, in short, is "It's all about me." In the eyes of a narcissist, no one else counts; if they don't get their way, they may result to pouting or bullying in order to do so.
- Immature defenses: Freud coined the term defense mechanisms for ways in which individuals protect themselves and/or get what they want. Adults use defense mechanisms like listening to others' concerns as well as to their own. They then engage in collaborative problem-solving. These responses to difficulties signal psychological maturity. Children tend to regard the best defense as a strong offense. While that defensive strategy may work in football, attacking anyone who expresses a viewpoint different from what they want is, in life, a primitive defense mechanism.
Another primitive defense is denial: "I didn't say that!" or "I never did that!" when in fact they did say or do the thing they claim not to have done. Sound childlike to you?
- No observing ego—that is, no ability to see, acknowledge, and learn from their mistakes: When emotionally mature adults "lose their cool" and express anger inappropriately, they soon after, with their "observing ego," realize that their outburst was inappropriate. That is, they can see with hindsight that their behavior was out of line with their value system. They can see if their outburst has been, as therapists say, ego dystonic (against their value system).
Children who have not yet internalized mature guidelines of respectful behavior toward others, or who have not developed ability to observe their behaviors to judge what's in line and what's out of line, see their anger as normal. They regard their emotional outbursts as ego syntonic, that is, perfectly fine, justifying them by blaming the other person. In other words, "I only did it because you made me."
I admit to wincing a little when I read Kamachanda's comment in this diary because I see myself in some of the listed traits. Not fully, just a little. Those times when you snap at someone seemingly out of the blue and feel like an asshole right after, and are terrified of apologizing (yay for social anxiety! Not), but try to, anyway. Worse, sometimes, you don’t, or don’t have time to, miss the window and have to leave the situation unhandled, and a friend, or potential friend, is possibly left wondering if you’re a jerk. That’s the impulsivity control one. Ok, not the best example, it’s fairly mild, but you get the idea.
But, I do have trouble with that one, sometimes. I have difficulty understanding my emotions, a lot of the time. They can be confusing, especially when I’m feeling overwhelmed, emotionally, or feeling swamped from too many directions at once (Asperger’s and Sensory Processing Issues play a part in this). If there’s too much argy-bargy, argle-blargle, I’m all flailing and a-flapping, mentally spinning in place, feeling like a moron, and if there’s anything in this world I fucking despise, it’s feeling stupid.
Because feeling stupid is probably my greatest fear, right up there with LOOKING stupid (failure is one of my other big fears).
For me, the Impulse Control can lead to Emotional Escalation where the frustration at not being able to articulate what I’m feeling pushes me so hard, that I can break down into a sulky mood where I have to extricate myself to prevent my getting angry (I tell the person I want to leave and why so I don’t just abruptly scram and leave them in the lurch—I call it trying to be polite—not everyone agrees), or I can get teary and even cry (imagine a short, hairy, little bear-man crying). I usually, at least, try to explain why I think I’m crying, but it never feels right, that I haven’t found the real reason why I’m so frustrated. I just feel like the other person doesn’t understand, or isn’t really listening (my feeling of self-centredness showing there, I suspect).
I also feel deathly embarrassed that I got into that state to begin with. Embarrassment is somatic for me—it feels like getting punched in the chest with a brick, while scorched on the face with an open oven at the same time. Vastly uncomfortable and can lead to panic and asthma attacks.
Centre of Attention: here’s where I worry if I’m trying to be the centre of attention when I actually HATE being the centre of anyone’s attention for longer than a few minutes (unless it’s one-on-one in a therapy session, and Boy Howdy, have I ever needed a lot of therapy over the decades). But, then, I’m a worry-wort. :-p
Name Calling: I don’t do this one very often. I’m very careful not to. I was bullied MERCILESSLY as a child, and refuse to pull that shit on other people. Every rarely once in a while, though, a “stupid”, or “moron” will slip out, and I’m not always as immediately ashamed as I should be because I thoroughly believe it in the heat of the moment and it’s hard to shake me out of what I believe.
Bullying: No. Just… No. See above.
Yeah, I hate to think that I might be immature in some ways, but I’m pretty sure I am. I get locked into mental roundabouts where I can’t get out of the thinking state I got sucked into, emotionally, and that’s part of the frustration, so it goes… Kinda hard not to be when you grow up socially isolated with an undiagnosed neurological difference that made interacting with people incredibly difficult, learning disabilities that make things even more “fun” (dyslexia, ADHD, Sensory Processing issues—though not really a learning disability, it does make learning harder), and a severely-abusive home situation.
But, what does all this have to do with the list above and why I link to the diary I found it it in? Why the title? How did I “find myself in evil”, as I put it?
Getting to that.
Trump grew up in an abusive, possibly alcoholic home. We all know this. His father was a narcissistic fuckhead who treated his wife and kids horribly (c’mon, we know he had to have treated his wife the same shitty way he treated his kids… Amirite?) and Trumpy grew up in a loveless environment trying to please that monster his entire life and failing.
Note that word: Failing.
He failed at everything he ever did. He failed school, despite “passing”. He failed at running every business he ever set up. His relationships failed (what? You think that because he and Malevolia are still married their relationship is successful? Don’t count on it). He assaulted and raped, trying to be a “tough ladies man”. Then, the ultimate failure: he failed at being the most powerful man in the country/world—the President of the United States. Then he failed AGAIN: failing at being re-elected… and then failed at an autogolpe, a sitting President trying for a political, one party coup.
Imagine living in that head: abused your whole childhood, probably bullied as much as he bullied others, until he reached the point where he was powerful enough (probably his teens) where no one could bully him ever again, but failing at everything he does and being bullied by the one person in his life who could still do so: his monster of a father, until the day that man died. Trump holds grudges forever. He never forgets a slight, real or imagined, and everything his father ever said to him probably still burns in his mind at night.
The idea that he doesn’t sleep more than five hours a night is quite believable, with a load on his mind like that.
Is the narcissism a front for the most massive case of insecurity ever, solidified into an adamantium-hard self-defense mechanism? I don’t mean that it’s impenetrable. I mean that it’s so solidified in that it never changes. It’s always the same, predictable patterns. He CAN’T change. He’s STUCK. Constant pathological lying, blaming others for all of his perceived problems, his bullying and gaslighting of everyone around him when things don’t go his way, absolute denial of reality…
I’ve personally known people like this. None were anywhere near as evil, nor where they as broken. None had the money Trump grew up on, either, and I wonder if that’s what makes the difference. All of the people I knew who shared the same or similar traits (including myself) were frankly, poor.
I still wince when I see the above list with it’s descriptors, and I wonder if I’ll ever be fully mature, if my mental problems will ever be under enough control to make me feel “presentable” to myself, let alone others. ;-p
Sympathy isn’t quite the right word for what I feel toward Trump, or people like him. He’s done far too much damage by this point, both he and others. Seeing myself in some of his messed-up-ness only reminds me of his essential humanity and serves to remind me that I need to not hate him, even though I hate what he does, hate what he thinks, hate what he encourages people to do, hate what he says to, and about others. I hate everything about the man, but I need to remember not to hate him for being human.
He’s very flawed, very abused (I feel a lot of sympathy for the child he once was), very broken, and probably never going to be healthy in any way. He’s going to die an evil travesty of a person because of his upbringing, yes, but it was the choices he made as he went through his long life that made him evil. It bothers me a little that I could see anything of me in such a person, but then, I tend to empathize with a lot of different types of people. It’s my nature. I’m weird. I’ve been mean for no reason. I’ve felt like a little turd for it, too, and made attempts—some successful—at recompense for it. I actually empathized with some of my bullies when I was a kid. Not many of them, but some.
I do make fun of him, like everyone else. I even have an ever-growing file of over seven-hundred names collected from here on DK and elsewhere that people have been calling this sad-sack. So, I’m not immune from the name-calling. I’m hardly innocent.
Anyways, my ramble is long. I just wanted to noodle this out. Any thoughts from anyone else?