🌿 Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People: The Nervous System Perspective

Sasha Tanoushka BCH IACT
5 days ago
2 min read

By Sasha Tanoushka | Thiscourse™

Emotional immaturity is rarely obvious at first.

It can hide behind warmth, humour, and even high intelligence. Yet over time, relationships with emotionally immature people — whether romantic, familial, or professional — begin to feel draining, confusing, or even unsafe.

Many clients describe it as “walking on eggshells” or “constantly second-guessing themselves.”

And there’s a reason for that: emotional immaturity is not just a personality trait — it’s a nervous system pattern.

🧠 What Emotional Immaturity Really Is

Psychologist Dr Lindsay C. Gibson, in Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People, explains that emotional immaturity involves avoidance of emotional responsibility.

Such individuals often:

Deflect discomfort or blame others for it
Seek control rather than connection
Confuse intensity with intimacy
Lack the capacity to self-regulate when triggered

This doesn’t necessarily make them “bad.” It means their nervous system has not learned the safety of co-regulation — the ability to stay connected while staying calm.

💔 Why Empaths and Healers Get Hooked

If you’re emotionally attuned, compassionate, or in a helping role, your nervous system reads other people’s dysregulation as a call to stabilize them. You unconsciously become the regulator — absorbing tension, smoothing over conflict, and providing emotional grounding.

This creates what’s known in polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges, 2011) as a co-regulation imbalance.

You are over-regulating for another person who isn’t yet able to meet you in reciprocity.

Over time, this leaves you fatigued, anxious, or detached from your own needs.

🌿 Disentangling: What It Really Means

Disentangling isn’t rejection — it’s self-regulation in action.

It’s the process of returning emotional responsibility to where it belongs, while maintaining empathy.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1️⃣ Awareness without absorption

Notice another person’s emotional state without taking it on. Breathe, ground, and observe before reacting.

2️⃣ Boundaries as clarity, not punishment

Healthy boundaries sound like:

“I care about you, but I can’t engage when the conversation turns blaming.”

3️⃣ Repair, don’t rescue

If someone cannot repair conflict, the relationship cannot deepen.

Repair is a hallmark of emotional maturity (Gottman Institute, 2017).

4️⃣ Re-pattern your body’s reflexes

Healing happens below cognition.

Through rhythmic entrainment, RTT, and guided autohypnosis, Thiscourse™ helps retrain the vagus nerve to recognize calm connection as safe — breaking cycles of hyper-vigilance and over-giving.

💫 Moving Forward

You don’t have to cut people out to heal — you only need to stop abandoning yourself in the process. When your nervous system feels balanced and safe, you stop seeking chaos disguised as connection.

You start attracting people who can meet you in maturity, empathy, and repair.