Growing Up Emotionally

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is “when I grow up”. I’m going to be forty next year, so by most standards, I’m considered to have “grown up”. Only by the model that includes life experiences such as working, buying a house, etc., I’m not necessarily truly an adult. After all, though my spouse and I own a house together, buying it was mostly done out of necessity so that I could go into long-term care. I’ve never worked, not even had a side job as a teen.

That being said, in many respects I’m still young at heart. I know everyone my age says so to be cool, but I don’t mean it in a positive way. Rather, I mean it to say that emotionally I’m very vulnerable. Like I shared when discussing emotional development as it relates to intellectual disability (and autism) in 2023, on many subscales of the emotional development assessment used here in the Netherlands, I’m considered an infant or toddler. That doesn’t mean I can’t grow.

When I grow emotionally, I’d like to become more regulated. My psychiatrist used to say that I’d likely experience less emotional dysregulation after age thirty. I’m not sure that’s true in my case. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not true. The frequency and severity of my meltdowns has increased, though the duration has lessened significantly. I no longer experience outbursts that last all day. That, I mostly attribute to my staff’s proactive attitude.

I’d also like to be more independent. The problem with this, however, is the fact that my energy level varies significantly from day to day. Because of this, I hardly ever progress in my independence even though I might be able to. The reason is the fact that, if I do something independently once, my staff and others are going to expect me to always be able to do it.

Same for adaptability and emotional regulation: my abilities vary from day to day and sometimes hour to hour. I, for this reason, struggle to really make progress. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.