I use the term in defense-protection training of, “Emotional Maturity.” Most people know what emotions are and that they effect us daily but how many know what they are, what they cause and how one can achieve a certain emotional maturity that results in better responses to situations that can be depressing or can trigger aggression, anger and violence? This is a question martial artists who teach and mentor folks on self-defense should hold to task in the teachings of defense-protection.
"When the emotions are inactive, this is called the center." - Analects of Confucius
Mushin: Freedom from discriminative thinking.
Reading these two, typical, martial meme’s or quotes I have to ask people, “Do humans really have the capability to make our emotions inactive? Can human beings really free themselves from their emotions? The quick and solid answer to both questions is an emphatic, “No!” The real question then, to my mind, is this, “Can we suppress our emotions to a state that allows us a logical freedom and can we suppress the chemical effects from those same emotions so that we may act with appropriate and logical actions for defense-protection?” The quick and solid answer to both of these questions is a resounding and emphatic, “YEAH!”
What I perceive as our greatest hurdle in life and in particular defense-protection is emotional control. I have surmised to date from my research and personal experience that our emotions drive our pension for violence or violent behavior. To achieve suppression of emotion in critical situations is the acquisition of knowledge concerning these traits and the actions necessary to recognize and suppress their effects, the detrimental ones at a minimum.
We are unable to recognize the adverse effects of emotional influences if we do not know what they are and why they invade our daily lives. Emotions serve a purpose psychologically but sometimes take us places that end up causing us more harm then good.
This brings me back to the three brains that require training/practice to achieve some level of proficiency in handling effects of emotional/adrenaline dumps. Fear and Anger, two chief culprits for either survival or the affects of violence, etc.
Fear helps us survive by triggering adrenaline dumps that work with the lizard brain in our taking appropriate action. Take someone jumping out from behind a bush to scare you. You do several things of which primarily is the adrenaline dump then eyes widen and of course you instinctual pulling back, jumping back out of perceived harms way. Then you feel the after affects of the dump, heart racing, breathing shallow and quick, and hands shaking, etc.
This can either provide you safety or open you to violent attacks, i.e. you jump back and freeze. Your survival instincts will tell your lizard brain to do one of three things unless you have trained/practiced something else, i.e. you freeze, you flee, or you fight. Here again these can be either beneficial or detrimental, i.e. you froze when your friend jumped out to scare you so you didn't flee, or worse, or punch him/her in the face.
In a violent attack you don't want to freeze because in those cases they count on it. You may want to flee but it may not be the best tactical move, especially if you turn your back on the attack, provided you have the ability to break the freeze and do it. If you do instinctively start to fight then you may go beyond what is accepted as self-protection and move right on into a counter-attack with the word, "attack," being the killer in a court of law.
The monkey brain is the one that kicks in and dumps both emotional and adrenaline into your system and tells the monkey brain to take action and this can occur faster than conscious thought. Here is where the rubber meets the road for your training and practice, if for self-protection, must take these into it curriculum or you will fail and get hurt, maybe killed.
Now that folks have accepted the fact that emotions are a huge deal in defense-protection lets define emotional maturity. Emotional maturity refers to your ability to understand, and manage, your emotions. This is huge, the management ability of emotions is only achievable when you understand and have emotional maturity.
Know this if nothing else, “Emotional maturity and emotional intelligence are key factors in maintaining a clear and calm mind and a clear and calm mind are critical to achieving your defense-protection objectives.” There are a few signs you can look for to determine if you have that maturity:
1. You notice and can verbalize, with composure, when you are wrong.
2. You are aware of your biases.
3. You acknowledge your privilege and make use of it wisely.
4. You have created a space between feeling and reacting.
5. You allow yourself to consciously be vulnerable and allow for difficult feelings.
6. You are compassionate to others and especially to yourself.
7. You know when, who, and how to ask for help.
8. You know when to quit and when to persevere.
9. You have realized the more you know, the less you know and that there are things you don’t know you don’t know and are ok with that.
(https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16995/9-signs-of-emotional-maturity.html)
Another aspect of emotional and intelligent maturity is that with these tools you can also observe and detect what a student needs to build on their already substantial emotional maturity. It is recognized by folks that they have it but for the art of defense-protection applications in reality the level needs to be built a bit stronger because aggression with violence, especially of a predatory nature, is something seldom experiences so one needs to have a higher level to handle the ramifications of self-defense.
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