Managing Emotional Takeovers

Whether it be a parent, a partner, a boss, a coworker, or a friend, interacting with someone who is emotionally immature can feel like navigating a minefield of emotions. You are left on guard, proceeding with caution without the ability to guarantee your safety or predict the outcome, with the overwhelming fear that something could go terribly wrong at any moment. The mere idea of engaging with an emotionally immature person may leave you feeling confused, exhausted, angry, and utterly helpless. These feelings are completely normal.

In this article, we will break down the characteristics of emotionally immature individuals, provide guidance for managing emotional takeovers and offer strategies that can help you navigate these challenging interactions with resilience.

What Makes Someone Emotionally Immature?

Emotionally immature individuals often possess a combination of the following characteristics:

Difficulty managing emotions: They may struggle to regulate their emotions, leading to frequent outbursts, mood swings, or excessive sensitivity.
Lack of empathy: They may have trouble understanding or considering the feelings of others, often prioritizing their own needs and desires.
Immature coping mechanisms: They may rely on unhealthy coping strategies such as avoidance, denial, or blaming others to deal with stress or difficult situations.
Difficulty taking responsibility: They may avoid taking responsibility for their own actions or mistakes, often blaming external factors or others.
Issues with boundaries: They may have trouble setting or respecting boundaries, leading to manipulative or controlling behaviors.
Need for constant validation: They may have a strong need for constant reassurance or praise, often seeking approval from others to feel good about themselves.

While those with personality disorders like narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder fall within this category, not everyone who exhibits emotionally immature behaviors has a personality disorder.

What is an Emotional Takeover?

An "emotional takeover" (coined by Dr. Lindsay Gibson) is when an emotionally immature individual dominates a situation to meet their own needs without considering the impact on the other person. These emotional takeovers often involve disproportionate emotional reactions, manipulative behavior, and a lack of empathy in which the individual prioritizes their needs over others. Emotional takeovers can come unexpectedly, without warning, and at the expense of the other person, leaving them feeling drained, confused, and emotionally exhausted.

The Impact of Emotional Takeovers

Emotional takeovers can have a significant negative impact on individuals who are subjected to them. These effects can include:

Emotional exhaustion: Constant exposure to emotional turmoil can lead to feelings of being drained and overwhelmed
Confusion: The manipulative and erratic behavior of emotionally immature individuals can create confusion and uncertainty
Self-doubt: Emotional takeovers can affect an individual's self-esteem and confidence
Relationship strain: These interactions can damage relationships, leading to conflict, resentment, and even estrangement
Unbalanced dynamic: The person subjected to the emotional takeover becomes accustomed to addressing the other person’s needs while neglecting their own

A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Emotional Takeovers:

Managing emotional takeovers requires awareness, assertiveness, and a willingness to engage in boundary-setting and self-care. The following steps provide a guideline on managing emotional takeovers with resilience.

Step 1: Predict the Other Person's Reactions

Emotionally immature individuals are prone to certain patterns of behavior. Try to identify their patterns before interacting with the individual.

Review the emotional takeover patterns and specifically identify which of them are applicable to your situation based on past interactions with the person. The patterns can generally be grouped into three categories:

Domination: Emotionally immature individuals are self-focused with a "me, me, me" mentality. They may hijack conversations, divert attention from the topic at hand, or refuse to acknowledge your needs or feelings. This behavior may lead the subjected individual to attend to the person’s needs rather than addressing the initial issue.
Devaluation: Emotionally immature individuals may engage in emotional abuse tactics such as blaming, shaming, criticizing, or threatening. They may also invalidate your feelings, needs, and experiences. Tone, words, and body language all play a role in making the individual subjected to the emotional takeover feel bad.
Diversion: Emotionally immature individuals may use gaslighting, deflection, or emotional manipulation to avoid taking responsibility or to gain control. Gaslighting is a process in which a person manipulates a situation and causes you to doubt your perceptions and memories by distorting reality through tactics like denial, minimization, invalidation, redirection, and/or projection. A tell tale sign of diversion is if you feel a sense of confusion as the conversation evolves. Subjected individuals who are not aware of what is happening may lose themselves in a cycle of defensiveness and reassurance.

Step 2: Identify a Goal for the Interaction

Each time you enter into a conversation with an emotionally immature individual, try to identify a goal for yourself before the interaction.

Summarizing your goal in a sentence can help clarify and solidify your needs. Getting into the practice of considering your needs can be a helpful way to stay grounded and focused as the person derails the conversation.

When identifying a goal, it is important to consider:

What you have control over: You are unable to impact the person's reaction, response, or receptiveness; however, you do have control over what you communicate, how you communicate, and your ability to stay focused on your goal.
The extent the goal is achievable: This is another opportunity to focus on what you have control over. Achievable goals may include informing a person of something, expressing yourself, establishing a boundary, etc. Hoping for a particular response (empathy, understanding, acknowledgment) from the person may not be realistic. While you may not be able to control how they respond, you can request that they hear what you have to say.
The desired outcome from the specific interaction: The more specific and concrete you can be, the better. Focusing on improving the "relationship" is less effective as it may lead you to defer to the other person's needs and emotions.

Step 3: Commit to Observation Mode vs. Falling into Reactivity

Staying in observation mode is a foundational part of managing emotional takeovers. Emotionally immature individuals can easily hijack and escalate situations based on their emotions. By maintaining a detached perspective during interactions, you protect yourself from being drawn into their drama and avoid falling into reactivity and caretaking. Think of yourself as a neutral observer, much like a scientist conducting a study.

Look out for changes in their emotional state: Pay close attention to their facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. Note whether they seem relaxed or tense, open or closed off, and how they respond to your attempts at connection. This works in tandem with Step 4 listed below.
Learn to recognize what is not pertinent to the conversation: As you cement yourself in your needs, you will become more skilled in noticing the person's redirection, hijacking, and tendency to make things about themselves. Gaining awareness of when this happens and when topics are brought up that are not relevant to the conversation can help you redirect when appropriate

Step 4: Stay Grounded Within Yourself

Being able to identify your needs and feelings is one thing, being able to stay rooted in them during the conversation is another. Treating your needs and feelings as a priority can help to shift the dynamic.

When you are vulnerable to an emotional takeover, you might default into caretaking, defending, or reassuring. Staying grounded in your needs and feelings allows you to keep yourself in the forefront rather than just responding and reacting to the other person.

Keep your identified goal front of mind: Remember the initial one-sentence goal you established for the interaction (step 2). Keep it as your mantra to help you stay on track. Being firmly rooted in the goal can help you more easily acknowledge when things go off-track.
Look out for changes in your emotional state: Recognizing your own feelings during the interaction can act as a cue for when your partner may be dominating, devaluing, or diverting the conversation. The more specific you are with your feelings, the better. Paying particular attention to unpleasant feelings like confusion, exhaustion, frustration, and guilt can be helpful to start to identify a shift in conversation and when things are getting derailed.

There are different resources you can use to get a better handle on your feelings, including the feelings wheel and mood meter. If it is difficult for you to identify your emotions, it is important to get into the practice of naming how you feel. Apps like How We Feel help individuals to easily define and make sense of their feelings on a user-friendly platform.

Step 6: Engage in Self-Advocacy/Boundary Setting

When interacting with an emotionally immature individual, you are forced into a position that requires your full attention. Instead of just focusing on your needs and goals, you also must be adept at recognizing the manipulation tactics at play, while having the confidence to redirect the conversation and advocate for yourself.

Managing emotional takeovers involves clearly communicating and enforcing limits on behavior and interactions to protect yourself. During the conversation, you have the opportunity to put what you have learned into practice, in terms of being able to recognize the patterns at play, become rooted in your feelings, and work towards redirecting the conversation.

While it may be challenging at first, it is a practice that can be improved overtime. Don't worry about getting it perfect. Know that it will be awkward when you start this practice. Just like with any skill, you will be able to gain confidence that will make the practice of managing emotional takeovers easier overtime. The nature of the emotionally immature person further complicates things. It is possible that they will be receptive to what you have to say; however, it is equally likely that you will continuously have to repeat your boundary or engage in redirection until you get a response.

With self-advocacy and boundary setting, being clear and direct is key. The different parts of this include:

Acknowledging the other person and what they are saying
Calling out the shift that happens during the conversation
Stating your feelings (if you feel comfortable and safe to do so)
Communicating your needs - in terms of redirecting the conversation or taking a break
Restating the boundary and self-advocating as needed

Understanding the concept and process is the first part of it. But what does engaging in self-advocacy/boundary setting while managing emotional takeovers look like practically?

Examples of self-advocacy/boundary setting include…

To protect against domination when managing emotional takeovers:

“I see that you want to talk about ________ , can we finish talking about ________ first?”

“What you are sharing is not relevant to the conversation, let me finish sharing what I am saying.”

“I understand that you feel ________ , when we talk about ________ , but it is important to me that we address this issue.”

“I feel unheard right now. I wanted to speak to you about ________ .”

“I feel confused. We were talking about ________ and now we are talking about ________ .”

“I feel discouraged/hopeless when I try to speak to you about something that is important to me and the conversation topic changes. I need a minute before I can continue the conversation.”

“What happened just took me off guard. We were talking about ________ and now we are talking about ________. I need to take a break from this conversation to collect my thoughts.”

To protect against devaluation when managing emotional takeovers:

“I don’t appreciate that tone. Please don’t speak to me that way.”

"I am feeling ________. I need you to stop making comments where you ________.”

“If you continue to speak to me that way, we will need to pause and find another time to talk about this when we both feel more calm.”

“You don’t need to agree with what I have to say, but you do need to communicate with me in a respectful manner that does not put me down.”

“When you interrupt me to share how you feel, it feels like your feelings are more important than mine. Can I finish sharing?”

“What you are saying doesn’t reflect how I feel. Can I finish sharing my feelings?”

“When you blame/criticize/threaten/shame me I shut down. I need you to listen to me without interrupting.”

To protect against diversion when managing emotional takeovers:

“While you might not think this is a big deal, it is important to me. Can I finish sharing?”

“Before sharing what you think, can you tell me what you are hearing me say to make sure we are on the same page?”

“While you may feel that other things/people are at play, can you acknowledge what you did and how it affects me?”

“You feel that I have done something wrong. We can address that in a moment. Can you first acknowledge what you did and how it affects me?”

“I wanted to speak to you about _____ , can we stay on topic?”

“We remember things differently. What I am saying is….”

“What I am talking about is when you _______.”

Final Words

Managing emotional takeovers can be challenging, but it is possible with the right strategies. By understanding the characteristics of emotionally immature individuals, recognizing patterns of behavior, getting rooted in your feelings and needs, and practicing self-advocacy and boundary-setting, you can protect yourself from the negative effects of these interactions. You deserve to have a healthy and balanced relationship where your needs and feelings are taken into consideration.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by managing emotional takeovers and would benefit from getting support, there are trained therapists at The Center for Growth that can support you. The Center for Growth has locations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ocean City, New Jersey, Mechanicsville, Virginia, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Fayetteville, Georgia.

At TCFG you can schedule directly online with a therapist. If you prefer talking to a therapist first, you may call (215) 922-LOVE (5683) ext 100 to be connected with our intake department. Lastly, you can call our Director, “Alex” Caroline Robboy, CAS, MSW, LCSW at (267) 324–9564 to discuss your particular situation. For your convenience, we have five physical therapy offices and can also provide counseling and therapy virtually.

Our Guarantee: If after your first session you are not sold that you are working with the right therapist, do not hesitate to call our intake line at 215 922 5683 x 100 or Alex at (267) 324-9564 and ask to be rescheduled with another therapist. The choice of how you want to proceed is yours. Our only goal is to support you in becoming the best you possible.

For your convenience, we have brick and mortar offices and work with clients virtually in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Physical Therapy Office Locations:

Ocean City Therapy Office 360 West Ave, Floor 1, Ocean City, NJ 08226
Mechanicsville Therapy Office 9044 Mann Drive, Mechanicsville Virginia, 23116
Society Hill Therapy Office 233 S. 6th Street, C-33, Philadelphia PA 19106
Art Museum / Fairmount Therapy Office 2401 Pennsylvania Ave, Suite 1a2, Philadelphia PA 19130
Providence Therapy Office 173 Waterman St. Providence, RI 02906
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