My dad, the psych-nurse, told me years ago that when a person experiences trauma or tragedy in their childhood, they're jarred off the "normal" path of emotional developement.
If maturity and emotional growth were a bottle, the traumatized child's bottle has been smashed on the edge of a counter (like in those cool bar-brawls where cowboys smash their beers on the bar and use the jagged glass as a weapon, because some city-slicker insulted their girl... that really happens, right? =P)
Anyway - in some ways, they mature much more quickly than their peers, and in others they are emotionally delayed. (think the jagged edge of the bottle).
And the test concurs. I'm apparently as much an Emotional Child as I am an Emotional Adult. Go figure.
Specifically, when it comes to sorting through and dealing with my emotions, accepting my own limitations, and understanding how the past has effected me - I am a spiritual child. However, in brokeness and vulnerability, embracing grief and loss, and loving people - I'm ahead of the game.
It's strange for me to read the emotional description of a child, and think that part of my heart is still stuck at age ten, frozen there and still trying to figure everything out, while the rest of me grew up.
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