7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E.

Fielding

Book

Mastering Adulthood
Go Beyond Adulting to Become an Emotional Grown-Up
Lara E. Fielding
New Harbinger, 2019 
 74  0 
Buy book or audiobook
Listen now 



 Download

 74   

Rating  Qualities

8 Applicable
Concrete Examples
Inspiring

Recommendation

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 1/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

Psychologist Lara E. Fielding offers a map of the path to adulthood and

teaches readers how to gain new skills that can ease disquieting or stressful
feelings. People often develop habits to make life easier and then forget why
they adopted them in the first place. Fielding suggests using mindfulness to
detect and address these habits. She suggests also applying mindfulness to
identify and reframe past events that impose a lingering anxiety on
your present life. Fielding effectively blends observation, theory and case
studies in her discussion of using mindfulness to navigate life’s challenges.

Take-Aways
• Becoming an adult is a challenge that calls on your ability to cope
flexibly with change.
• People tend to under-regulate when they feel anxiety, panic and
despondency, and to over-regulate when they lack motivation.
• How you think, feel and behave contributes to your personality.
• Determine the costs of your habits by assessing whether you over-
regulate or under-regulate.
• Use the metaphor of a car to assess your emotions. You might be
carrying “passengers” – that is, the effects of past events superimposed
on the present.
• Try to determine if you use emotional habits to conceal awareness of
your passengers.
• Practicing mindfulness can help you respond thoughtfully, not
automatically.
• Use mindfulness to discern the link between different and often
seemingly arbitrary parts of your life so you can bring them together.
• Gather information to explore yourself.

Summary
Becoming an adult is a challenge that calls on your ability to cope
flexibly with change.
The ability to be flexible as you adapt to changes in your environment is
called emotional regulation. It comes under pressure when you face major
changes, such as starting a new job or ending a relationship. Faced with
charting the course of your life, particularly at times of upheaval, you might
feel despondent and anxious; you might lack energy. Growing and maturing
is never easy, though it is important to understand that everyone encounters
doubt and despondency.

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 2/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

If these feelings limit you, you can learn strategies for countering them. These
new skills won’t merely address the outward manifestations of inner distress.
As you learn to work your mind and body, these skills can help you find the
core of your upset feelings and gain an upper hand.

People tend to under-regulate when they feel anxiety, panic and

despondency, and to over-regulate when they lack motivation.
You might feel so anxious that you believe some facet of your emotional
system is unregulated. If you feel anxiety, panic and despondency, you may be
under-regulating. If you feel unmotivated and aren’t interested in anything,
you may be over-regulating.

People develop habits to make their life easier. Habits free your mind to deal
with new issues because the habits automatically address a range
of problems, known and unknown. People tend to do what makes them feel
better and to refrain from doing what makes them feel worse. This inclination
is what drives you to make almost anything you do or think into a habit.

To make matters more complicated, you might lose conscious awareness of

how your formed some of your habits. This could make it harder for you to
acknowledge that something you do habitually is no longer working on your
behalf. You might be using emotional habits to address immediate
discomfort, but those habits can interfere with meeting your long-range

“
objectives.

”
“Emotional habits are ways of thinking and doing that
sacrifice long-term goals for immediate gratification.”

Sometimes the reason why you adopted a habit – not the habit itself –
can derail you. You could find yourself reluctant to confront the possibility of
failure and ambiguity. You could be looking for a familiar emotional reward
even if it prevents you from pursuing your dreams. Even seemingly good
habits, like working hard, can derail your ability to lead a healthy life.

How you think, feel and behave contributes to your personality.

Psychologists define personality as the way someone typically thinks, feels
and behaves. Your personality forms as the result of your behavior patterns.
In turn, your behavioral patterns shape your habits. Your personality is
malleable because you can change your habits.

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 3/9
 “ ”
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

“Every day and moment to moment, you’re making decisions

about which way to turn on the road of life.”

Human personality develops along a continuum. At one end of the

continuum, people want to relate to other people, so they make concessions to
others’ needs. At the other end of the continuum, people need to maintain
their individual identity, which means standing up for themselves against
other people. To preserve your flexibility and adaptability, seek a
compromise between the two extremes.

Determine the costs of your habits by assessing whether you over-

regulate or under-regulate.
Assess the cost and benefits of your habits by considering a metaphor
involving a castle and a village. People who live in castles tend to over-
regulate their behavior, while village dwellers usually under-regulate. Castles
protect people, but their walls prevent the people who live in them from
seeing what is happening outside. Thus, castle dwellers have little experience
in dealing with their own feelings. They find it hard to show empathy. If the
walls come crashing down for any reason, castle dwellers can experience

“
an emotional crisis.

”
“Habits get programmed by the natural and automatic human
pull to do more of what feels good and avoid what feels bad.”

On the other hand, village dwellers have lots of experience in dealing with
their feelings. They have close emotional connections with those around
them, and thus might lose sight of their own needs. Their emotions
can overwhelm them. A relationship with a village dweller may have ups and
downs. If you are a village dweller, be aware that problematic relationships
can sabotage your creativity and your ability to connect with others.

Use the metaphor of a car to assess your emotions. You might be

carrying “passengers” – that is, the effects of past events
superimposed on the present.
Think of your mind and body as a car that you drive through your life. Each
person has a different type of vehicle, each with unique strengths and
weaknesses. No one car is superior to another. Your well-being depends on
how well your car manages the challenges of the road. You can’t trade in your
vehicle for another type, so you must learn how to manage it.

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 4/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

This vehicle – in other words, your biological system – forms one part of the
puzzle of getting where you want to go. How you maintain your car and your
skills as a driver play equally important roles. You don’t have to identify with
your body – the car – or with past experiences. You have the ability to step
back and examine the experiences your mind and body generate. Being able
to regulate your emotional reactions involves directing your vehicle where
you want to go.

People, like automobiles, have a variety of components which act together as

a system to influence the quality of a journey. Each person’s system
determines his or her psychological framework, feelings and levels of
motivation. People see what happens outside themselves through their
“emotions, thoughts and action impulses” (ETA). These components

“
determine how you feel and how you experience everything you encounter.

”
“‘Passengers’ are our sensitive spots of thinking and feeling
that can hide just outside awareness – until we stumble upon
something that triggers them.”

Emotions helped our ancestors survive by sending out quick reactions to ward
off external threats. Emotions help you communicate with others and impel
you to act. For example, sadness causes you to withdraw, and anger pushes
you to fight. Emotions signal your deepest needs and can guide you in the
direction your life should take. Perhaps past events made an indelible
impression on your consciousness. You could have suffered through moments
of feeling weak or humiliated. Those past events can superimpose themselves
on current events and reshape and reframe how you perceive them. These
experiences are called “passengers.” No one pattern describes all passengers,
but it is important to learn that you can manage them.

Try to determine if you use emotional habits to conceal awareness

of your passengers.
Perhaps, over time, you have developed emotional habits that suppress your
conscious awareness of your passengers. If you repeat certain patterns, you
could identify a passenger as the proximate cause. The most painful
experiences can lead to picking up really nasty passengers.

“Moving beyond emotional habits is about taking ahold of the

steering wheel to move that vehicle of yours where you want
to go!”

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 5/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

Each encounter with experiences that resemble something negative that

happened in the past could trigger unwanted passengers. However, once you
identify these stowaways, you regain control. Then, instead of having an
automatic anxious response, in the future you can choose how you want to
react.

Practicing mindfulness can help you respond thoughtfully, not

automatically.
Most people hope that as they grow older they can jettison the issues that
bothered them in the past. However, you can’t erase history. Your passengers
will travel with you on your journey into and though adulthood. As you make
the journey, you add more experiences and more passengers. If you try to
placate the passengers already in your car, you give them more power. To
weaken emotional habits, you must not encourage them. Though it
seems counterintuitive, it’s better to stop fighting unwanted habits and use
mindfulness to accept them. This means matching your desire to feel better

“
with an improvement in your ability to feel.

”
“Ultimately, the prescription for a healthy and flexible emotion
regulation system will always include a balance of validating
emotions, checking thoughts and changing actions.”

Practicing acceptance doesn’t mean capitulating because you can’t do or feel

exactly the way you want. It means working though good and bad internal
experiences as you learn to appreciate your ever-changing emotions. Using
the mind-set of acceptance prevents you from having to adopt painful, rigid
emotional habits.

Use mindfulness to discern the link between different and often

seemingly arbitrary parts of your life so you can bring them
together.
The practice of mindfulness has a long history and has recently become
popular and gained wider acceptance. Academic research has shown
its benefits. You can apply the principles of mindfulness to various parts of
your life to gain control over them.

In the early 1980s, professor of medicine and Zen practitioner Jon Kabat-
Zinn developed his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program for
helping people combat pain. Professionals in areas like mental health and
stress reduction expanded its application and found it useful. MBSR coaches
can teach you how to use meditation to implement mindfulness techniques.

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 6/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

Practicing mindfulness helps you increase your consciousness so you can

make deliberate choices rather than relying on emotional habits. Five
strategies underlie the use of mindfulness: 1) Learn to examine the link
between what you feel internally and the external events in your life; 2) train
yourself not to react to what you feel internally; 3) don’t judge what you
experience; 4) when you act, do so consciously; and 5) learn to describe or
define what you experience.

Mindfulness helps you probe challenges instead of becoming numb to them.

The only way to gain an understanding of mindfulness is through practice.
Begin by learning to sit quietly in “formal practice.” Initially, you may find
that meditation brings forth uncomfortable feelings. In the normal course of
life, you might avoid paying attention to these thoughts. A large part of

“
mindful meditation comes from learning to accept unpleasant feelings.

”
“Where skillfulness with emotions requires leaning in and
getting closer so you can validate them, working effectively
with thoughts asks you to step back, observe and keep your
thoughts in check.”

Pay attention to the five parts of your experience that you encounter every
day: facts, emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations and action impulses. These
elements work in the background of your consciousness to influence your
feelings. As you persevere in your mindfulness practice, you will recognize the
connections between your internal experience and your outside
circumstances.

The essence of mindfulness emerges in your ability to step back and observe
what is happening within and outside you. Do this without any evaluation.
What happens with each of the five components of your experience will
change constantly, but they will fashion your larger perception of life as being
either happy or unhappy. When you increase your mindfulness practice, you
drill into your emotion, thought and action systems and, in time, you will be
able to prevent yourself from reacting to situations automatically.

You might recognize some components of your experience more easily than
others. Investigate the areas in which you have the greatest difficulty, because
they could reveal information about something that troubles you. Each
component of your experience provides vital insights about your
passengers and the talents you will need to deal with them. As you acquire
dexterity, you will stop reacting instinctively to old wounds.

Gather information to explore yourself.

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 7/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

Over the next few weeks and months, go on an internal expedition to gather
information and explore your personal enigmatic aspects. Keep a written
record of emotional events, such as after an intense emotional experience or
when you worry, procrastinate or act in a way you dislike.

The more information you gather, the clearer your picture will be of
the triggers that set off your automatic responses. Compile about 10 lists
before you attempt to discern patterns. This will strengthen your capacity to
consider your behavior objectively and sort out the feelings, thoughts and
actions that cause you to over- or under-regulate the internal system that

“
connects your emotions, thoughts and actions.

”
“Like all skills, it’s only with repetition over time that we
internalize the steps for being skillful and what it feels like in
our body when we do.”

When you start creating this record, pay attention to whether you can
distinguish between thoughts and facts with the intention of building your
capacity to discern the differences. Consider facts as something you
experience in the present. Being able to separate emotional thoughts from
hard facts lets you consider alternative interpretations of a situation, and that
can be especially important in emotionally charged situations.

About the Author

Clinical psychologist Lara E. Fielding specializes in mindfulness-based
cognitive behavioral therapy. She is an adjunct professor at California’s
Pepperdine University.

This document is restricted to the personal use of Precis Booke

(precisbooks@protonmail.com)

Did you like this summary?

 Buy book or audiobook

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 8/9
7/9/2020 Mastering Adulthood Free Summary by Lara E. Fielding

More on this topic

Customers who read this summary also read

Wherever You Go, The Courage Habit The Stress Code Stillness Is the Key You W
There You Are S

7  8  9  9  8

Related Channels
Mindfulness Personal Change World Youth Skills Day

Comment on this summary

Write a comment...
Post

Sitemap

 English Deutsch Español Русский 中文 Português Français

   
© 1999-2020, getAbstract

https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/mastering-adulthood/34000 9/9