Growing older happens to all of us. Growing up is optional, and far rarer. We carry certain habits into adulthood and quietly file them under "normal" — when really they are unfinished emotional work. I want to name six of them, because once you see them in yourself, you can't un-see them.

1. Cursing when you're upset

The first is swearing — reaching for abuse the moment a conversation gets heated. An adult needs a better way of letting emotion out than firing off insults. The words feel like release, but they only tell the other person you've run out of better ones.

2. Storming off mid-argument

The second is walking away. You're in the middle of a disagreement, you get up, and you leave — sometimes shutting the door behind you. This usually happens not because you've made your point, but because you can't. When you don't have anything constructive left to say, escaping the room feels like winning. It isn't. It just postpones the conversation.

3. Shouting to be heard

The third is raising your voice. When your point isn't being accepted, you turn up the volume — louder and faster — believing that a bigger sound will somehow carry more weight. It doesn't make you more right. It makes you harder to listen to. Volume is not the same as authority.

4. The explosive reaction

The fourth is reacting hugely to something small. You hear a comment you didn't expect, and instead of pausing, you erupt. Here's the thing worth sitting with: when something lands that you weren't prepared for, you don't have to shoot back loud. You can let it hurt for a second and still respond like an adult. That gap between feeling and reacting is the muscle most of us never trained.

5. Name-calling and personal attacks

The fifth is deliberately going personal. When you've lost the thread of the actual argument, you grab something close to the other person and use it as a weapon — their appearance, their family, their old mistakes. When you have nothing useful to say on the topic, the attack shifts to who they are. Stay on the point you're actually arguing. The moment you walk over to someone's personal life, you've already lost the debate.

6. Lying to prove your point

The sixth is the worst of the lot — bending the truth just to win. You convince yourself your point matters so much that any lie is justified. It isn't. Lying to prove a point is entirely childish behaviour, and it's the one to work on first, because it costs you trust long after the argument is forgotten.

So what do I actually do?

People ask me which of these six I'm guilty of. Honestly, none of them — but I have a seventh, and it isn't perfect either. When I get very upset, I shut down. I stop talking. I stop engaging altogether. Silence feels safer than saying the wrong thing, but withdrawing is still a way of avoiding the conversation rather than having it. It's quieter than shouting, yet it can be just as much of a wall.

That's the honest part. None of us has fully grown up — we've each just kept one or two of these habits and learned to live around them. The work isn't to feel less. It's to notice the old reaction rising, name it, and choose something steadier in its place. That choice, made again and again, is what growing up actually looks like.

Have a look at the six. Tell me which one is yours — and what works for you instead.