[hosh]

Someone can be fairly mature and still have very strong emotions. Furthermore, just because the strength of the emotion is easily detectable in one person, doesn't necessarily mean it is as perceivable by another person. What allows a person to perceive emotions has to do with how well they have trained their awareness to pay attention to emotions rather than either ignoring them, or avoiding them.

Hunger itself isn't an emotion. It's a complex of physical sensations. However, in most people, it is highly coupled with various emotional responses. Hunger is one of the first things an infant experiences, often coupled with being fed by a parent and loved upon. It's not accident that a lot of people (not everyone) eat more when they are stressed. (Comfort food). I have seen otherwise mature adults regressed to childhood, infantile behaviors because they skipped a meal.

It's actually a fairly immature understanding of emotions to associate poor emotional control or behaviors with the level of maturity. Your ability to handle emotions has more to do with whether you fully pay attention to the emotions and process them out. Although people with greater physical age will tend to have experienced a wider range of emotions in a variety of life circumstances, if they don't pay attention to them when it happens, it festers in the back of the mind, carried on for years.

I think this model is a "good try". It seems good enough for now, for the author. And although it scratches the surface, I think it's great for anyone to think about this more closely.

To really start digging in there, you have to allow yourself to experience the emotion; "thinking" about an emotion without allowing yourself to experience it or be aware of it tends to be a way for the mind to avoid experiencing painful things.