Why you shouldn't let "sleeping dogs lie".

Picture Courtesy: Simon Hesthaven, Unsplash.com

I recall, sucking my thumb in childhood like many children. But I continued doing so till I was 9 years old. Like most concerned parents, mine too adopted all kinds of ways to help me get out of this seemingly harmless but embarrassing habit. From tying my fingers together, to applying distasteful stuff on my thumb, they tried anything and everything.

I don’t know how but I eventually stopped this “childish” habit. But had they approached a specialist in psychology, they would have been given an insight into my innocuous habit connected to my emotional state.

Today, when I look back and think about this, I understand that it was a reflex action to soothe myself. While all infants suck their thumb, it simply shows their sucking reflex that is responsible for breastfeeding. So it is a developmental indicator till the age of 3. However, I continued to suck my thumb, much beyond the acceptable age limit. Why? It served as a compensation for the less nurturance that I received as a child. I began to associate it with emotionally comforting myself, albeit subconsciously.

Outgrowing this act of soothing myself, emotionally, could then indicate that I became emotionally healthy. But that is far from my reality. I simply replaced thumb sucking with other self-destructive behaviors that earned me the label of being stubborn, rebellious and selfish. I was constantly told to “grow up” or “be mature”. Which means that at some point in time, especially in a stressful situation, I was displaying age inappropriate behavior. While all the while I acted or felt like a child conveying, “I can’t stand this!”

In psychology terms, I Regressed. Regression refers to the tendency of a person to adopt certain behavioral traits from earlier stages of development when faced with unpleasant, threatening and unacceptable situation.

Here are some behaviors that you could observe in yourself or in your young children and understand that you or your child could be suffering from regression.

Nail-biting. Chewing on a pencil when taking an exam. Eating impulsively when upset. Profusely wiping the kitchen counter after an argument with your partner. These are harmless ways of coping with a difficult situation.

But it can become major and serious when it drastically affects the way someone acts.

A wife refuses to drive a car even though it causes the family much disorganization.

A child wetting the bed at night or unwilling to sleep alone/with lights off or asking a parent to stay with him or her all the time.

A parent resorts to stomping off in a huff, slamming doors or hurls vicious remarks at his or her grown up children.

I am in no way suggesting that you do not express your feelings. But there is a big difference between feeling an emotion and acting it out.

For example, an emotionally mature adult might cry on the shoulder of a close friend after losing a dear pet. An emotionally regressed adult might flail about dramatically, crying uncontrollably in a public place.

An emotionally mature adult might scream into a pillow or take a long run when feeling overcome with anger, where as a regressed adult might punch a hole through a wall – or punch another person.

That road rage you see when drivers are stuck in traffic is a great example of regression. People may also show regression when they return to a child-like state of dependency. Retreating under the blankets when you've had a bad day is one possible instance.

From repression to regression—one little "g" makes all the difference. In regression, you revert back to a childlike emotional state in which your unconscious fears, anxieties, and general "angst" reappear.

So if you are someone who tends to “shut down” in emotionally stressful situations, you might be regressing to your childlike state to cope with the situation. If you are able to recognize your regressive tendencies you can begin to work on them.

Like me, you can begin with first knowing, why we regress?

In Freud's theory of "psycho-sexual" development, people develop through stages such as the oral, anal, or phallic so that by the time they're five or six, the basic structures of personality are laid down. However, every once in a while, a person either reverts back to a childlike state of development, particularly under conditions of stress.

It was Freud’s daughter, Anne Freud, who ranked regression as the most basic and important defense mechanism and went on to say that the kind of behavior traits that a person reverted to when he regressed, could explain his fixation with the exact stage of development.

For example, a person who was fixated at the oral stage of development, developed behavior patterns like smoking, excessive eating or resorting to verbal abuse (all to do with the mouth). Similarly, a person fixated on the anal stage of development would exhibit behavior patterns that have to do with being extremely clean, neat and tidy or developing obsessive-compulsive tendencies, or behaving like a miser (as a child, potty training is a practice that teaches a child to control his urges and needs and therefore the behavior born out of these has to do with things that have the “control” factor in them). A person who was fixated on the phallic stage exhibited behavior that had to do with sexual impulses (being promiscuous or dressing provocatively).

Therefore, when certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur.

Some psychoanalysts feel just the opposite. Renowned psychologist, Carl Jung described regression as more of a positive psychological behavior and defense mechanism more than other psychoanalysts in the past. Some believed it was an attempt to achieve something more important such as coping mechanism.

Finding your personal coping mechanism to deal with stress is all good until it works in a self-destructive way like driving badly or refusing to talk to people who've made you feel bad, mad, or sad. Also, most often, people who regress are not aware that they have done so, while spectators may look upon that behavior as being immature, egoistic, childish, self-indulgent and inappropriate.

To sum it up, even though the adoption of regression helps in lowering stress levels, a prolonged continuation of unresolved emotional issues of the past will find an outlet in unwanted behaviors and habits.

That is why it is imperative to not let "sleeping dogs lie" and wake up to unresolved conflicts to give yourself a good chance of finding better ways and healthier options to deal with stress and anxiety.