Holiday Regression: How to Avoid Becoming a Teenager Again
Do you ever catch yourself feeling and acting like a teenager when you go home for the holidays? You’re a full grown adult. You just tied up some loose ends at work (and are trying to forget about the unraveled ones), used your hard-earned money to pay for a flight or gas to get home, and are ready to welcome in a tryptophan-induced coma. You have a few warm moments upon arrival home, but somehow before you know it, things spiral out of control.
It may start with a bubbling irritation – Mom’s prying about your “attitude” and your brother’s sitting and relaxing while everyone else helps out with dinner. They’re so annoying, you think quietly to yourself, but with one more poke from Mom, the internal thought turns into an explosion – you’re suddenly screaming at your brother for being a spoiled brat and storming off to your room to text friends about your crazy mom. It’s like a time warp, and just like that you’re fifteen years old again.
This process of acting like your younger self around your family at this time of year is called, “holiday regression.” Regression, or a retreat to an earlier stage of development, is a defense mechanism that is provoked by emotional stress. While defenses aim to protect us against difficult emotions, they can also impede growth and keep us stuck in old, dysfunctional ways.
If we slow down the scene above, we can illuminate some moments that acted as triggers to conflict: Maybe when you were a moody teenager, Mom became sensitive to a furrowed brow or a cold response from you; now when she asks about your mood, it takes you back to your younger self who felt ambushed and intruded on by her questions, and needed to defend against them to create space. Watching your brother sit unbothered while nobody requests his help may activate the angry, jealous part of you who felt he was “the favorite child.”
Maybe Mom’s accusation of your “attitude” makes you feel trapped in the family’s image of you as “the downer” - it feels like no matter what you do and how much you grow up, they will always perceive you this way. You become even more frustrated because you’ve now validated their flawed perception, as you lashed out at her simple, “What’s wrong?” inquiry and ruined the mood. Your misunderstood inner child took the wheel, and it was a domino effect from there.
What you may miss in this rapid, seemingly automatic process is how you are contributing to the regression to old family roles. By reacting to perceived threat, as you’ve known it in your past, you are confining your family members in the same way that you feel confined by them. For example, it can be tempting to imagine we know exactly what another member’s tone of voice means about their mood. While there may be some truth to that idea (after all, you’ve heard that tone before), the assumption that we know all of each other can actually keep us, and them, stuck – we can get in the way of learning about each other and encouraging growth when we anticipate old behaviors. So what might happen if you give Mom a chance to show up differently? You can interrupt the explosive cycle (of frustration met with frustration, leading to more frustration) by choosing to respond instead of react. Responses come from a thoughtful place, while reactions are emotional and often defensive. “Oh did I look off? I’m actually enjoying being home and away from work,” you might respond to Mom. Your teenage self can take a backseat while adult you attends to your need to protect yourself in a more efficient, developed way.
Try to remind yourself that you are not that powerless teenager anymore and you now have more authority over your choices. When you step out of a reactive place in response to Mom reverting to her usual family role as “the worrier,” you give her a chance to show up differently as well - your new response sends the message that she does not need to take care of you in the same way she did when you were a child, and she is invited to engage with you as an adult.
When we recognize our contribution to conflict, we actually empower ourselves to have more control. The idea is to become mindful of our triggers and learn to emotionally regulate in overly activating settings. Learning to respond from a rational place can be liberating, as other people no longer dictate our behaviors. If we’re lucky, the old cycle is disrupted and a new, healthier kind of relationship can develop.
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https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.pn.2019.10a23
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See Dr. Shubert's quote in the article below:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-stonewall-psychoanalysts-idUSKCN1TM169
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https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-were-running-from-when-we-count-our-steps
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Dodson lays out a two pronged therapeutic approach that has a chance of working, when nothing else has...
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https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/19/the-psychopharmacology-of-everyday-life/
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https://www.girlboss.com/money/how-to-deal-with-making-more-money-than-parents
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Some biology to back up the matter:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/sex-biology-binary.html
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You can watch the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9l3hvOuEQ
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https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/11/psychoanalysis-and-metoo-memories/
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"In other words, under a daily homophobic assault, a child’s sympathetic system (“stress response” or “fight or flight” response) gets overly activated. Often during such stressful situations, neither fighting nor fleeing can resolve the overwhelming situation, and the thwarted or incomplete fight and flight responses can become “trapped” within the body and dysregulate the nervous system. Such a dysregulated nervous system is more likely to get stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal. Anxiety, panic attacks, rage, hyperactivity, mania, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, exaggerated startle response, digestive problems, and many other symptoms are the result of a dysregulated nervous system that is stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal."
http://drpayam1.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-somatic-perspective-on-trauma-of_18.html
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"Just as the airlines recommend putting on your oxygen mask before tending to the person next to you," says Dr. Tepper, "it’s critical to look after your own personal well-being first and foremost."
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https://www.girlboss.com/girlboss/2018/1/16/how-to-avoid-burnout
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https://www.girlboss.com/girlboss/2018/1/8/stop-calling-coworkers-psychopaths
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While we don't believe that an "8 best ways" list can truly change a troubled relationship, it couldn't hurt either:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/smarter-living/8-ways-to-have-a-better-relationship-in-2018.html?action=click&module=Smarter%20Living&pgtype=Homepage
Against Empathy
"In this video, Paul Bloom, psychologist and Yale professor, argues that empathy is a bad thing—that it makes the world worse. While we've been taught that putting yourself in another's shoes cultivates compassion, it actually blinds you to the long-term consequences of your actions. In this animated interview from The Atlantic, we hear Bloom’s case for why the world needs to ditch empathy."
He says in the video, "If you really want to make the world a better place, spend less time thinking about how to maximize your own sense of empathic joy, and spend more time, in a cold blooded way, about how to help other people."
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Therapy works through equal parts catharsis and getting to know yourself (among some other things), which is why we often encourage our patients to write - write letters you don't send, poems, or keep a diary. Here's a fun little video where David Sedaris tells his story about writing for himself.