My teen is taking Intro to Psychology this summer, and probably the most worthless Psych course conceivable. Since the course failed to cover Freud’s theories in depth, I dusted off my beloved Psychology degree and taught her this myself. No study of Freud would be complete without covering his ego defenses (aka, defense mechanisms), especially since it’s so easy to see these ego defenses manifest themselves in our lives and the lives of others.
According to Freud, ego defenses are necessary to the survival of our psyches, but if they are overused, they lead to dysfunction, even neuroses (to use a mid-nineteenth century psychology term). Denial, for example, gives our brains a moment to catch up with bad or distressing news. Think about it: How often does someone cry out, “No!” when they hear bad news? You can see compensation in the guy with the huge pick-up truck with the loud muffler. My daughters are masters of displacement. When I get on one of them about not doing her chores or studies, she then picks a fight with her sister.
Today, though, I want to talk about regression. This is the ego defense in which the person goes back to an earlier stage of development. Maybe the person curls up in the corner and sucks their thumb when they haven’t thumb-sucked in decades. Another example is when older children begin to bed-wet after they’ve been abused. Or a teenager curls up with her favorite stuffed animal at the end of a hard day.
I have found myself using a little regression today. We’re in the midst of a major clean, and I was working on the floor in one little section of the dinette. I had knelt on a chair and was bending over to pick stuff up. About the best way to envision it would be like a melting child’s pose. (Even yoga allows space to regress in practice.) I was tired, and it felt good. Nevermind that adults are supposed to sit in chairs properly, and most assuredly without their rumps on level with the top of the table. For those moments I was melting over the chair, I forgot my stress, forgot my ginormous to-do list, forgot everything. I was in that moment in a seat in a silly way, just as I used to do when I was a kid. And it felt good.
I got up. I cleaned and hefted. I worked and parented. In short, I adulted. For those short moments, though, I chilled as a child, enjoying the utter relaxation of my position in the chair. For a few moments, I regressed just long enough to charge myself back up for being me.
