Why do you always like to escape? Interpretation of retrogression in psychological counseling

Degeneration is a self-defense mechanism to prevent anxiety. This kind of anxiety makes people return to the early stage of development and requires few and relatively safe behaviors. Usually, when the second child comes to a family, the older child will shrink back and use the early way of speaking to ask for a bottle or even shrink back to wet the bed. Adults may also use regression. Think about it. A man felt a "midlife crisis". He is afraid of getting old and dying. In order to avoid anxiety related to unconscious fears, he may regress to his youth, become irresponsible, drive a racing car for a ride, try to date women, and even eat children's food. Another example of retrogression is that married adults move back home to live with their mothers, which is a problem in marriage anyway. Psychological retrogression-retrogression Example 1: Beibei's father died in a car accident when he was one year old. Three years later, Beibei's mother remarried and soon became pregnant again. Beibei was curious to see her mother's stomach getting more and more round, like a ball. His mother said to him, "Beibei, do you want a little brother or sister to play with you?" Mom gave birth to one for you, okay? "Beibei confused nodded and shook his head again. A few days later, menstruation came and teased him with Beibei in his arms: "Beibei, go and live in menstruation. Mom will give birth to a little brother for you in a couple of days, so no one will take care of you, or aunt will love you the most. " Unexpectedly, Beibei burst into tears as soon as she opened her mouth. After her aunt left, Beibei hid in her room alone and refused to come out. When eating, he must sit next to his mother and let her feed him with a spoon. In fact, he could have eaten by himself long ago. One night, Beibei, who has got into the habit of getting up at night to pee, wets the bed again. Mom and dad think it's strange. The older their children are, the more sensible they are. How can Beibei become a little doll again? Mother is going to have a second child, which is not a happy thing for young Beibei. Aunt's joke made Beibei start to feel scared. How sad it would be if her mother left herself alone to take care of her new brother and sister! Beibei feels that her unique position in the family is threatened, and someone wants to compete with him for maternal love. This made him feel anxious. Although he can't express it in words, he subconsciously uses his own behavior to solve this difficulty: that is, "regress" to a younger age, let adults take care of themselves and attract everyone's attention. This kind of thinking, emotion and behavior regress to the early stage of psychological development, and the behavior is more naive than the present age, which is called retrogression. Degeneration is usually caused by serious setbacks. Here are a few examples. Ex. 2: Li Jun just entered the first grade of primary school this year, and he was quite happy when he first started school. However, in the last month, his family found that he always didn't like getting up in the morning, and he was very tardy in dressing and eating breakfast. On several occasions, he was almost late because of his slow action. He has a new problem these days-whenever he goes out with his schoolbag on his back, he has a stomachache. His family took him to the hospital for examination and found nothing wrong. Stranger still, as long as he stays at home, he won't have a stomachache. Mom also found that Li Jun ate his fingers and bit the tip of a pencil from time to time, and it was useless to stop him. He himself said that he didn't mean it, so he put his hand or pen in his mouth unconsciously. Father asked the class teacher for information. It turned out that Li Jun often couldn't sit still in class, and talked with his classmates, and was criticized by the teacher several times. Maybe he feels that school life is too strict to adapt to, so he is afraid of going to school. The teacher suggested that parents take their children to a psychological education expert for consultation and adjustment. For young children, school life is strange, and it may be unpleasant or frightening. In order to escape from the unpleasant school environment, Li Jun used illness to make excuses for not going to school, and also appeared more childish behaviors such as eating fingers and biting pens, which was an obvious retrogression. Ex. 3: Xia Feifei has always been an excellent student and was successfully admitted to the university this year. Originally full of ambition, she met a series of unexpected difficulties after she started her college life. Because of strong personality and poor self-care ability, I often have frictions and contradictions with my roommates in the dormitory, which makes me very unhappy. Later, this contradiction escalated, which led to the extremely tense interpersonal relationship between Feifei and her classmates. After an argument with her classmates, she felt sick, vomited, depressed and overeated. This kind of symptom will appear every time I have a conflict with my classmates, and my health is getting worse and worse. Seeing this, the school teacher had to call her parents. Parents have to accompany their daughters in the city. Feifei, who has always been competitive, has encountered many difficulties in her life and interpersonal relationship after entering the university, and these difficulties happen to be that she did not have enough exercise and psychological preparation before. In the face of setbacks, she chose to retreat-trying to solve the immediate problem by getting sick and asking her parents for help. In this way, she can get the care of her parents as always, and avoid conflicts with her classmates again. But for a young student who goes from family to society, this retrogression is not conducive to her physical and mental development. Xiao Ai is the apple of her parents' eye. When she got married, her mother was very reluctant to part with her and was sad for a long time. She often said to her son-in-law, "You are not allowed to bully our family." It is common for young couples to make mistakes, but Xiao Ai is headstrong and always loses his temper in front of her husband. These two days, they quarreled again about whether to have children, and Xiao Ai moved back to her family in a rage. When her husband called, she didn't answer, and she cried to her mother why her husband didn't think of her, only listened to his mother, and always forced her to have children quickly. Xiao Ai's parents are afraid to give their son-in-law a good look when they see that their daughter has been wronged so much. On the phone, they accused him of taking care of his wife and not considering the needs of the elderly at home. Xiao Ai is still young and an artist, so he can't influence his career development just to have a baby. This made the son-in-law laugh and cry and begged her parents-in-law to say, "Can your parents let me discuss it directly with Xiao Ai?" Xiao Ai should have tried to solve the problems she encountered in her marriage, but she adopted a relatively immature method-hiding in her parents' house. In fact, it's just like encountering difficulties when I was a child. It is also a kind of psychological regression to let parents solve it for her. Example 5: Zhang is always an attractive middle-aged man. After years of hard work, his company is booming, his wife is gentle and virtuous, and his son has just graduated from college. It stands to reason that this is an enviable happy family, but Mr. Zhang's wife is never happy. She found that her husband had changed over the past year, making it difficult to understand and accept. Mr. Zhang, 50 years old, used to be mature and steady, but now he is active. He likes to wear colorful and fashionable clothes, sell Passats, buy cool brand-name sports cars, and often drive fast, which really worries his family. He always said, "it's okay. I'm not old. I'll be fine." What worries his wife even more is that he still keeps close contact with some young female college students, and she begins to doubt whether her husband has an extramarital affair ... These changes happen to middle-aged people like Mr. Zhang, who have a successful career and good social adaptability, usually because of entering the "middle-aged crisis", they have inner anxiety, fearing that they will get old and cannot cope with the changes in life after middle age, so they retreat to the level of young people in concept and behavior. Like young people, they pursue fashion, adventure and radicalism, and even "feel" youth by keeping close contact with young women. These behaviors are all manifestations of psychological retrogression. As can be seen from the above examples, retrogression may occur at any age, and people who seem to develop well may not necessarily not regress. Minors (such as children and teenagers) have retrogressive symptoms. Parents and educators should discover and analyze the causes of retrogression in time, and help and support them to summon up courage to face reality and solve difficulties. But when adults have retrogressive behaviors (such as Xiao Ai and Zhang Zong), they need to be aware of this and try to solve psychological conflicts or practical problems with more mature and effective methods. Of course, people around you (including parents and spouses) can also remind and help them realize their problems and symptoms. Doing as Xiao Ai's parents do will not only help her daughter solve the problem, but also seriously hinder her psychological maturity, and her marriage problem will never be really solved. Special retrogression is not always synonymous with childishness and maladjustment. In some special cases, regression is acceptable and sometimes has positive significance. Especially in psychotherapy, regression is a necessary stage. With a series of changes in physical and cognitive functions in the aging process, the mentality and behavior of the elderly have also changed. Old people tend to be rigid, cautious and stubborn, like to be true, easy to get angry, willing to be followed by people around them and need care. , which is also commonly known as the performance of "old children", is also a retrogression. Of course, the retirement of the elderly is a natural development process, and society and families should accept them with an understanding attitude, give them support and help them spend a happy old age. Falling in love is the most personal and usually the deepest emotional experience, so the feeling in love is very important to most people. The two sides who love each other trust each other, care for each other and support each other, and become the most important dependence of each other. This dependence is often more reflected in the psychological level. In the lover's arms, there is warmth, trust and concern, which makes people feel relaxed and happy, just like being taken care of by their mother in the early life. Many people will regress in happy love and behave more like children. Couples hug each other, feed each other, make each other happy, play coquetry in front of their lovers and play a small temper. These are all retrogression. But the return in love is limited to someone and some situations, so it will not affect other aspects of a person's life. On the contrary, the pleasure brought by temporary retrogression is beneficial to a person's mental health. In psychotherapy, case 6: Pei Yi, 30, unmarried, sought psychotherapy for long-term depression. The therapist is also a woman, in her forties. Pei Yi started meeting with therapists every week. This finally gave her a chance to talk to people about her inner confusion, get care and comfort, and the symptoms of depression began to ease. When the emotional confusion basically improved, Pei Yi and the therapist began to have conflicts. She showed hostility and rebellion to the therapist, and her language and behavior were more like a teenager. Pei Yi's mother complained to the therapist that although psychotherapy had relieved her daughter's depression, her daughter had new problems. Daughter's rebellion and emotional impulse are most obvious in adolescence. She thought it had disappeared, but this phenomenon appeared again. She doesn't understand what happened. From the analysis of the causes of psychological problems, symptoms are the external manifestations of visitors' inner conflicts, and they are also the ways they try to alleviate their psychological pain. Pei Yi has a controlling mother who can't accept her daughter's rebellious behavior in adolescence. She was angry and prevented her daughter from doing what she wanted. In retaliation, Pei Yi chose to use depression to resist her mother's control, because a depressed person has reason to do nothing. In the process of psychotherapy, the task of the therapist is to make the symptoms of the visitors no longer play the role of avoiding contradictions and alleviating pain. So at this point, psychological conflicts covered by symptoms will reappear. On the surface, she returned to the stage where the problem just appeared. In essence, this is an opportunity to re-recognize and solve the previous psychological problems. Therefore, psychotherapy needs to return.