Shouting, Crying, and Complaining – That’s Regression – An Ego Defence Mechanism

Our ego – the voice in our head that tells stories from first thing in the morning until late at night – is constantly attempting to create meaning to protect our identity and sense of self. We hear a moment-to-moment commentary about what’s happening inside of ourselves mentally and physically, and outside of ourselves with other people, situations, and environments. Our ego creates this.

Whenever our ego is operating, we are not dealing with facts. It’s always narrating our experience from our own subjective perspective. This is why we all have such different views of ourselves, situations, and other people.

As our ego is concerned with preserving our identity, when we feel it is being threatened, we have a range of tools to protect ourselves. These are called ego defence mechanisms. They emerge when we emotionally wobble as we haven’t yet learned to process or tolerate difficult experiences in another way. We use defence mechanisms without even being aware, as they are unconscious. There are quite a few, some of these include denial, projection, splitting, repression, rationalisation, and regression.

I want to share the common defence mechanism regression, so that you can be on the look out for it when you’re relating to yourself via your ego, your partner or anyone else.

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