I say “revert” and not “regress” because regress has the twinkle of a bully in its eye. While “revert” feels more transitory, like a revolving door, “regress” is the sad long trip down an escalator where everyone at the bottom is laughing at you while cramming mall pretzel nuggets down each other’s throats (please tell me this is a universal nightmare). I suppose the simple acts of walking through a door and riding down an escalator aren’t all that different. This is a near-perfect illustration of what it means to be a synonym. I am a Good Will Hunting level genius.
Regression has a long history with pop psychology, thanks to that pervert who got famous, Sigmund Freud. It is one of his 12 defense mechanisms, the others being: compensation, denial, displacement, identification, introjection, projection, reaction formation, rationalization, repression, ritual & undoing, and sublimation. One to celebrate every month of the year! Woo! To have any of these words brought up and thrown against you during an argument is the most infuriating thing, and yes, it is also projection. If I were to be accused of “reaction formation” in a fight, I imagine that my blood would reach the perfect temperature to cook beignets. Note this as you see fit.
Freud defined regression as “the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses more adaptively.” Common examples of this are direct results of extreme stress, like having road rage (the adult-lite version of a tantrum) or thumb-sucking as a mode of self-soothing (It’s always thumb-sucking? No shade to any readers who partake, I just don’t imagine it’s as common as I’ve read).
In short, it’s the slipping into a childlike self to cope with an adult situation - to reach back in time and behave accordingly as a form of armor against whatever force is overwhelming you. Defense mechanisms! The zest of life!
In the last few years, I’ve heard the term “inner child” associated with healing a lot. I will not act brand new about common therapy practices, but it feels particularly trendy to discuss your inner child and all the ways you choose to acknowledge and tend to it, the same way it was once en vogue to declare that you were an empath (which has aged like milk).
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B (for my Lord of the Rings crowd):
There was a time when I worshipped the teachings of a very popular Instagram therapist who I will not name (because even though she’ll never read this, I still fear her wrath) - the same therapist is discussed in this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. She boasts 5 million followers - 62 of which are people that I personally follow on Instagram, including musician Phoebe Bridgers, celebrity chef Sophia Roe, drag queen Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, and reality star housewife Lisa Rinna.
A friend had shown me the Instagram during an impromptu dinner by the harbor. We oscillated between shoving spoonfuls of chili down our throats and scrolling through graphic after graphic - different T-charts outlining the differences between people-pleasing and authentic kindness or boundaries versus a lack thereof. It was access to a language I wasn’t finding in my day-to-day life that put meaning to what I was unraveling. It was biblically moving to be so validated - I was subscribed to her texts and had her book pre-ordered. I was snapped out of the spell when news hit one of my group chats about her having heinous political beliefs - everything from who she associated with (white supremacists and Covid deniers to name a few) to a victim-blaming mentality, lack of cultural competency, and anti-healthcare/medication rhetoric. I unceremoniously canceled the pre-order, unsubscribed from the texts, and unfollowed her on Instagram - a complete digital divorce.
It’s important to note that the menacing, problematic Instagram therapist did not invent the concept of reparenting the inner child - they had just cobbled together simplified infographics about the subject and shared them with a massive audience. Regardless of where I’m at now in relation to them, I’m glad to have been introduced to a few of the concepts they post about so frequently. Many therapists genuinely offer different methods to heal that involve our young subpersonalities - from art therapy to letter writing/journaling, there are many ways to get in touch with the tyke who feels a type of way.
Frankly, it’s harrowing to think that the little girl with greasy bangs who chronically peed herself and answered every question with “I don’t know” still lives inside me, making decisions from a wounded place, playing some part in the way I communicate. The storied history of the ways I’ve reacted because of what I’ve experienced… damn, it’s exhausting that we each have a mythology like this, ready to be ignored or mined for meaning, and misinterpreted at every turn. It makes me never want to say a word to anyone ever again.
Here’s the thing. If you search the internet for “is it weird to be an adult and buy a stuffed animal for yourself” you will only find articles and question-answering websites that offer a hearty “no, it’s fine!” You will not stumble into anyone’s honest opinions about it being a little fucking weird. A lot of the Quoras on this subject actually invoke the law, that it is not illegal for adults to purchase and own stuffed animals, which I was actually not wondering about even a little bit. Again, the internet validates, which is an important lesson and haunting reminder.
Despite my irritable tone, I just recently bought the first and probably only stuffed animal of my adulthood, and I’m trying to talk myself down from feeling weird about it.
While a bit stoned, I fell down the rabbit hole of an Instagram ad for Jellycat brand stuffed animals. I’d been seeing the ad for weeks, curious how algorithmically they ended up on my feed in the first place but was able to ignore the call and go about my slack-jawed scrolling.
The day I decided to grab the hand of the ad, into the unknown, I was pulled off Instagram onto an external site and clicked through 51 (yes, 51) pages of different stuffed animals - delighted to be on the journey at all. From bunnies with extremely long ears to literal slices of brie cheese, Jellycat has something soft, quirky, and adorable to offer everyone. I laughed at each new, silly discovery, bothering my friends with outbursts like, “they have a little tomato! A tomato with a face!” I ended my adventure by taking a singular screenshot of a small stuffed cow. After so much “research,” it felt like a divine sign from my high to buy one.
So now I have a stuffed animal. And it sits up so straight that it almost scares me. I’d like to believe it’s warding off bad vibes and possibly even ghosts. I hope my inner child is happy because it feels like she took the lead on this, but I’m not naive enough to believe she’s had her list of demands met. The revolving door of reverting will surely strike again.
Before all of this, in the fall of 2016, Dreamworks’ Trolls hit theaters for an intended audience of young children, particularly those at the age where bright colors and fun sounds hit like drugs. It featured a confusingly star-studded cast, Zooey Deschanel rapping lines from “Mo' Money Mo' Problems,” and Ariana Grande singing the word “shit” in a song written specifically for the soundtrack (though you can hardly tell because of her trademark lack of enunciation).
It also features one of the most absurd lines of dialogue of all time:
I first saw the movie in theaters on November 4th, then again on November 6th, and a third and final time on November 16th (at a 10 pm showing with two boys I haven’t spoken to in years, all of us trudged to the theater in our pajamas). As you may remember, Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election on November 9th. I never saw the movie alone and never left the theater without crying. I was 19 years old, attending my second year of college, and deep in the throes of the emotional fallout after an intensely painful, confusing, coercive situation with a supervisor at my ice cream shop job. I was on the brink of dropping out. I was wearing a ridiculous wide-brimmed felt hat and brown lipstick. All in all, it was dark times. Trolls was the saccharine bandage to block out any more bad from further getting under my skin.
The film (lol) grapples with the abstract idea of happiness - both its source and how it is sustained. The plot features a historically gruesome relationship between the species of Trolls and Bergens (which are just like much larger, uglier monsters?). The Bergens host a yearly festival called “Trollstice” where every member of the community gets to eat a single troll to experience a day of happiness (Ari Aster did not direct, FYI) until one year the entire population of trolls are able to escape. They spend 20 years Bergen-free, hidden somewhere in the woods, until Princess Poppy (I know, please just go with it) throws an incredibly loud party and they are found out by the banished-Trollstice Royal Chef (because of course there is a Trollstice Royal Chef, voice by Christine Baranski), who pockets a handful of the little creatures in a fanny pack.
It continues to get more and more colorful and absurd. Anna Kendrick Troll (aka Princess Poppy) and Justin Timberlake Troll set out to save their abducted troll friends but eventually face capture. While trapped in a pot, waiting to be feasted upon, their fate literally sucks the life out of them: all the trolls fade to gray. It is then that Justin Timberlake Troll (who has classically been a pessimist the entire film) begins to sing “True Colors” by Cyndi Lauper to cheer everyone up (remember, singing killed his grandma - it’s a big deal). Quickly after this moment, which absolutely made me uncontrollably weep, the Trolls are able to prove to the Bergens that eating them is not the key to happiness, that there is actually something inside them they can tap into to feel happy. They all gleefully dance the night away to a song called “Can’t Stop The Feeling” which has caused psychological harm to countless retail workers.
I rewatched the movie for the purpose of writing this (and spent $3.99 to do so, thank you very much), and while it holds up as the kind of delightful thing you’re glad you can put on for the children in the room at Thanksgiving, I didn’t transcend the way I did back in 2016. Trolls slipped in through some crack and swept me away - it delivered a very simple message I needed to hear at the exact, perfect moment. It was a classic moment of reverting, of squinting really hard and seeing that little inner girlboss desperately trying to take over, moved to tears by the idea that there was still an opportunity to turn it all around.
In retrospect, the movie’s moral provides a faulty message - particularly when it comes to clinical depression (the aforementioned Instagram therapist would be super into it for this reason) - but there’s something beautiful about the wild hope of it. I was in a place where I was seeking so much external validation, just waiting for something, anything, to go right, that it felt truly groundbreaking for a bunch of animated trolls to tell me there was happiness accessible inside myself. I told you it was dark times!
I was a very serious child (shocking, I know), so the concept and practice of inner child work honestly make me cringe. My inner child is literally like “um? grow up?”
I’m tempted to turn all of it into a throwaway joke - because the things I’ve done to sate or heal or baseline acknowledge the existence of my inner child feel embarrassing. The stuffed animal I bought is staring at me right now, only challenging me further. What does it know? Is it judging me? More importantly, is it haunted?
It’s important for me (and you, if you also feel this way) to remember that the goal of this work isn’t to act like a child. It’s meant to reclaim some of the unbridled joy and excitement that was stamped out by time and circumstance. It’s a fabricated opportunity to give yourself a deliberate kind of care that was absent or withheld.
Whether an intentional look at the self or a slip into reverting/regressing by the will of forces greater than us both, it is all frighteningly earnest. Someone get Ari Aster on the case. I will not watch that movie because I avoid being purposely scared at all costs, but I will gladly read the Wikipedia page and listen to “True Colors (Trolls Version)” while I do it.
Big love,
kaylasomething