Inked Soul: Echoes

Episode Three: Regression

It's strange how the mind works, how it bends and twists when life presses too hard. Sometimes, without even realizing it, I find myself slipping—not just into old habits but into versions of myself I thought I'd grown out of long ago. That's what regression feels like. One minute I'm an adult, juggling responsibilities and bills, and the next, I'm acting like a kid—snapping at someone over nothing, curling up under a blanket, or needing to hear someone tell me everything will be okay. It sneaks up on you, like a memory surfacing without permission.

When the weight of the world gets too heavy, my brain pulls a trick on me, dragging me backward to a time when things were simpler—or at least, a time when the world didn't expect so much from me. I guess that's the point of it. It's a defense mechanism, this unconscious rewind button that gets pressed whenever fear, stress, or heartache become too much to bear. It's like... retreating to the past, hoping it'll shield me from the mess the present has become. Not the most productive way to handle things, but sometimes it just happens, and I can't stop it.

The thing is, I don't even know I'm doing it at first. I might get short with someone, sulk, or suddenly crave stupid things like the comfort of a worn-out hoodie or music I haven't listened to since I was a kid. And then, there are times it's worse—like when I isolate myself, thinking if I shut the world out, the storm inside will calm. It never really does, though. Funny how the brain tries to fool itself like that.

I've read somewhere that people regress to a point in their life where they felt safer, more in control. Makes sense. When things now feel impossible to handle, part of me clings to memories of when I wasn't expected to have all the answers. Like back then, tantrums and tears were allowed. Now? Now you're supposed to have it all together, keep moving, smile through the chaos.

Regression isn't always bad, though. Sometimes it's temporary—like a mental vacation. A reset button. It happens when stress burns too hot, but then it fades when the pressure eases. Other times, it sticks around a little too long. That's when it gets tricky. Chronic regression, they call it. It's like you get stuck in rewind, reliving old patterns because the present feels too impossible to navigate. I've seen it in people with depression or trauma—like their mind locks the doors, refusing to let them move forward. I guess in those moments, they're just trying to survive. We all are, in our own way.

Freud had this theory about it—of course, Freud had a theory about everything. He thought regression was like slipping back into earlier phases of development, almost like your mind retreats to old versions of itself when life throws something it can't handle. Psychologists today still talk about it, but not just in a psychoanalysis kind of way. They say it's about attachment—going back to the patterns we learned when we were kids. Makes sense, really. If I didn't learn how to cope back then, what else can I do but fall into the familiar when things go wrong?

Sometimes I wonder if everyone feels this pull backward now and then. Maybe I'm not the only one who reverts when life gets too heavy—who needs to be told, just once more, that it's okay not to be okay. Maybe we all have those moments when adulthood feels too much, and the child in us just wants to be held, to be heard.

In the end, it's not about fighting regression—it's about knowing when it's happening and figuring out how to move through it. Sometimes, letting yourself retreat a little is necessary. But staying there? That's where the trouble lies.

It's strange how the mind works. It can hide things from you—things that should be unforgettable, but somehow slip into the cracks of your memory, swallowed whole by the dark. That's what happened to me. I didn't even know something was missing until it came back—years later, like a ghost knocking on the door, demanding to be let in.

When I was younger, I knew something bad had happened. I couldn't tell you what, exactly. I just carried this heavy feeling around, like an old coat that didn't fit right but I couldn't take off. The details? Gone. Not faded, but erased—sealed behind some invisible wall my mind built to protect me. It wasn't a choice; I didn't sit down one day and decide to forget. My brain just... did it. Like flipping a switch, shoving the memory deep into some corner where it couldn't hurt me.