Regression

Regression isn't failure—it is a structural response of any system under strain.

 When demands exceed capacity, systems—biological, psychological, relational, and organizational—do not innovate; they revert to previously learned, stabilized patterns. This episode reframes regression as a necessary and predictable part of growth, rooted in recursion and polarity. Through examples from neuroscience, psychology, history, and lived experience, the episode illustrates how contraction follows overextension, and how recognizing regression in real time enables more skillful, intentional response rather than unconscious reactivity.

✅Key Topics

• Regression as a systemic pattern (not pathology) 
• Capacity thresholds and nervous system response 
• Recursion and polarity as underlying structures 
• Psychological regression (Freud, Jung) 
• Eastern perspectives (Buddhism, Taoism) on contraction and rebalancing 
• Historical cycles of societal regression and expansion 
• Relational regression and co-regulation breakdown 
• Organizational regression under pressure (control vs. trust) 
• Pattern recognition and conscious intervention 
• Expanding response range as the essence of growth

💡Takeaways

• Regression is predictable: Systems revert to prior patterns when capacity is exceeded. 
• It is adaptive, not defective: Regression prioritizes speed and survival over complexity. 
• Growth is non-linear: Expansion and contraction operate as a polarity, not a progression. 
• Awareness creates agency: Recognizing regression in real time interrupts automatic patterns. 
• Capacity precedes capability: You cannot solve effectively while dysregulated. 
• Relational systems amplify regression: Two systems under strain can reinforce downward cycles. 
• Organizations behave like individuals: Under pressure, they centralize, control, and simplify. 
• The goal is not elimination: It is upgrading what you regress to and expanding your range over time.

🎤Memorable Quotes

• “Regression isn’t the opposite of growth. It’s part of the pattern.” 
• “When life asks more of you than you’re able to give, you don’t become more capable—you fall back on what’s already wired.” 
• “The system doesn’t invent something new under pressure. It pulls from what it already knows.” 
• “Regression is efficient. It’s not trying to be right—it’s trying to be fast.” 
• “Growth is about expanding your range of response. Regression narrows it.” 
• “You’re not responding as who you are today—you’re responding as who you were when that pattern was learned.” 
• “Regression isn’t a deviation from growth. It’s how growth stabilizes.”

🔗Resources  

• Sigmund Freud — Concept of regression as return to earlier developmental coping strategies 
• Carl Jung — Regression as part of individuation and integration 
• Buddhism — Contraction of awareness under suffering 
• Taoism — Rebalancing through natural compensatory movement 
• Historical examples referenced: 
  • Collapse of the Western Roman Empire → fragmentation → later Renaissance expansion 
  • Post-World War I instability → authoritarian regression → post-World War II global cooperation

Regression, systems theory, recursion, polarity, nervous system, capacity, contraction, expansion, psychological patterns, Freud, Jung, Buddhism, Taoism, organizational behavior, leadership, stress response, adaptation, co-regulatio

Disclaimer:

***The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice.***

Credits: Written, produced and hosted by: Mary Schaub. Theme song written by: Mary Schaub

Contact: FractalsofChange@outlook.com  

Website: M. Schaub Advisory (MSA)

Transcript

E.xx_Regression

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Progress isn't a straight line. It's recursive. It's polar. And under pressure, it can bend backward. We imagine growth as a forward motion. But sometimes when capacity is exceeded, something else takes over. We don't rise to the occasion. We return to what's familiar. Old habits, old identities, old structures. Not randomly, predictably. Because regression isn't the opposite of growth. It's part of the pattern. A system under strain doesn't invent something new. It recurses to what it already knows. Regression sometimes gets a bad rap, seen as failure. But if we can recognize the pattern while we're inside it, it can help us to understand ourselves and to work with where we are more skillfully.

Definition & Cross Disciplinary View

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Regression is the reversion of a system to earlier, previously stabilized patterns when current demands exceed available capacity. As I said much more plainly, it's when life asks more of you than you're currently able to give. Mentally, emotionally, or physically. You don't suddenly become more capable. You fall back on what's already wired. Regression is that return. It's a signal that something in the system, your system, has reached its limit. It's also recursive. The system doesn't invent something new under pressure. It pulls from what it already knows. It's also an example of polarity in action. Regression has us move from a state of expansion toward contraction, from openness, flexibility, and creativity toward certainty, habit, and control. So regression isn't failure. It's what any system does when it's operating beyond its capacity. You can feel this in your body if you pay attention. There are moments when you're clear, thoughtful, measured. You can hold complexity very easily. You can consider multiple perspectives. And then something happens and things shift. Maybe a comment lands wrong, an email comes in, a conversation escalates, and suddenly your range narrows. You're not as patient as you were, not as thoughtful or as open. That's not random. That's your nervous system reallocating energy. When load exceeds your capacity to regulate, the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for reasoning and reflection, goes offline. The limbic system takes over. And if the pressure continues, you drop into more primitive survival responses. This can look like overreaction or irrational behavior. It can leave us asking ourselves, why did I say that? When this happens, it's our system prioritizing survival over complexity. Regression at this level is efficient. It's not trying to be right, it's trying to be fast. In psychology, this has been observed for a long time. Sigmund Freud described regression as a return to earlier developmental strategies, ways of coping that were learned at a different stage of life. And you can see how practical that is. If something worked once, especially under stress, it gets encoded. So when a similar feeling or condition arises, the system doesn't pause and evaluate all the possible options. It retrieves, going back to what's available. From a system's perspective, this makes sense. All systems oscillate between expansion and contraction. Expansion allows for growth, novelty, innovation. Contraction stabilizes, it simplifies, it protects. Regression is what happens when the system moves too far into expansion without enough coherence to sustain it. It contracts, not as failure, but as a correction. Sigmund Freud's protege, psychologist Carl Jung, didn't see regression as inherently negative. He saw it as a process and one that can often precede transformation. It can be a return to something unresolved or unintegrated that needs to be brought forward precisely so you can release it and move forward. In Buddhism, suffering isn't just about external conditions. It's about what the mind does under pressure. It contracts, it grasps for certainty, it pushes away discomfort, awareness narrows. In Taoism, there's a recognition that imbalance creates compensatory movement. When something extends too far in one direction, it naturally swings back. Overextension leads to collapse, not as punishment, but as rebalancing. When we look at history, it's easy to tell a story of steady progress, more knowledge, more freedom, more connection. But history doesn't actually move in a straight line. It moves in cycles. Take Europe, for example. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, systems fragmented, trade declined, governance localized, complexity reduced. And then, centuries later, the Renaissance and Enlightenment marked a re-expansion. Science accelerated, ideas opened, new forms of government began to emerge. Another clear example comes from the twentieth century. After the First World War, there was a push toward international cooperation, but under economic collapse and social instability, many societies regressed. Democracies gave way to authoritarian regimes. Power centralized, identity hardened. And after the Second World War, systems expanded again. Global cooperation increased, institutions formed, economies rebuilt. The pattern repeats. Not because societies are failing, but because they are under pressure, societies behave like any system. They don't invent entirely new ways of operating in the moment. They return to what feels more stable, more controllable, more certain, stronger authority, clearer boundaries, simpler narratives. So regression at scale isn't random. It's the system reverting to earlier governance and identity structures under threat. And while that can stabilize things in the short term, it often reduces the system's ability to adapt in the long term. At the individual level, regression often doesn't look dramatic. It looks subtle. It looks like saying something sharper than you intended, avoiding a conversation that you know you should have, getting defensive when you'd normally stay open. It's a loss of range. And that's important because growth isn't about becoming someone else. It's about expanding your range of response. Regression is the opposite of that. It narrows your options. So instead of choosing the best response, you default to the most familiar one. And in that moment, you're not responding as who you are today. You're responding as a version of you that learned that pattern under different conditions. If you heard or watched episode 21 on Emergence, you may remember the story I told about a former coaching client named Barry who hired me to help him transition to a more senior role in finance. Barry had gone through an amicable divorce two years prior and had begun reconnecting with an old fraternity brother, Arnie, who was also single. Now a bachelor, Barry and Arnie frequently indulged in happy hours, grabbing quick dinners at bars, and transactional dating. Barry and Arnie's friendship thrived in college. Frat life, going out, having fun. During Barry's marriage, they barely saw each other. And after the divorce, Barry regressed back to the earlier dynamic. Going backwards helped him regain steady ground during a time when two major life changes had him feeling off balance and at emotional capacity. Barry recognized the pattern as he began to progress into a stronger state of awareness and inner capacity. The older version of himself naturally felt too small, and he steadily began to evolve into something new. Regression isn't failure. It's how we grow. And growth is rarely linear. It's recursive. We revisit earlier versions of ourselves, not to stay there, but to integrate them and move forward with more range. In relationships, regression becomes easier to see and harder to interrupt. Because it's not just one system, it's two. And when one person's capacity drops, it often triggers the other. You've probably experienced this. Maybe a conversation starts neutral. Something small shifts. Tone, wording, timing. One person tightens and the other reacts. And within minutes, you're no longer in the conversation you started. You're in a pattern. One person is pushing, the other is pulling away. Or one is controlling and the other is resisting. And both feel justified. But what's actually happening is simpler. Both systems have lost capacity at the same time. And now they're co-regulating downward. This is where past attaches to present. You're not just responding to what's happening, you're responding to what it reminds you of. This happens in couples and family systems a lot. I want to tell you a story about a tenured manager at a large organization. Let's call him Charles. He was exceptionally bright and had already built a successful 10-year career in retail when he was promoted to lead a small department, his first supervisory role. He'd grown up in the company, but without support in the transition, he felt uncertain about how to ensure his team was working effectively. Several months in, Charles was given his first high visibility database project. He assigned it to his strongest employee, Lisa, confident in her technical ability. But he felt anxious relying on her. It was his first major deliverable as a manager. And that anxiety showed up as control. He checked in daily, often making unannounced visits to her cubicle. Lisa, bright and independent, experienced this as micromanagement and began to resent what she perceived as mistrust. Charles asked her to walk him through technical details, began to drain her time and energy. She started to withdraw. Sensing this, Charles became even more anxious and began criticizing her. For Lisa, the dynamic felt familiar. It echoed her relationship with a demanding father. The pattern intensified. Eventually, Charles placed his top performer on a performance improvement plan. She completed the project successfully and then left the company. Charles and Lisa weren't interacting in the present moment. Charles' nervous system was activated by insecurity in his new role. And Lisa was reacting not just to Charles, but to a remembered past, experiencing her boss as if he were her father. Relational regression is where the past attaches to the present. Projection replaces perception. And pattern overrides intention. You've seen regression in organizations. Things are working well. Decision making is distributed, strategies clear, teams are empowered, there's trust, there's flow. And then the pressure hits. Maybe the market shifts, performance drops, risk increases, and almost immediately something changes. Decision making starts to centralize, layers increase, transparency decreases, leaders become more directive, processes multiply, innovation slows. It can look like dysfunction, but it's not. It's regression. This is the same pattern we saw with Charles. Under pressure, his nervous system moved toward control, more checking, more oversight, more intervention. The organization does the same thing. It tightens because control is easier than trust under stress. It's simpler, faster, more predictable. But just like with Charles and Lisa, what begins as an attempt to stabilize the system starts to erode it. Trust declines, capacity narrows, people disengage, and over time, the organization loses the very thing it needs most in moments like this. The ability to adapt. The question is: how can we work with regression as a process to help us better understand ourselves and make skillful and intentional choices? I offer three practices which might help. Number one, pattern recognition. It's absolutely normal when something unexpected or disappointing happens to us for us to react by thinking or saying, why is this happening? That automatic response is one that reflects fear. And by the way, you may very well be, in fact, feeling fear. The next time you find yourself responding this way, try reframing the question to, what pattern is this? This puts you in a slightly more curious and open mindset. And this shift will help you to respond more quickly and with greater clarity than responding from a place of self-doubt. Take time to think this out in your head, or even out loud. Name what's going on. Maybe you actually say, I'm aware that I'm regressing under some pressure here. This objective naming helps create greater awareness and keeps you from identifying with feelings that might distort your perception of yourself or the situation. Number two, restore capacity before solving. Most people try to solve problems while they're in a process like regression. If you're feeling that you're at or over your current emotional capacity, it's so important that you get your nervous system back online first. Pause what you're doing, hold off doing anything, and get grounded. This might mean temporarily changing your environment and slowing your thoughts down first so you can regroup. The motion to regress gives us clues about what we need from ourselves. This wisdom will help you address challenges more skillfully. Number three, upgrade what you regress to. I will regress. It's human. The question is, to what? Maybe when you were little, your mom helped you deal with difficult feelings by buying you candy. Now as an adult, maybe you deal with a really bad day at work by eating a pint of ice cream. What if, just to start, you gave yourself a small piece of chocolate instead? And while you ate that chocolate, you took 10 minutes to breathe deeply and get your nervous system online. And maybe then you reminded yourself that you had a really bad day and that you were aware of a need to soothe yourself in ways that have worked before. Not only will this save you from eating a pint of ice cream, but it will help you to bring awareness to your feeling states. It'll help you to be more discerning and intentional about how you react to them. It will help you to know yourself better and to expand your capacity for growth and new ways of seeing and engaging with the world around you. Regression isn't a deviation from growth. It's part of the process of how growth stabilizes. Every system, and that includes us humans, has a threshold. When we move beyond our threshold, we aren't able to evolve forward. Sometimes we need to return, regroup, and stabilize ourselves so we can again move forward. Our work isn't to eliminate regression, it's to recognize when it's happening, to increase the capacity that prevents it, and to gradually reshape what you can return to when it does. Because in the end, you're not defined by how you perform when everything is working. You're defined by what you do when it isn't. I'm Mary Schaub. This is Fractals of Change, wishing you curiosity, presence, and flow.