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"Time does not heal all wounds. Doing the work of grieving heals all wounds. Some people may have it worse, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to your pain."

Britt Frank

Sep 19, 2022

EFR 639: Using Anxiety and Grief to Your Advantage and Overcoming Emotional Regression with Britt Frank

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Britt Frank is a trauma therapist and the author of The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward.

Today’s conversation centers largely on the topic of emotional regression: that all-too-common anxiety-inducing feeling that you are younger than your chronological age. Britt says that this is an issue that needs to be talked about more, because it can affect anybody regardless of their mental health status—even the most successful men and women in society.

Some signs of emotional regression? Indecisiveness, fear of making people angry, can’t say “no”, emotional explosions, wanting to be the “favorite” child/employee/friend, imposter syndrome, and many more.

Believing that “surviving childhood is trauma in and of itself,” Britt asserts that, “if you don’t grieve the fact that your childhood is over, you end up repeating it.”

At the same time, Britt notes that humans are a “sliding scale”, constantly swinging from equilibrium to one extreme to another and back again.

According to Britt, instead of trying to practice “self-regulation” all the time on one end, or being overly emotional and passionate on the other, we need to be willing to embrace a dynamic way of life. This way, we allow ourselves to consciously shift from one emotional state to each other, and from a state of high energy to a state of rest, acknowledging that how we feel is completely and utterly how our body wants us to feel in the moment.

Britt reminds us that “our brain is on our side”—that anxiety is simply a sign telling us that something needs to be addressed. This means allowing ourselves to grieve, as opposed to suppressing that grief, is what will ultimately lead to our healing.

Follow Britt @brittfrank

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

  • Britt breaks down the phenomenon of “emotional regression”: those excruciating moments—usually taking place around one’s parents—where one feels younger than their actual age, and why many of even the most successful individuals go through it.

  • Like the titular character in Alice in Wonderland, emotional regression makes us feel too big one moment and too small the next: your “yes” was really a “no”; you feel guilty when you fail and guilty when you succeed; you feel like an imposter half the time and a narcissistic monster the other half.

  • Britt describes emotional regression as a psychological longing for “home”—by extension defining homeostasis as feeling at home in your body, mind, and heart.

  • Britt unpacks grief as it relates to emotional regression and lays out the four steps to healthy grieving. She also explains why she sees anxiety as a superpower that can help us get unstuck on our road to healing.

  • You don’t need to wait until you’ve hit rock-bottom to change. Britt shares how you can start taking those baby steps to turn your life around today, and explains why feeling “fine” is far from fine.

Powerful Quotes

It’s very hard to feel your chronological age every second of every minute of every day. [...] Anytime you’re feeling smaller or younger or less powerful than your chronological age, that’s called “emotional regression”.

Our nervous systems, our brains, are not wired to be in a steady state. It drives me bananas when people sell self-regulation as the ultimate goal of wellness. You’re not supposed to be self-regulated all the time! [...] All of the things we want—passion, creativity, inspiration, success—are all on the edges of human experience.

Balance is not the goal. The goal is to be able to shift between states to know where you are on the roadmap and to feel like you have a choice rather than responding all the time to things flying at you.

Time does not heal all wounds. Doing the work of grieving heals all wounds.

Some people may have it worse, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to your pain.

Episode resources:

Read More

EFR 639: Using Anxiety and Grief to Your Advantage and Overcoming Emotional Regression with Britt Frank

Britt Frank is a trauma therapist and the author of The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward.

Today’s conversation centers largely on the topic of emotional regression: that all-too-common anxiety-inducing feeling that you are younger than your chronological age. Britt says that this is an issue that needs to be talked about more, because it can affect anybody regardless of their mental health status—even the most successful men and women in society.

Some signs of emotional regression? Indecisiveness, fear of making people angry, can’t say “no”, emotional explosions, wanting to be the “favorite” child/employee/friend, imposter syndrome, and many more.

Believing that “surviving childhood is trauma in and of itself,” Britt asserts that, “if you don’t grieve the fact that your childhood is over, you end up repeating it.”

At the same time, Britt notes that humans are a “sliding scale”, constantly swinging from equilibrium to one extreme to another and back again.

According to Britt, instead of trying to practice “self-regulation” all the time on one end, or being overly emotional and passionate on the other, we need to be willing to embrace a dynamic way of life. This way, we allow ourselves to consciously shift from one emotional state to each other, and from a state of high energy to a state of rest, acknowledging that how we feel is completely and utterly how our body wants us to feel in the moment.

Britt reminds us that “our brain is on our side”—that anxiety is simply a sign telling us that something needs to be addressed. This means allowing ourselves to grieve, as opposed to suppressing that grief, is what will ultimately lead to our healing.

Follow Britt @brittfrank

Follow Chase @chase_chewning

Key Highlights

  • Britt breaks down the phenomenon of “emotional regression”: those excruciating moments—usually taking place around one’s parents—where one feels younger than their actual age, and why many of even the most successful individuals go through it.

  • Like the titular character in Alice in Wonderland, emotional regression makes us feel too big one moment and too small the next: your “yes” was really a “no”; you feel guilty when you fail and guilty when you succeed; you feel like an imposter half the time and a narcissistic monster the other half.

  • Britt describes emotional regression as a psychological longing for “home”—by extension defining homeostasis as feeling at home in your body, mind, and heart.

  • Britt unpacks grief as it relates to emotional regression and lays out the four steps to healthy grieving. She also explains why she sees anxiety as a superpower that can help us get unstuck on our road to healing.

  • You don’t need to wait until you’ve hit rock-bottom to change. Britt shares how you can start taking those baby steps to turn your life around today, and explains why feeling “fine” is far from fine.

Powerful Quotes

It’s very hard to feel your chronological age every second of every minute of every day. [...] Anytime you’re feeling smaller or younger or less powerful than your chronological age, that’s called “emotional regression”.

Our nervous systems, our brains, are not wired to be in a steady state. It drives me bananas when people sell self-regulation as the ultimate goal of wellness. You’re not supposed to be self-regulated all the time! [...] All of the things we want—passion, creativity, inspiration, success—are all on the edges of human experience.

Balance is not the goal. The goal is to be able to shift between states to know where you are on the roadmap and to feel like you have a choice rather than responding all the time to things flying at you.

Time does not heal all wounds. Doing the work of grieving heals all wounds.

Some people may have it worse, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to your pain.

Episode resources: