I have a partner who way too consistently exhibits childlike behaviors when he is frustrated and offended by other people. He has temper tantrums. He pouts. He insists. It seems to me that he is using the psychological defense of regression. My question to you is this: How can I help him change this kind of behavior when he is treated unjustly?
Your partner’s exhibiting the psychological defense mechanism of regression could be caused by a number of issues as follows: a) He saw this exhibited by others in his family when he was growing up; b) his parents may have fostered a sense of entitlement in him so that he gets overly angry when things do not go his way; c) he wants to control others by his intense anger so that others acquiesce to him out of fear. Regardless of the cause, he can change this regressive behavior if you can introduce him to what forgiveness is (and what it is not) and, with your encouragement, help him to begin forgiving others who are unfair to him. As he learns to forgive, he will be fostering a sense of the inherent worth toward those who have offended him. It will help him to check the temper tantrums because people who see the worth in others do not impose the pain of temper tantrums on them. Once he begins to see the value of forgiveness toward others and develops a capacity for forgiveness, you might want to introduce him to self-forgiveness. He may have to forgive himself for the times he was intemperate with others by his regressive actions of excessive anger toward them.
