Regression: When the Soul Feels Like It Is Moving Backward

Understanding Regression in the Reconstruction Journey

There is a moment in the spiritual life that few talk about, but nearly everyone experiences. It arrives after deconstruction, sometime during reconstruction, when healing has begun, and hope has started to grow again. Just when you think you are moving forward, something happens that feels like a collapse. A reaction. A moment of anger or impatience. A return to an old fear. A loss of trust. A dip into self-criticism you thought you left behind.

This experience has a name.
Regression.

Not the clinical kind that belongs in a textbook, but the quiet and disorienting kind that visits the soul. The kind that makes you feel like you have lost everything you gained on your long and difficult journey. The kind that leaves you discouraged, embarrassed, or confused.

I want to begin this reflection with my own story.

My Recent Regression

Recently, I caught myself regressing. It happened quickly and almost without warning. I was in a conversation with someone I care about, someone I mentor. As we talked, I felt my patience slipping. Self-control began to fade. I felt disappointment rise in me because I thought my mentee was regressing.

But the truth was that I was the one regressing.

In that moment, I lost patience, positivity, and trust in God’s timing. I could feel my old patterns from my church-planting years pushing to the surface. The achiever. The activator. The part of me that judged circumstances by productivity rather than by presence. The part that relied on strength instead of surrender.

My false self took the wheel before I could stop it.

And as soon as it happened, I felt embarrassed. Shame appeared immediately, telling me I had failed. I felt myself slipping toward the same self-critical patterns I once knew too well. Patterns that used to pull me toward despair and even self-harm.

I had to stop.
I had to breathe.
I had to be honest with myself.

I took time to reflect, to sit with what was happening beneath the surface, and to name it. I remembered that God’s grace is sufficient. I let God’s forgiving love settle me again. And from that deep space, I write this reflection.

Regression is real.
It is painful.
But it is not the end.

Why Regression Feels So Heavy

Psychologically, regression often shows up when someone is integrating a major shift in identity or belief. Reconstruction fits this perfectly. The brain revisits earlier frameworks as it forms new ones, which means old fears and behaviors often reappear. The nervous system dips into old protective patterns because it is trying to reestablish safety.

Spiritually, the contemplative tradition sees regression as meaningful and important.

John of the Cross describes the “dark night” as a kind of experience in which God leads the soul through darkness in order to give it deeper light. He writes that although this “happy night brings darkness to the spirit, it does so only to give it light in everything.”[1]

Teresa of Avila speaks of times in prayer when the soul feels great aridity, confusion, and even distress about its own state, not because God has left, but because the person does not yet understand what God is doing within.[2]

Thomas Keating, reflecting on contemplative prayer, speaks of the “unloading of the unconscious,” in which buried material rises into awareness so it can be healed over time.[3]

Richard Rohr often describes the journey of growth as “two steps forward and one step back,” and points out that the step back, painful as it feels, is often where wisdom and transformation deepen.[4]

Regression is not backsliding.
It is revisiting what is ready for healing.

The Spiritual Reality Underneath Regression

Henri Nouwen reminds us of the real tension between our wounded self and the deeper place where God dwells. He writes that we are “confronted again and again with the choice of letting God speak or letting your wounded self cry out,” and that while our wounded part does need attention, our deeper vocation is to speak and live from the place in us where God lives.[5]

That is exactly where regression hurts the most. It exposes our wounds and our old stories:

• Regression feels personal because it touches old shame.

• Regression feels humiliating because it reveals our humanity.

• Regression feels heavy because it shines light on parts of ourselves we hoped we had outgrown.

But the contemplatives agree on this:

Nothing that resurfaces in you is new to God.
It is only new to your awareness.

What Is Actually Happening Inside You

Psychologically and spiritually, several things are at work:

1. Your identity is reorganizing.
   As your beliefs and self-understanding shift, you revisit earlier stages from a new vantage point.

2. Your nervous system is recalibrating.
   Old fears and reactions come online because your body is learning what safety and trust feel like now.

3. Unhealed parts are rising.
   In Keating’s language, the “unloading of the unconscious” means that old emotional material is being brought into the light so it can be transformed, not so you can be shamed by it.[3]

4. Your inner critic becomes loud.
   Shame tries to protect you by pushing you back into the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy.

5. Your spiritual senses are shifting.
   As Teresa describes, you may feel dryness, confusion, or distance in prayer, not because God is gone, but because your way of relating to God is changing.[2]

Regression is not the collapse of your reconstruction.
It is the soil in which it grows.

How to Be Present When You Feel Yourself Regressing

Here is wisdom from the contemplatives, grounded in their real teachings.

1. Pause without panicking.
Nouwen encourages us to acknowledge the wounded part honestly and still choose to listen for God’s voice in us.[5] Feelings are not failures. They are signals.

2. Treat yourself gently.
Self-compassion is not indulgence. It is cooperating with the way God already looks at you. The saints are very realistic about their own weaknesses and imperfections.[2][5]

3. Name what is happening.
Teresa urges her readers not to be alarmed by inner trials they do not understand and not to abandon prayer when things feel off.[2] Simply naming, “I feel like I am regressing right now,” can loosen shame’s grip.

4. Return to your breath.
Keating describes contemplative prayer as a consent to God’s presence at a deep level, beyond all the thoughts and feelings that pass through.[3] Returning to your breath helps your body settle enough to remember that God is here.

5. Pray simply.
A very simple prayer in this space can be as few as three words: “Here I am.” No performance. No explanations. Just presence.

6. Seek one safe person.
A spiritual director or trusted friend can help you distinguish between your wounded self’s narrative and God’s invitation.

7. Trust that God has not moved.
Regression changes what you feel. It does not change where God is. John of the Cross insists that the apparent darkness is actually the action of divine light, which is simply too different from our usual way of seeing.[1]

A Word for Those Caught Between Deconstruction and Reconstruction

You have not lost everything.
You are not the same person you were before.
You are revisiting these places from a new level of maturity.

Rohr’s “two steps forward and one step back” is not a formula for failure, but a realistic description of how change usually unfolds.[4]

You are not back at the beginning.
You are deepening.

God is not disappointed in you.
God is not grading your progress.
God is not keeping score.

God is with you in the very place you feel most lost.

Regression is not the retreat of your soul.
It is the deepening of it.

And if you are living in that space now, you are not alone.
You are growing in ways that are hidden but real.
You are becoming more whole, even if it feels like breaking.

Take courage.
Take one breath.
Let God meet you there.

Footnotes:

[1] John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Book I, Chapter 3; Book II, Chapters 4 to 5.
[2] Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, Fourth Dwelling Places, Chapter 3; The Way of Perfection, Chapter 30.
[3] Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love, Chapter 10, “The Unloading of the Unconscious.”
[4] Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, Chapter 2; Everything Belongs, Chapter 1.
[5] Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, entries “Face Your Loneliness” and “Trust Your Healing.”
[6] Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part II, Chapter 2.