Psychologist reveals why we act like teenagers around our family

No matter how mature you are in everyday life, when it comes time to head home for Christmas, we often find ourselves acting like grouchy teenagers.

However, if you end up clashing with your family over the holidays, research suggests that you are far from alone.

Psychologists say that well-functioning adults often end up feeling and acting like younger version of themselves when around their families.

According to Dr Chester Sunde, a licensed clinical psychologist in California, this is due to a completely normal and very common process called 'regression'.

Our psyches developed their fundamental structures within the pressures and conflicts of our families and childhood relations.

While we can control those deeply ingrained habits in our adult lives, it's hard not to slip back into old habits as soon as we return to a family context.

Dr Sunde told the Daily Mail: 'When you return to that context, those patterns can reactivate automatically. 

'It's not that your siblings "make you" regress; the environmental cues trigger responses you built decades ago.'

Dr Sunde says that he has seen 'countless' numbers of patients over the 20 years of his career who experience the same difficulties during the holidays.

He says: 'In my clinical practice, many clients describe finding themselves feeling and acting like teenagers shortly after walking into their parents' house.

'Capable professionals who suddenly feel defensive, reactive, or caught in old sibling dynamics even though you're successful and have nothing to prove.'

This is because the old defensive structures that were created during our childhood are very deeply ingrained in our psychology.

All it takes is something to trigger those reactions, and soon even very well-composed individuals can start to act like children again.

'The family home is where your psychological architecture was originally constructed. The familiar rooms, the dinner table, even the way your mother sighs - these cues can bypass adult functioning and activate the defensive structures of childhood,' says Dr Sunde.

'Christmas can intensify this because it compresses extended family into close quarters, often in the childhood home itself, with added pressures around gift-giving, meals, and unspoken expectations.'

This regression has three main components: a physical part, an emotional part, and a behavioural part.

First, when someone starts to regress, they may begin to feel familiar symptoms associated with stress or anxiety, such as tightness in the chest or shallow breathing.

Next, someone going through this kind of regression will start to experience disproportionate emotional responses.

You might start to feel angrier than the situation calls for, more anxious than the stakes demand, or feel insult and criticism where there is none.

Finally, we find that our behaviour begins to fall back into the same patterns we followed as children, playing the peacemaker or acting as the golden child.

This is why we often find ourselves snapping at our parents or arguing with siblings, even when this is well outside our normal behaviour.

Dr Sunde interprets this kind of regression through a theory that can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

He says: 'Plato described three aspects of the psyche: reason, spirit or emotion, and appetite or basic needs.'

When we are adults living our normal lives, these three aspects of our psychology are reasonably well balanced, and we can control our behaviours.

However, when we go back to our families, this integration between the different parts is disrupted, pulling us back to an early time in our psychological development.

This can take someone back to a time when they craved approval, had an excessive need to feel safe and secure, or lacked the judgment to act properly.

'What collapses is what I call constitutional self-governance, that stable sense of who you are that transcends context,' says Dr Sundee.

'Many people have this at work, with friends, in most settings. But it can dissolve at the family dinner table.'

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The easiest thing to do is simply learn how to recognise those defensive patterns as they start to emerge.

Noticing that you are acting like a teenager in the moment, rather than afterwards, gives you the chance to choose how to react.

He says: 'You probably can't prevent regression entirely if the patterns run deep and the context is powerful. But you can recognise it when it's happening.

'There's space between feeling the old pattern and acting from it. That space is where your freedom lives.'

WHAT ARE THE 4 PERSONALITY 'CLUSTERS' RESEARCHERS CLAIM WE ALL FALL INTO?

Experts from Northwestern University sifted through data from more than 1.5 million questionnaire respondents.

Their research suggests that everyone falls into one of four distinct clusters of personality types.

These are — 

Average

Average people are high in neuroticism and extraversion, while low in openness.

'I would expect that the typical person would be in this cluster,' said Martin Gerlach, a postdoctoral fellow and the paper's first author.

Females are more likely than males to fall into the Average type.

Reserved

The Reserved type is emotionally stable, but not open or neurotic.

They are not particularly extroverted, but can be somewhat agreeable and conscientious.

Role Models

Role Models score low in neuroticism and high in all the other traits. The likelihood that someone is a role model increases dramatically with age. 

'These are people who are dependable and open to new ideas,' said study lead Luís Amaral.

'These are good people to be in charge of things.

'In fact, life is easier if you have more dealings with role models.' 

More women than men are likely to be role models.

Self-Centred

Self-Centred people score very high in extraversion and below average in openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

'These are people you don't want to hang out with,' co-author William Revelle, professor of psychology, said.

There is a very dramatic decrease in the number of self-centred types as people age, both with women and men.