Growing up, and life in general, involves a lot of trade-offs. Many of the developmental steps we take come with a sense of loss, a feeling of giving something up. New doors open, new capacities develop, but we also leave things behind. These are necessary losses, as Judith Viorst called them.

Yet some people are not willing to give something up to get something in exchange. They feel that what they need is so pressing and urgent that the trade-off doesn’t seem worth it. I’ve seen this in a number of clients who want attention very badly — who seem to feel it’s worth sacrificing their mental health, doing something reckless or dramatic, or holding on to their suffering in order to get others to pay attention to them. Sometimes these same people may also carry a fear of growing up and taking on adult responsibilities. Yet part of what they lose out on in such cases are the good feelings that come with a sense of mastery: the satisfaction of working hard at something, taking on new responsibilities, developing new capacities, and growing into them.

And yet we all need attention. When those needs are frustrated, it can feel like the only way to get them met is to get people to notice us through negative behaviors or dramatic displays. For some, this feels worth it. Others recognize that what they’re giving up in exchange for the attention, or the ways in which they’re self-destructing to get it, is hurting them — and the life force inside them is strong enough that they’re not willing to go down that road. They want to fight the urge to do destructive things just for attention.

Families that only give attention when a child is sick, or that punish a child for separating, can unconsciously send the message that the only way to get what you need is to be ill, to struggle, or to stay small and needy. Even when those same parents complain about the child’s neediness, they were the ones who reinforced it in the first place. Something similar happens with people who avoid work because they don’t want responsibility — don’t want a boss, don’t want to answer to anyone or have to push through difficulty. In avoiding all that, they also lose out on the deep satisfaction that comes from working hard, earning money, and discovering what they’re capable of.

When we keep ourselves small — when we avoid going out into the world and doing things that require effort, frustration, and patience — we give up a feeling of efficacy and mastery. For some people, that feeling doesn’t seem worth pursuing. Maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they were taught learned helplessness, absorbing the lesson that whatever they do, they’ll fail or be criticized anyway. So why try? Better to take the easier satisfactions of staying needy, taking it easy, just chilling out.

We all have parts of us that want to regress — to go back to being young, carefree, nurtured, free from responsibility. We want to let go, we want to be loved. But as we grow older, we learn how to integrate those needs with reality. When we can do that, it eases anxiety, because we know we’re meeting life on its actual terms. Otherwise, there’s a kind of low-grade paranoia — a feeling that something bad could happen at any moment, because on some level we know we’re not playing by the rules of how things are supposed to work. This creates an undercurrent of anxiety, even when we can’t quite name why it’s there.

I can’t make the case for people who are stuck that getting unstuck is worth it — not in any way they’ll simply accept. Growing up is hard. It’s hard for all of us. But when our needs were met well enough in childhood, we learn that growing up isn’t traumatic. It just involves some ordinary disappointments — and those are well worth the price of what we gain. I hope someday those who are stuck in a regression can rethink their position.