Note:  if you found a regexp like this _in_ the Python distribution, then a bug report would be appropriate.  It's certainly possible to write regexps that can suffer catastrophic backtracking, and we've repaired a few of those, over the years, that shipped with Python.

But we can't stop you from writing such things yourself.  If you post your regexp to, e.g., comp.lang.python or StackOverflow, I'm sure someone will show you how to rewrite it in a safe way.  But be prepared to explain in English what you're trying to accomplish with it.

For example, while it appears you're trying to ensure there are at least 3 characters (of the right kind) between "|" separators, for some reason you made matching "|" optional.  That leaves open an exponential number of ways to try to match long strings of non-"|" characters between "|" separators.