Displacement - misplaced aggression

Pic Courtesy: Alex Perez, Unsplash.com

Say you are about to go meet a friend, and right before you leave your apartment, you have a tiff with your sibling, setting in a sour mood. When you reach the meeting place, your friend has still not arrived and is late by 15 minutes. When she is finally there, she explains that she was stuck in traffic. You give her an earful of not showing any consideration for anyone else’s time except her own self. This is Displacement at play.

It’s like a chain reaction and does not usually stop at one incident. For example, when you shout at your friend, the friend in turn will get angry with her boyfriend, and the boyfriend at a waiter and the waiter at a stray dog. Thus, the chain reaction continues and only a slight trigger is sufficient to bring out the reaction.

Displacement, in Freudian terms, is an unconscious defense mechanism taking one emotion from one situation and dropping it into another. It occurs when we know we want to react, but for a variety of reasons, we know we can’t or shouldn’t in the way that we’d like.

Often it’s a direct transfer of action, as in being shouted at in an argument and turning that anger into shouting at your child who’s happened to wander in with a question. But it can also take the form of something completely unrelated, like troubling your sister for no apparent fault of hers since your teacher shouted at you in class. But you couldn’t pull your teacher’s hair.

So what do you do when you are stressed, swamped or overcome with emotions? Unleash hell on an innocent bystander, of course!

The truth is that often when we feel powerless we dump our anger on someone else – someone we know won’t fight back.

According to Martha Beck, a writer, Military folks have a charming phrase for displaced aggression, that she has described as “stress rolls downhill.” “I am sure you can recall times when people rolled their stress onto your unprotected head as you have rolled your stress onto other’s. Learning to stop stress-rolling is one of the best things you can do for your relations and your general life satisfaction”, she says. She further posits that "feelings don’t want to stay hidden. Like water held back by a dam, they are always pushing, seeking a crack to leak or entirely break through." Our hidden feelings seep or burst out on safe targets.

How often have you come home and “kicked” the proverbial “cat” (or dog)? My guess is, you have had a terrible interaction with your boss or teacher. Your inability to deal with the uncomfortable feelings towards your boss or teacher makes you shift your anger or anxiety towards a less harmful target. After all, you could get fired or suspended if you kicked your boss or teacher. So you may have protected yourself from dire consequences but the frustration of that situation does leak out onto something or someone else.

The truth is that you maybe able to cover up your unpleasant feelings but they are still there, buried somewhere. It probably will show-up when you bring up things from the past in an argument or have an unjustified outburst/overreaction. You might keep pounding your partner for never picking up his towel after a shower or point out every grammatical goof your assistant made since the day she was hired.

Martha Beck finds this behavior similar to the general who opens fire on his own troops, then decides he’d better shoot a few more so they’ll be too scared to stand up to him. But don’t be like that general, instead, excuse yourself, take some deep breaths and figure out what’s really bothering you. You could stop displacing your feelings and start facing your troubles head-on.

I, recently, snapped at my son for eating all the ice cream. When he questioned my overreaction, a hint of guilt spoke to my conscience. I realized that I was actually irritated because no one was commenting on my blog. The reality is that I was not being fair to him. I immediately apologized and explained the real reason for my bad mood.

Basically, the core issue is often so beyond your control that you push it out of your consciousness or you may not be able to articulate it at first.

Fortunately, we all have a built-in problem-detector. If you poke at the general area, you will find the epicenter of the pain. Ask yourself the following questions:

“What’s really bothering me?”

“What’s the worst thing about it?

Repeat these questions until you reach the source of your distress.

You will know you have hit upon the source when all your irritation with innocent bystanders disappears. You will be left with your own feelings of fear, sorrow or despair. And it’s okay to feel lost or sad. Every time you avoid stress rolling, and instead admit the places you feel lowest, you will find your power growing.

Accept, forgive and move on. Honesty and humility will help you solve both the problems that create stress rolling and the problems stress rolling creates.

Lao Tzu said, “All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”