Displacement

• Our feelings are harder to access in environments where they are not welcome. This can be with certain people who we feel shut us down, and it can also be with our internal world if we believe certain feelings are bad, unproductive, or unacceptable.
• When we can’t access and process through our feelings directly we may find ourselves prone to using displacement. When we “displace” we focus our energy, attention, and conversation around something other than the core issue at hand.
• Displacement can be an indirect way of addressing an emotionally charged / intense topic or a topic we can’t find an accessible entry point into discussing or feeling our way through.
• Example: you’ve had a bad day at work and take out your anger on your family once you’re home. Perhaps you’re feeling angry about work, and simultaneously feeling like you can’t change that environment / express yourself there and maintain professionalism (i.e. you can’t find an accessible entry point at work to handle your concerns in a direct way).
• Although you don’t want to be irritable at home, you may (consciously or unconsciously) rationalize to yourself that your family is “stuck with you” and so you release your frustrations at home. In this scenario the person has displaced their anger at work onto their family members and in an environment where they feel their negative emotions are more tolerated.
• Sometimes displacement of this nature can happen even when we don’t consciously *feel* angry. So yes, this means you can have a feeling, not register that you are having it, and then direct a release of it toward some other topic or person in your life. 
• The trouble with displacement is we focus our attention, energy, and conversation around the focal point, at times without acknowledgement or awareness of the underlying issue(s) at hand. 
• Unfortunately, even if we can “resolve” the displaced issue (in this example the conflict with our family), we haven’t resolved the core issue (work) and the recipient(s) of our displacement often leave the interaction(s) feeling like the other has been unreasonable.
• If we are regularly displacing in our lives we run the risk of resentment in relationships, having the same fight repeatedly, believing our internal world is unreasonable, and feeling confused by or untrustworthy of our reactions. 
• More in today’s post and comments about how displacement can creep into relationships and decrease our ability to solve problems in our lives. Also, tips for how to find displacement and what to do about it.

When we “displace” we focus our thoughts, communications and/or reactions to a “stand-in” person / object / situation as opposed to the actual person / situation we are having a reaction to. When someone says they feel treated like a punching bag, often they are describing being the recipient of someone else’s displaced feelings. 

Displacement can happen in lots of ways, imagine you and your spouse are in a fight about how the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher. More often then not those types of fights are a displacement of a different, larger, and more emotionally overwhelming topic. Instead of facing that topic head on, we can displace onto something more accessible and concrete, like how the dishes are loaded. In this scenario the intense emotions about a larger dynamic (could be anything, perhaps how heard one party feels) are displaced onto a smaller dynamic (how the dishes are loaded) that comes to represent the larger one.

Sometimes we can displace as a way of protecting ourselves from feelings we don’t want to have or believe we shouldn’t be having. At those times we can be fully wedded the the notion that we are having reactions to “the dishes” rather than some larger problem we don’t want to be true of our relationship or in our lives.

Other times when we displace, we may feel aware that the strength of our reaction doesn’t totally make sense. A helpful way to get to core of an issue when you suspect displacement is at play in yourself or others is to ask (in a collaborative, non-judgmental, and accepting manner):

1. Can you articulate why there is so much emotion or heat around this topic?
2. Does it feel like this type of thing happens in other ways we may not be discussing?
3. What else happened today or recently that this reminds me of that I might also be having a reaction to? 
4. Does it feel like we might really be talking about something or someone else here?

Until we can get to the core of the issues we face we are at risk of having the same underlying concern or conflict around “stand-in” topics. With curiosity and introspection we can work to understand and know ourselves better to catch displacement in the act, and get to addressing core underlying concerns.

Notes

1. One of the reasons that therapy is effective is that a skilled therapist provides a space for someone to feel their feelings without judgment. The relationship becomes a safe place to release your emotions, and it’s not uncommon for patients to find themselves surprised by what comes out in a session. If this has happened to you in treatment this is often a great sign that you feel safe in your relationship with your therapist and they are helping you access, process through, and release what is already there and needs room to come out.
2. Once we’ve gotten good at recognizing the signs of displacement in ourselves and can recognize when we’re displacing from one topic to another the displaced topic itself can become a helpful entry point into conversation. For example, “I’m noticing myself feeling angry about the dishes but as I think about it, I’m realizing it’s not just the dishes, it’s more that the dishes are one example of how I feel like I ask you to do something and it doesn’t happen. I think we really need to talk about this because I can tell I’m getting resentful”. 
3. Affairs in relationships can happen for many reasons, but one avenue for thinking about them (and there are many others) is through the notion of displacement. If you are having an affair one of many questions you can ask to build introspection and awareness is what need aren’t you getting met from your partner or your life that you have displaced into this other relationship? 
4. I mention in the post that sometimes we can feel like our reactions don’t totally make sense for the situation we are in. Sometimes this is because we are displacing, but all feelings are valid even if they are about numerous situations at the same time. See this post on the cumulative nature of emotions as well as this post on how our brains make associations for a deeper dive into that topic.
5. I mention in the post that our feelings are harder to access in environments where they are not welcome including our internal world if we believe certain feelings are bad, unproductive, or unacceptable. See more here for how to approach your internal world in a way that won’t shut it down .
6. I mention in the post that we can have an emotion and not register we are having it. It’s true. For more about how this works see this post on emotional blocking.
7. Alcoholics Anonymous groups talk about displacement too, though they use the phrase “Coming out Sideways” to discuss how emotions or reactions can come out “sideways” to a focal point other than the core issue, problem, concern, or person. 
8. Our insight into our use of displacement can vary even if we are otherwise self-aware and reflective. We can be very self-aware in some categories of our life and in some relationships, as less so in others. Further, we can displace more around certain types of issues than others. Our insight can vary based on a variety of factors including whether we’re in our window of tolerance, or when we’re operating outside of our limits.