Feelings can be misplaced or displaced when we direct or project them inappropriately at someone or something that is not the source of those feelings.
Consider the following hypothetical scenario – Jo is driving back from work after a really long day where he was yelled at by his manager for not submitting a report on time. He had felt a bit under the weather, but the only reason he dragged himself to work that day was the report due for submission. Thinking about the day, being on the receiving end of his manager’s wrath, feelings of inadequacy compounded, and he turned the car towards the pub and drank until late. At midnight, he received a curt message from his wife to say that their 5-year-old had cried himself to sleep after waiting way past his bedtime. It was his birthday, and Jo had promised to take him for ice cream after work.
Feeling a surge of guilt, Jo slammed his glass on the table with such force that it cracked on impact, causing glass shards to scatter everywhere. A young man narrowly escaped an injury to his eye, but the woman on the table next to him got seriously injured when a fragment pierced her hand as she pressed her hands down at the same moment that the glass shattered.
It was the worst day of his life.
Days like these are common in our lives and can prove to be really challenging if we don’t learn skills and strategies that help us ground ourselves when we feel overwhelmed or vulnerable. Application of grounding and mindfulness skills and strategies helps us make room for these feelings that bring so much discomfort. We can then choose our actions more in alignment with our values. It doesn’t mean we will get everything right because that is neither realistic nor possible; however, in situations where things don’t go our way, we can learn to respond more appropriately.
Anger, guilt, embarrassment, resentment, loss of self-worth, feeling like a failure with harsh self-criticism can often lead to misplacement/displacement of these emotions by ‘discharging’ them at people or situations that were an easier and less threatening target.
The emotions we struggle to accept and manage are normal human emotions, so we all face and feel them. The methods we use to ‘express/release/project’ them are problematic when we end up inflicting injury on others who were not responsible for those emotions.
The Plutchik’s wheel of emotions is a very helpful tool to understand the complex layers of emotions and how they present in people differently. Once we become more aware of our emotions, we automatically place ourselves in better positions to explore, understand, accept, and manage them better.
Displacement of emotions is a very unhelpful and often dangerous behaviour. It leads to perpetuation of problems and inflicts harm on those projecting as well as those on the receiving end of the displaced emotions.
Let’s equip ourselves with skills to understand and explore our emotions in a meaningful manner so we can break cycles of negativity and toxic stresses in our lives.
