10/19/2012
Has someone ever yelled at you and it took you totally by surprise?
It might have been your child, your spouse, your partner, your parents, your in-laws, a friend, or a co-worker. Displacement knows no boundaries and it does not discriminate, but if the receiver of the displacement doesn't recognize it for what it is, it can do serious damage within the relationship.
The following are excerpts from my books, mainly EQ and Your Child: 8 Proven Skills to Increase your Child’s Emotional Intelligence (Chapter 15 - Anger Management).
Even though EQ and Your Child is written for parents to increase their child’s EQ many of my clients and audience members throughout the US buy it for themselves to better understand emotional intelligence and work on their own EQ.
If you are interested in buying an autographed copy of EQ and Your Child we are offering a 20% discount on our website (http://eitraininginstitute.com/home/products/) and enter the following code (Facebook1018) offer good through 12-12-12. The book is also available on Amazon.com – autograph free.
What is displacement?
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud discovered that when people don’t express their anger in the moment—at the person they’re angry with—it oozes out later in different ways. He called this displacement. In other words, if a person feels angry towards someone but doesn't feel safe or comfortable expressing it toward that person, they will often direct it towards someone else they consider much safer. For instance, let’s say your child has a bad day at school, but instead of yelling at his classmates (he’s afraid they might not play with him, or worse, they won’t like him) he comes home and yells at you and at his siblings.
Have you ever had the experience of picking up your child from school, saying something like “How was your day, honey” and having your son or daughter want to bite your head off? That’s displacement. They experienced a build up of negative emotions, possibly anger, disappointment and rejection during the day and they held it in. Your child needed a safe place to dump his anger, and you were it. In my own life experience, and through thousands of hours counseling, I have consistently discovered that for children ages four through eighteen that moms and dads are a great place for a child to dump their negative emotions. This isn't low EQ—it’s displacement.
Another example of displacement is your twelve-year-old son who just had a really horrible baseball practice. His coaches yelled at him and his teammates laughed at him when he struck out for the third time. He kept his cool throughout practice, so he is ready to explode when you pick him up. He gets in the car. You say hello and tell him dinner is going to be a little later tonight because mom won't be home until seven o'clock. You say you want to wait for mom so you can all eat together. Your son starts yelling at you about how you never fix dinner on time like all the other parents, how he always has to wait for his mom, who, by the way, is always late from work. He suggests that maybe mom should just eat on her own if she can't make it home by dinnertime. He finishes by saying nobody cares that he might be extremely hungry after baseball practice. Oh, yes, and, by the way, life sucks!
One key is to recognize the displacement and do not take his outburst personally. You wait until he's finished and you quietly say, “It sounds like you had a really bad practice. Do you want to tell me about it?” Your son crumbles and starts to cry.
Another parent might have yelled at their son for yelling at them and then the evening would have gone a very different way.
Someone with high EQ realizes what’s being done and finds a healthier way to vent his or her negative emotions—most of the time. Remember: even high EQ individuals have low EQ moments. Have you ever experienced your spouse walking through the door; when you've had a great day and can’t wait to share it with him? All of a sudden …whoosh! His body language is so grumpy, his greeting so curt, that in an instant your good mood—and the mood of the entire household—is changed. Chances are you haven’t seen your spouse for ten or more hours, so he is probably not mad at you. More likely he had a bad day at the office, a bad commute home, a disagreement with someone on the phone, and now he just needs to let out his negative emotions in a safe place. Home being the safest place there is. If he had come home an hour earlier and you weren't home the entire sequence of events might have been different. He would have had time to unwind, relax, and hopefully calm down, you would have walked in the door, and he might have met you with a welcoming hello and a hug.
There is another way that displacement happens in relationships. Freud talked about the individual taking negative emotions towards a person and redirecting them on to another person or object. I have learned within my own marriage and family, and in the families that I work with, that a unique phenomenon happens, which Freud didn't emphasize. A spouse or a child holding in negative feelings about not being listened to, not feeling loved, feeling disrespected and undervalued, will choose some other issue to bring up. For example, a spouse coming home after a long day, wanting to feel loved and nurtured might walk through the door and see his wife on the phone discussing plans for tomorrow’s school fund-raiser. He notices that dinner isn't started and the children are running around: instead of saying, “Honey, I've had the worst day. I could really use a hug right now and a little attention and then the rest of my evening is yours. Help me get the children settled down so we can talk and connect.” What probably happens is more like this: The husband walks in picturing his wife waiting to greet him and the children tucked away quietly in the other room, and his mind flips a switch when he sees reality. Then he starts telling himself, ”And this is what I go to work for? All I am is a paycheck to the family while everyone else gets to play all day. I live in stress. No one is cooking dinner; the children are running around and out of control. And she’s probably been on the phone all-day gabbing.” He has moved from “I had a bad day at work” to “Is this what my life is all about???” By the time his wife says “Hi Honey, I’ll be off the phone in a moment,” he’s furious at life in general. He walks down the hallway, yells at the children to “quiet down” or just plain “shut up.” When he gets to the bedroom and starts to change his clothes, his wife has caught up with him and says, “Honey, are you all right?” The truthful answer might be, “No, I've had a really bad day and I need a hug and some attention right now and I know I’ll feel better in about ten or fifteen minutes.” The wife, having a high EQ, might make a quick decision to support her husband knowing the fifteen minutes spent now will pay off all evening, and the evening would be happily ever after.
The reality of what probably happens is more like this:
WIFE: “Honey are you all right?”
HUSBAND: “No, I’m not all right. I go to work everyday. I work my butt off even though I hate my job, and what for? (WHINE, WHINE) So you and the children can play all-day. Nobody even cares when I get home. You've probably been on the phone all-day because I sure don’t smell dinner cooking and I can tell from looking around you sure haven’t done any housework today (ATTACK, ATTACK). The children are totally out of control, running around. What kind of mom are you anyway? (ATTACK, ATTACK) It would be so nice to actually walk into my own home sometimes to peace and quiet and dinner cooking, but that’s probably too much to ask! (WOE IS ME!)
We've all been there. If only the wife knew what was really bothering the husband or the husband could have talked about what was bothering him life would be smoother. Displacement in marriage and families goes beyond just dumping our negative emotions onto someone safe. Such scenarios too often end up with the displacing person accusing or attacking the other. “You never…you always...” And when someone who is hurting and needing to talk about negative emotions ends up blaming or attacking the safe person, the situation often ends in conflict. The safe person usually doesn't understand why they’re being attacked and takes it personally and gets defensive. The real issues are never addressed, and therefore the emotions are left to ooze out again in the future.
A person with a high EQ would recognize almost immediately from their partner’s (or child’s) body language that this person has a lot of negative emotions that will spill out one-way or the other. A spouse or parent with a high EQ would know enough about reading someone else’s body language to realize that now is not the time to share their great day. Now is the time to listen to the other person, who clearly needs to talk and vent their negative emotions, whose body language reflects how tense, angry, upset, depressed, frustrated they are feeling. So the high EQ person shifts from addressing their own needs to focusing on the needs of the family member.
And how might a high EQ child react to a parent’s displaced anger? All children feel tension and anger in their homes, but the child with high EQ knows that there’s a good chance her parents are not angry with her but with something that happened that day. She also knows she has the right to ask her parent if everything is okay. High EQ children understand that at some point in the evening or at bedtime one of their high EQ parents is going to check in with them to see if they’re all right. Children in a high EQ family feel much less fear, tension, or stress because they don’t have to make up stories in their imagination about what is causing the negativity. At some point, a parent will be talking with them honestly, telling them about why one or both parents are upset, and assuring them that everything will be okay. This knowledge is a crucial security blanket for a child.
Whichever way negative emotions presents itself in your family if it is not acknowledged and discussed, it will continue to ooze out in hurtful ways doing damage to your family.
Have a high EQ week!
