It can be very difficult when someone who has experienced trauma or hardship redirects their pain and anger onto you. This phenomena has a few names that aim to describe what is happening. Some key terms for when someone displaces their trauma and stress onto others are:
- Displaced aggression
- Misdirected anger
- Projection
- Transference
- Scapegoating
The reasons behind this behavior are complex, and it often happens unintentionally on the part of the person acting out. With compassion and boundaries, it is possible to cope with being on the receiving end of displaced trauma. Understanding the psychology behind it can help make sense of a confusing situation.
Why Does Displaced Trauma Happen?
There are a few key reasons someone may take their trauma and stress out on another person:
- They feel anger about their experiences but cannot express it directly at the original source, so they redirect it.
- They have repressed or suppressed their feelings, so these leak out and get aimed at safer targets.
- They struggle with overwhelming emotions and lack appropriate coping skills, so lash out due to feeling out of control.
- They subconsciously transfer feelings about their trauma onto others around them.
- They feel powerless so seek control by putting down others.
Often when people have been victimized or gone through something devastating, they feel extremely powerless. Exerting power over others can seem like an unconscious way to regain control. Abusing or manipulating someone else provides a sense of dominance that can be appealing when someone feels helpless.
Likewise, anger often arises naturally after trauma, but it may seem impossible or dangerous for someone to direct that anger at the original source. The trauma may come from an abusive partner, parent, or authority figure. Or the abuser may be deceased or otherwise unreachable. That leaves all the anger and pain bottled up with “nowhere to go”.
Someone struggling this way may not even fully recognize they are redirecting trauma at safe targets around them. The process can be subconscious. It stems from unmet needs, lack of coping skills, and suppressed emotions.
Types of Displaced Trauma
There are a few concepts in psychology that describe different ways people may displace trauma onto others. These include:
Displaced Aggression
Displaced aggression refers to redirecting feelings of anger, hostility, or aggression from the original source onto an unrelated target. The new target is a “safe” substitute because there will not be consequences for expressing anger toward them.
For example, a child who is abused by a caregiver might be unable to fight back or express how they feel toward that caregiver. So they may show excessive aggression with peers at school instead.
Misdirected Anger
Misdirected anger follows a similar pattern, where someone shifts their anger and stress onto targets that are not the real source of those feelings.
Someone who feels oppressed or mistreated in society might focus their anger on family members or a specific social or cultural group, misdirecting their frustration.
Projection
Projection is a psychological defense mechanism where someone projects their own unacceptable feelings or desires onto someone else. For example, someone struggling with inner aggression might constantly accuse others of being aggressive.
Projection allows the individual to see an unwanted trait in themselves as instead being a trait of others around them. This provides a level of psychological comfort and enables the person to avoid taking responsibility for the trait.
Transference
Transference describes unconsciously transferring feelings about one person, often a caregiver from childhood, onto someone else. This often happens between patients and therapists. A patient redirects the anger, fear, or desire they felt toward a parent or other early caregiver onto their therapist.
Transference provides insight into how that relationship shaped the patient’s emotions and vulnerabilities. The therapist helps the patient recognize the transference, gain insight about its origins, and resolve it.
Scapegoating
Scapegoating refers to choosing one person or group to unfairly blame for complex societal problems. It redirects strong feelings of frustration and aggression onto that target.
For example, after a society goes through economic collapse or defeat in war, people may choose a specific group as a scapegoat to blame, such as immigrants, certain religions or races, or political factions. This displaces responsibility and rage onto an outlet that did not truly cause the problems at hand.
Coping When You Are a Target
When someone consistently takes their trauma and stress out on you, it can be extremely taxing and difficult to cope with. Some tips include:
- Understand it is likely not personal. This behavior stems from their trauma history, not your worth.
- Set firm boundaries around what treatment you find acceptable. Make clear you will not tolerate abuse or aggression.
- Avoid absorbing their criticisms or blame. Recognize that their judgment is clouded by pain.
- Offer compassion while firmly protecting yourself. For example, “I understand you’re struggling and want to support you, but will not accept yelling.”
- Seek support. Talk to trusted confidantes for reality checks and coping strategies.
- Therapy can help process hurtful experiences and build self-esteem resilience.
- If the situation remains unsafe or intolerable, you may need to limit contact or remove the person from your life.
- Take time for self-care and stress management.
Coping with displaced trauma requires being aware it is not your fault, developing inner strength, finding healthy support, and setting clear boundaries. Safety is essential, whether that means creating distance, limiting time together, or leaving the relationship entirely if necessary.
Why Does This Happen?
There are several key factors that contribute to someone taking their trauma and stress out on others, including:
Unresolved Trauma
Unresolved trauma refers to inner pain, fear, anger, grief, or shame that has never been fully processed. This creates inner turmoil and distress that demands an outlet. Lashing out at others can stem from inner chaos seeking expression.
Suppressed Emotions
Sometimes, emotions like rage or devastation seem too overwhelming or unacceptable to express directly. Someone who experienced trauma may have needed to suppress their feelings to survive at the time. But suppression just bottles up pain – it does not heal it. Those potent emotions can leak out later directed at new targets.
Learned Behavior
In some cases, aggression or emotional abuse may be a learned behavior from growing up around violence and mistreatment. Children often absorb behavioral lessons from caregivers and other influential adults in their lives.
Loss of Power and Control
Trauma often involves a major loss of power – being victimized, abused, oppressed, attacked, or otherwise rendered helpless. Attempting to regain that power by subjugating others can become an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Emotional Dysregulation
Strong emotions like rage, fear, shame, and grief can become incredibly difficult to manage after trauma. Without the ability to self-regulate, outbursts and emotional overflow occur. Rage or blame aimed toward others may stem from an inability to control one’s inner experiences.
Substance Abuse
Self-medicating trauma with substances leads to loss of inhibitions and impaired judgment. Outbursts fueled by alcohol or drugs may involve displaced anger coming out without filters.
Therapeutic Approaches
Various types of therapy can help someone work through trauma and stop displaced aggression patterns, including:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT helps people modify dysfunctional thought patterns that fuel harmful behavior. Changing cognitive distortions around blame, rage, powerlessness, and injustice can alleviate displacement.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
DBT focuses on building distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness. This allows people to handle trauma-related anger and pain in healthier ways.
Exposure Therapy
Guiding someone to gradually face trauma memories and feelings in a safe, controlled way can help defuse their power. This reduces the need to displace those emotions.
EMDR
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation like eye movements to help desensitize traumatic memories. This can resolve trapped “fight or flight” reactions.
Anger Management
Anger management provides tools to express anger appropriately, defuse rage in healthy ways, and stop aggression or hostility. This creates outlets so anger need not be displaced.
Stress Management
Techniques like meditation, breathing exercises, relaxation skills, and mindfulness practice helps develop higher distress tolerance and emotional regulation.
Support Groups
Connection, understanding, and empathy from other survivors can help trauma survivors feel less alone. Shared coping strategies prevent isolation and build self-worth.
With professional help and social support, the heavy burden of unresolved trauma can gradually lift. Inner peace and regulation become possible. The urge to displace rage, fear, or shame onto others finally abates, ending the cycle.
When to Seek Help
Displacing trauma onto others causes harm – both for the targets of the aggression and the person suffering internally. It is a damaging pattern for all involved.
Consider seeking therapy or counseling if you or someone you care about shows patterns like:
- Outbursts of anger or rage, often seemingly “out of nowhere”
- High levels of criticism toward others around them
- Blaming others when things go wrong, even if it does not make logical sense
- Emotionally or physically abusive behavior
- Socially isolating themselves and withdrawing from loved ones
- Extreme mood swings
- Ongoing struggle with anxiety, depression, grief, lack of fulfillment
- Substance abuse as an emotional coping mechanism
- Being excessively controlling or paranoid
The sooner healthy coping skills develop, the less likely anger and pain will need to be displaced onto others. With therapy, suppressed emotions find safe outlets and expression. Inner wounds can finally heal.
Conclusion
Displacing trauma onto others stems from intense emotional suffering and lack of coping skills. However, it causes further damage. The person continues struggling internally, while those around them suffer unjustly.
There are healthier ways to cope and express pain that can be learned. Counseling, group support, anger and stress management, and trauma therapy allow emotions to flow in constructive ways. This prevents repression and finally resolves inner anguish. Patience, boundaries, and care for all involved can end the cycle of abuse.