displacement - learned behavior?

•Displacement occurs when a patient shifts an affect from one idea to another. For example, a man with HPD may feel angry at work because the boss did not consider him to be the center of attention. The patient may displace his anger onto his wife rather than become angry at his boss.

Read more: http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hi ... z2FUapj1zy

displacement is one of the defense mechanism of hpd, so i read, and i realized i am totally like that.
But I don't even see it as a problem.
I don't know, I feel like, my anger is not clearly restricted to one person even though it should be
the boundary is .. blunt.
therefore when i am angry at person A, i will b*tch to my bf, vice versa
and I don't even see it as a problem.

my mother totally had a severe anger displacement. when she is angry at father, she just released anger to me, completely. but I don't really blame her for that or think that is a behavioral problem.
I don't know....

why do some hpds employ displacement as their defense mechanism? is it learned behavior?

yyy -

I can only make some guesses.

Possibly/probably as a child you were not encouraged to express yourself, perhaps your own parents reaction to confrontation was severe, so you learned to bottle it up, and avoid confrontation with them and that's carried over into your adult life? Or perhaps you were forced to take sides between them, and so don't feel good about taking out your anger on the people who deserve it even if sometimes they both deserved it, but instead transfer the anger to the 'unfavored' parent to protect the 'favored' one whose approval you were afraid of losing?

When approval/validation/attention is a very high priority for someone, the fact is that confronting people with our anger, what hurt us, is likely to have them at least going off in a 'huff' for a while. Some people can handle it well and talk about it. Some not so well and they are going to get their feelings hurt, become defensive for a time, but they get over it. Some completely lose it and just can't handle being confronted. If you're not use to confronting people you want attention from then it is not surprising you're going to bottle it up at least, if not take it out on others.

If you don't deal with your anger with the people who you're really angry with, that leaves two choices. Take it out on others, or talk it over with others you trust. I guess someone with HPD who is not use to talking over their feelings may be inclined to take it out on others.

It could also be related to valuing the attention of new people over existing relationships. In other words, it feels easier to take it out on the people you are close to as their attention is old/boring versus the new people who you are really angry at, but whose attention you value more than your existing relationships? Possibly it's not that simple, and there is some testing going on of your existing relationships which you know others you are less close to would not tolerate/pass?

I totally do this. What are other defense mechanisms markedly associated with HPD? I am sorry for not knowing, I just haven't found the need to research lately since I'm living with it. If my mom yells at me, which she always does, I find myself being very fickle with people and fiercely competitive. More succinctly, I become mad at people for other people being mad at me.

Most often it's probably more learned, either from a maternal role model, as you describe, or by getting negative feedback, like when you are angry at a parent. Example: "you can't talk to me like that, " - and then getting smacked. As a kid, you learn very quickly who you can be angry at and who you can't.
So yes displacement most often occurs when
-You cannot express your anger at the the person you are angry at, because they have power over you (i.e., like you said YYYYY, parents, bosses at work, etc.)
Yet, this kind of displacement is relatively easy to overcome; you can always confide in your friends, letting loose on your parents or bosses.

But displacement can also occur post defense mechanism:
-When you cannot express your anger at the person you are angry at, because it forces you to bring into your conscious mind the traumatic circumstances surrounding the anger. For example, a father molests his daughter for years. She cannot escape, and her only defense is to bury all the bad memories deep inside her. Even after she achieves adulthood and he no longer has as much power over her, expressing her justified anger at her father is too costly, psychologically speaking, because she would have to bring into her conscious all the memories of the incidents of abuse. This kind of displacement is much harder to overcome...it requires a kind of controlled release through therapy with a professional..

orion8591 wrote:But displacement can also occur post defense mechanism:
-When you cannot express your anger at the person you are angry at, because it forces you to bring into your conscious mind the traumatic circumstances surrounding the anger. For example, a father molests his daughter for years. She cannot escape, and her only defense is to bury all the bad memories deep inside her. Even after she achieves adulthood and he no longer has as much power over her, expressing her justified anger at her father is too costly, psychologically speaking, because she would have to bring into her conscious all the memories of the incidents of abuse. This kind of displacement is much harder to overcome...it requires a kind of controlled release through therapy with a professional..

Is it possible to overcome the harder things like that without bringing it into your conscious?

I would say no. A persons unconscious, subconscious, preconscious, these are places where things that are unresolved go to hibernate. But they dont sleep for long; they want freedom, and will come out sideways of you try to push down snd keep them suppressed from above.

When things get really intensely bad people form subpersonalities, usually only one of the personalities knows what the rest are up to. Old term: multiple personality disorder. New term: dissociative personality disorder. Ideally, the affected person becomes whole when they come to consciously know and accept all the subpersonalities.
For most people, a similar, albeit smaller challenge. Know yourself and your issues: therapy.