Self-Deception - Part Two - Elaborative Repression via Displacement

Greetings! The psalmist wrote, "This is the day the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24). But sometimes, what life brings our way makes this mindset challenging to walk in. Yet, God is very much intentional about His creation of this day (and every day for that matter). The world we live in is not like some giant clock left to tick away on its own without the involvement of its Creator. The psalmist helps us to understand God's intentionality for this very day; He has wonderful plans for us (see Jeremiah 29:11-14). But we cannot discover and live-out these plans if we're stuck in a mindset of avoidance. Thus, we continue with today's post on repression; specifically, the matter of displacement.

A second method of coping found in elaborative repression is known as displacement. In this mode, we are not so much attempting to avoid our feelings as much as we are looking for a more secure way to experience them. For instance, Kaylee is a teenage girl who finds herself crushing on a boy at church, only she senses the boy does not share the same feelings for her. Yet her attraction does not stop just because his feelings are not mutual. So she works to reduce her distress by focusing her energies on befriending this young man’s girlfriend, and, of course, she does not disclose her true feelings. He is often the topic of conversation between these two girls. By maintaining the front, Kaylee vicariously experiences a form of relationship with the boy by practicing displacement with her friend.

In my previous post, we looked at the concept of reaction formation, the means by which we attempt to cope with distress by convincing ourselves of an alternate, i.e., opposite realty to that which is stressing us out. Today, we discover our attempts to repress can be further complicated by means of displacement. A portion of today's post was excerpted from chapter five of my new book, The Conditioned Mind. To learn more about the ways in which we practice acts of self-deception, and, thus, stay stuck in life, as opposed to following the good plans the Lord has for us, click on the book title link above.