Acting Out

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Acting out is a behavior or emotional reaction, a defense mechanism caused by an unconscious need to cope with anxiety associated with internally forbidden feelings and desires, as well as obsessive fears, fantasies and memories. By playing out a frightening scenario, a person who unconsciously experiences fear turns the passive into the active, transforms the feeling of helplessness and vulnerability into an effective experience and strength, no matter how painful the drama he enacts.

This psychological defense is common to many people. Why does an emotional reaction arise, how does it manifest itself and what to do with it?

The following situations can be considered as examples of acting out:

1. The guy constantly monitors his girlfriend - where he goes, with whom and what he communicates, right up to how and why she went to the toilet and at the same time turned off Skype. If the girl begins to control him in response, the guy gets angry. If you look in detail, it turns out that the figure of the dad was controlling, and the mother, on the contrary, allowed everything. As a result, the person acts out the situation - my dad controlled me, so I will control you and do everything that they did to me to make you feel bad too. In this case, the person plays both parental figures at the same time. However, double acting is a very complex defense mechanism.

2. A situation that is currently called narcissism on YouTube - a man rejects a woman, is cold with her, or used her and abandoned her. The root of the whole story is the man. In the context of the problem, the figure of the mother of an emotional sadist who did not allow her son to express aggression, but at the same time all family members (including the mother) committed aggressive acts towards the child. And dad was absent or did not protect his son. The feeling of defenselessness and vulnerability in childhood played a decisive role in the formation of a man's character - aggression and anger accumulated over the years, but in the family it was impossible to show your feelings.

What does the man do in this case? Unconsciously, he does not make any decisions, but in adulthood, falling in love with girls, a man leaves them, sometimes even acting aggressively.

3. A girl in whose family her dad often cheated on her mother will sympathize with the mother like a woman, but she will not be able to do anything. In childhood, a girl can emotionally endure a family tragedy, and in adulthood, meeting with men, she will not be able to build stable relationships - all the actions of such a person are aimed at playing the situation that she experienced in childhood (a woman falls in love with men and abandons her partner, focusing solely on personal problems in order to humiliate his manhood - "You are not good enough in bed and just a terrible lover! How could you ever get confused with you!"). This is a kind of psychological castration of a man. Performing similar actions with every next man, the woman does not get full pleasure from the relationship, since she does not understand that this is due to childhood trauma and the father.

There may be another situation - the girl is angry with her mother because she did bad things to her father and, accordingly, expresses her aggression to her husband (at first she provokes a scandal, leads to hysteria, shouts loudly and rushes at him with the words “Well, look what did you do to me? ).

4. A person is presented with a claim that he did not:

- You offended me!

- What offended you?

- You told me I was stupid.

- I didn't say that!

- You did not say, but you meant when you said that I somehow behaved differently!

- Why are you twisting my words in your head, making illogical conclusions and

make such claims to me?

What is meant in this case? During the period of development (in childhood) in the life of such a person there was a person who morally humiliates her (mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, teacher, coach), the relationship with whom is not over (for example, the child did not hear "You are great!", And these words are not imprinted in the mind). In this case, in adulthood, she will look for something offensive in the words of other people in order to blame them in response and bring the internal conflict out.

As a rule, acting out finds its match - the person to whom an emotional reaction is provoked, feels guilt and shame for himself (“How bad I did!”) And tries to analyze and correct the situation. However, after a while, cases become more frequent and emotions reach the scale of an atomic explosion.

What if they do this to you? You should not take on the inner tension of another person and blame yourself. If the situation occurs within a couple, it is important to understand who the partner's stress relates to - in this case, you should try to tell your partner: “Your anger does not apply to me, it has to do with your mother. For my part, I will try to hurt you less in this place, but you need to work on yourself. " For an effective study of the problem, psychotherapy sessions are recommended, since in a couple it is quite difficult to cope and deal with the accumulated emotions and aggression to the end. If the situation is not so deep, you can try to explain to your partner the essence of the problem. The most important task is not to withstand the stress of another person, even the closest one, you should not be silent, you should definitely tell your partner: “Sorry, but this is your pain and stress. This is not for me, I am not guilty that you feel stupid! " If you allow yourself to experience tension at least once, then the situation will roll like a snowball and over time you will have to become a container of the soul for a loved one.

In addition, it is important to respect the boundaries - “In this situation, I definitely didn’t want to offend you! It's not my fault that you are hurt. Painful sensations arise only because someone once hurt you. Now I just expressed my opinion to you. If my words hurt you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You need to feel where there is really wine (there will be an intolerable feeling that you are being driven into a corner), and when acting out occurs. The cause of the conflict also matters - if a contradiction arises against the background of the deep values of one of the partners, his fault is not in the offense of the other partner.

If the acting out pattern becomes unbearable for one of the partners, he should not be tolerated. Being a container for a long time, you need to slowly disconnect a person from your inner world and not worry about stress for him, otherwise you will feel worse, you may lose your individuality. So, acting out is an action outside, when something happens inside a person's consciousness, and he cannot withstand the accumulated tension, anxiety and aggression. The defense mechanism is expressed in different ways, for example, by verbal claims (“You called me stupid!”).

Acting out always evokes feelings of guilt or aggression in response, and there is tension in the communication between two people. However, it is possible to understand the whole situation by being directly in contact with a person, and from the outside, only a good psychologist can give an objective assessment.

The complexity of the emotional reaction is that it has an unconscious and dissociative nature - a person does not understand what he is doing, or hides real feelings.

In general, acting out is common for different types of character. The defense mechanism is considered the protection of the primary order, because a small child does this - not being able to tell, he shows his mother that he wants something. If we look in more detail, quite often the emotional reaction is manifested in people with a borderline personality organization. In individuals with a hysterical type of character, acting out occurs in sexual and partner relationships (unconscious sexual scenarios are played out).

If a person is susceptible to any type of addiction, the defense mechanism works with the addicted object (for example, with a bottle of alcohol or drugs). For obsessive-compulsive personalities, uncontrollable manifestations of feelings are characteristic (for example: "I do not understand what is happening to my feelings, so I will just go wash my hands five times"). Narcissists use the defense mechanism very skillfully and beautifully, using manipulation.

What if a person begins to notice a similar pattern of behavior? First, you need to fully understand and analyze the situation, trying to figure out which feelings are closed in acting out, and think over how to behave in the future.