Mag-una gajod ta panilhig sa kauglingon na lagwerta! Do you still remember the story about a woman who constantly commented how her neighbor hangs “dirty” laundry on the clothesline? She often mentioned how her neighbor’s unclean habits may affect the health of the family members. Then one day, her husband cleaned the glass on their window and the woman realized that it was the window which is dirty all the while.
Deflecting is a psychological defense mechanism that people use to take the blame off of them. When they are deflecting, they are trying to make themselves feel less bad for their wrongdoings. This likely happens due to past experiences of being in trouble for things.
Most of the time, they do this so that they will not confront their own realities. They might experience some turmoil and they are seeing that their personal lives are in a mess, they want to deflect the attention to others. In this manner, they are protecting the SELF at the expense of others.
Deflection according to Horn (2020) is one of the many defense mechanisms. When someone deflects, they are trying to feel less guilty, avoid negative consequences, and put the blame on others. It is a learned defense mechanism, typically starting from early childhood. Most people have heard children blame their siblings for something they did. Usually, this behavior is diminished as the child enters other development stages. However, the habit doesn’t always go away when someone enters adulthood. This can be a serious problem and can have a large effect on their relationships.
Since it has become a habit, there are adults who are still trapped on this mechanism to the point that they are not focused on themselves. They probably did some efforts to correct their mistakes but they feel that they were exercises in futility. To cope, they deflect.
Psychological deflection is somewhat similar to blame-shifting and it is a narcissistic abuse tactic that is often used by narcissists but more respectively, Covert narcissists in order to move attention for their bad behaviors away from them, and then redirect it towards other people they may use as their scapegoats. With this tactic, a narcissist is able to control the mind and the emotions of everyone around them (bricefoundation.org).
A Covert narcissist is a type of person who is very manipulative and self-centered, he/she doesn't care about other people's feelings or well-being and doesn't think about how their behavior or actions may affect other people. Other people who are not narcissists have used it also as a form of coping mechanism strategy in order to mask their own impulses (guilt) by denying their mistakes and projecting them on the people around them.
Again, this soliloquy will then be centered on how to confront the SELF first than trying to “correct” others. It has been constantly mentioned that one cannot change others but the person can only change himself. The world, even the micro-communities like a family is in chaos since people like to change others. We can only facilitate the change. It is the person who will do it for his own.
Most defense mechanisms are fairly unconscious – that means most of us don’t realize we’re using them in the moment. Some types of psychotherapy can help a person become aware of what defense mechanisms they are using, how effective they are, and how to use less primitive and more effective mechanisms in the future.
Still, reflections and introspection can be very effective. It has been theorized by progressive thinkers that reflections can become bases of personal change and developmental planning. Academic institutions are now accepting reflections as tangible outputs of training and development. And reflective assessments have been used by big universities and colleges as learning gauges.
So, if we feel that we have already cleaned the front yard, we still have the backyard which others seldom see. We also have store rooms and closets full of cobwebs and probably some skeletons in them. It is always apt to consider General Cleaning during our thinking phases.
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