Will hard accelerating damage my car?

So I drive a 2014 Ford Focus. It's a 6 speed automatic transmission. I hate the transmission but I've learned to live with its quirks because the car is almost paid off. Lately I've noticed when I need to quickly manouver in traffic I press the accelerator harder and the car downshifts and my rpms shoot way high near the red line. Like I don't drive crazy or anything but in general driving sometimes you need to move quickly so why would my engine not shift properly. Like if it was a manual I'd never let it get that high before shifting. I have 54 thousand miles on this car, had a oil leak repaired by ford recently, and transmission parts replaced by ford last summer.

Tromping the throttle with an automatic will get you a down shift. Unless you stay in it, it will down shift. It will eat the gas like crazy though. If you are making these kinds of moves you are driving dangerously for sure. Pay better attention.

A properly running engine can safely be wound out all the way to its redline RPM without damaging it. That's why the manufacturer placed the "line" at that particular engine speed and not thousands of RPM below that engine speed. As long as the transmission isn't allowing the engine to spin faster than the redline RPM, no real damage is being done to the engine by your transmission downshifting to bring the revs up so you have more power available as demanded by your right foot.

Yes if you were to just hold your right foot to the floor every single time you accelerated, drive train components would wear out more rapidly than if you didn't drive like a crazy-person all the time. But winding out the engine once in a while isn't going to hurt anything and in fact, the engine (and car) were designed from the factory to handle that sort of driving when necessary, like when you need to get up to speed quickly while merging onto a freeway or when passing someone on a 2-lane road etc.

And if the car was a manual and you needed maximum acceleration, there would be no logical reason to upshift at ~5000rpm when the redline is ~6500rpm - you could safely rev the engine all the way up to the 6500rpm redline before upshifting without damaging anything AND you'd accelerate faster in the process.

No, it won't damage your car to do that when necessary. Grandpa Jack is correct - your car was designed for that. There are some situations where its safer to accelerate quickly - such as getting on the freeway on a short ramp or pulling into a high speed road with lots of traffic.

If you drive super hard all the time everywhere you go it will cause faster wear & tear on some components.

The engine can handle the speed, don't worry about it as long as you aren't exceeding the redline. If those speeds were bad for the engine the engineers who designed the engine would have made the redline RPM lower.

Also most modern transmissions are computer controlled and will not allow you to redline the engine - they will upshift at or before the redline no matter how much you're flooring the gas pedal. That's in addition to the engine control computers that typically limit the RPM's to a safe speed.

Probably not. An occasional trip to the redline might even be good for it. And rather a lot of Focus drivers revile that transmission, so you're not alone.

The Ford 6 speed is similar to the VW DSG transmission. It is a nice box.
It is not a traditional automatic. You need to drive each type of transmission according to its characteristics.
You have the manual option on the shift stick of the Ford Transmission.
You must be flooring it very hard to get it go rev that high! Are you in Sport Mode?
With a manual I will take it to the red line. That is what the line is for.
With my Automatic I need to get it to rev hard at times to exercise both turbos.