How to Combat Passive-Aggressive Behavior
There are a lot of terms that have been plucked from the world of psychology and entered the common vernacular. Actual clinical diagnoses that enter conversations in a way of labeling the behavior of others that results in a type of reinterpretation of the meaning of the word.
Words like as Manic Depressive, Narcissist, Passive-Aggressive, and the like. When these diagnostic terms are used so casually, in conversation, the meaning of the word changes from the clinical definition to a watered-down one that is judgmental.
The term Passive-Aggressive became popular and entered the common speech and is now a widely understood concept that is commonly used to describe manipulative behavior. The term is not always used correctly, but when someone says “she was being so passive-aggressive”, everyone understands the gist of what is meant.
The truth is, that passive-aggressive behavior is just another way to manipulate someone. It is what I call an “Opposer Strategy”.
These are strategies that combative, people use when communicating. Bullies use these opposer strategies, people who want to control and manipulate use these opposer strategies and dysfunctional people use these strategies.
Keep in mind, that 89% of us were raised in what is considered a dysfunction home. Which means even if you were not, you work with, live with, and will be around, someone who is considered dysfunctional in some way.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders revision IV or, more easily referred to as the (DSM-IV), describes passive-aggressive personality disorder as a “pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in social and occupational situations”.
Passive-aggressive behavior is not necessarily a personality disorder. A personality disorder includes deviation in affectivity, cognition, control over impulses, and need for gratification, ways of perceiving and thinking, and inflexible, maladaptive, or otherwise dysfunctional behavior. The behavior must also cause ‘personal distress’ to the behavior.
As I said, most of us have dealt with passive-aggressive behavior at some time in our lives. I have always experienced it as some form of unresolved anger that lives inside of them. The person displaying passive-aggressive behavior doesn’t have the skills or abilities to process the anger they feel, whatever the root cause, so it leaks out in times where they feel a loss of control, feel judged, or really, feel any strong emotion at all.
So how do you combat passive-aggressive behavior? Knowledge is key. As with so many things in life, once you understand something or someone in a more fundamental way, a lot of the destructive power of the behavior dissipates, in this instance meaning it’s power to influence your mood or impact your feelings.
I grew up in an old craftsman home built in the early 1900s on Queen Anne in Seattle. When I was a little girl, I would often be woken up by this strange growly pulsating noise coming from somewhere int the house. It scared the heck out of me and I would often go climb into bed with my big sister Megan when the noise woke me. I was sure that the undulating sounds were the ghosts of previous owners, and were somewhere below me plotting how they were going to rid their home of the Smith sisters once and for all.
One night I was in the basement saying goodnight to my dad. The basement was his domain, it was where the old octopus type furnace lived and his endless rows of books. He would spend hours down there reading and puttering so my sisters and I would often go down and say goodnight to him in the basement before bed.
As we were heading back upstairs, I heard the tormenting noise coming from the back wall behind the huge old furnace. I went over to the sound and saw that it was not a midcentury flock of ghosts huddled together plotting their vengeance on three unsuspecting hippie kids, it was one of the many tentacles from the furnace vibrating against a wall.
At that moment, that noise, which had stolen countless hours of sleep from me, lost all its power over my future nights.
Knowledge, understanding, and awareness can pop the reactionary balloon, that defensive feeling that springs up in us when a passive-aggressive person goes to work.
When we understand what the behavior is, at its core, we can sympathize with the pain the person feels, I do not mean condone the actions or behavior of that person, but understand that passive-aggressive behavior stems from a place of fear, insecurity, anger and a sense of impotence or powerlessness over their environment.
See what the noise in the basement really is.
The second thing you can do to combat this manipulative behavior is to know thyself. We find some behavior more egregious than others, some people more irritating, certain actions that just get under our skin.
When it comes to manipulative behavior, when you understand yourself and how important your family of origin is, how it has impacted you in the way you communicate with others and the intent that you infer of others actions is impacted by your past, you are less likely to fall prey to manipulative behavior and a defensive reaction.
Self-work, self-awareness, is the muscle that does all the heavy lifting on understanding.
During my first half of life, I wanted everyone to know I was smart, I had to prove to everyone I met that I knew stuff, I was a critical thinker, I was an intelligent person.
Both my parents were college professors, my mom even foundedaschool, the American Sign Language Interpreting School of Seattle which trained interpreters for over a decade. My parents prized and valued intelligence, curiosity, education and the quest for knowledge and understanding above, well to my mind, all else.
I struggled during my teen years. If you have read my book “Difficult Happens; How Triggers Boundaries & Emotions Impact You Every Day” you know a little more about the struggles I faced during this time and how I reacted to it. But one of the results of my choices was getting kicked out of school. I toyed with the idea of getting a GED and just starting my life. I had a lot of credits I needed to make up if I was going to graduate with my class and frankly I was not motivated in the least to do so.
My parents were ticked. I told my dad that I was planning on just getting a full-time job and skip the whole “re-entry” process that the Seattle school system set up for me to get back into school. I told him that I didn’t need a diploma because I wasn’t going to go to college anyway. He looked up from the newspaper he was reading and stared at me for a minute or two and said: “You are going to go to college.”
Of all of the things that I put my parents through, of all of the poor decisions, all of the rebellious behavior, this, this idea of not finishing school and going on to University was a non-starter. The thought of his youngest daughter going out into the world uneducated was unthinkable to him.
To anyone hearing this story, my quest to prove my intelligence to anyone in the room is as obvious as the noonday sun. But that’s the thing about self-awareness, Our subconscious, our Id, instinctually protects you and shields you from this self-awareness. It is base, it takes effort and work to understand yourself and to process your experiences.
Don’t get me wrong, I still feel a twinge when someone mansplains something to me or is taken aback when I know something. I have to take a beat and remind myself that I am smart, and this persons behavior is about them, not me. What I know or don’t know has nothing to do with self-worth.
Personal development, knowing yourself and why someone triggers a reaction in you, an emotion from you, empowers you to respectfully deal with passive-aggressive behavior and affirm or reaffirm your boundaries.
And finally, when you encounter passive-aggressive behavior, don’t let it go unaddressed. There are many ways you can address it depending on the situation. From the use of appropriate humor to stating facts or acknowledging emotions.
When someone is placing their anger at your door you can say, “I am sorry you feel that way” or “I am sorry you are experiencing — (whatever the frustration is)” without reacting to any underlying or unspoken outburst.
When I had a houseful of teenagers I constantly heard how “absolutely starving” they were. Now, in transparency, I have some food issues. If you come near me or enter my home, I will be offering you food. Snacks, fruit, nuts, an apéritif, some hors d’oeuvres of some kind. So the kids were trained that when they were hungry, the mere mention of it would spark me into action.
But at this point, I was well down my self-awareness journey and realized that this was setting the kids up for failure.
One day Lucas told me he was “starving” and I replied, in all seriousness, “If only, if only there was a way to solve this, some device that housed sustenance in which we could pull from, for the love of God please, help us find some way to solve this dire situation. Maybe a cabinet with grains, or a bowl of some sweet and fleshy product of a tree?”
I went on like this for a bit with a lot of drama. This use of appropriate humor, over time, nipped the behavior in the bud. Whenever these statements came up all I had to say was “if only there was some way” and the kids got it.
Naming the behavior, stating facts, using appropriate humor, responding to what is said and not reacting, goes a long way to stopping passive-aggressive behavior. When you have knowledge and self-awareness, this becomes easier to do, and automatic over time.
