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CRAZY-MAKERS: PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE
By Monica A. Frank, Ph.D.
I'm sure you've
dealt with individuals who have caused you to be so frustrated that afterwards
you scratch your head asking "Am I crazy?" Most likely you just had an
encounter with a passive-aggressive person. Such encounters may include
sarcasm, shifting blame, saying one thing while meaning another to name a few.
For instance, I used to know a co-worker who was very skilled at giving
back-handed compliments such as "You look great! You must be doing something
different" as well as sarcasm disguised as a compliment "Oh, I hear you've
managed to pull off another miracle." The problem with these kinds of
comments is that if you try to confront them about the insult, you will be
accused of not understanding, "I didn't mean it that way" or of misinterpreting,
"You must have a problem to think that. I was just trying to compliment
you. Sorry I didn't word it right to suit you." As a result, you end
up looking like the bad guy, feeling frustrated, and asking yourself, "Am I
crazy?" And the other person walks away blameless.
What is
passive-aggressive behavior? Passive-aggressive communication seeks to
control the emotions of others and thereby, control their behavior. Typically,
this communication
style seeks to express anger in an indirect manner. By doing so the
individual is able to deny all responsibility for the anger yet they score a
direct hit on their target. A common example is criticizing as if you are
concerned, "You've put on so much weight! You might get diabetes or heart
disease if you don't take it easy with the sweets." Certainly, in the
right context this could actually be an expression of concern. However,
the right context doesn't include making such a statement in front of others
just as the individual is taking a bite of dessert. In this instance, if
the comment is confronted, the person will often deny responsibility by stating
something like, "I'm just concerned about you. Wow, are you sensitive!"
The best way to
recognize passive-aggressive behavior is by analyzing the process and purpose of the
behavior. Typically, as the purpose is to control and/or deflect responsibility for
anger, the passive-aggressive behavior causes frustration or anger in the
recipient and will escalate conflict unless the recipient handles it passively
by swallowing, ignoring, or discounting their anger.
Yet, if the purpose is to escalate conflict, the passive-aggressive behavior is
calculated to cause the recipient to act unreasonably.
For example, a
father conveys the subtle message of "I don't think you're capable" by taking on
a task to do it right, "Here, let me help you cut that out" as he takes over the
child's school project. When the child states "I can do it myself" the
father keeps working on the project "I know you can. I'm just helping.
Now doesn't that look better?" If the child should protest angrily, "You
don't think I can do it right!" the father might respond "Of course I do.
I was just helping. You are so ungrateful!"
In this situation,
the father has escalated the situation to cause the child to become angry and
then to criticize the child for being angry. This teaches the child that
her emotions are unacceptable as well as that her father doesn't believe she is
capable. Over time the child learns to not trust her own perceptions of
reality.
Another common
example may be when a couple are trying to make a simple decision such as where
to go for dinner. The wife says, "I don't care" but then pouts when her
husband decides. When her husband asks her what is wrong she responds "You
know I don't like Chinese." Later on in a completely unrelated situation,
she may even take this a step further "You make all the decisions and don't take
my preferences into account!" This can become even more ugly if the wife
should accuse the husband of deliberately mistreating her "You do whatever you
want. You don't care about my feelings!"
This example shows
how a simple situation can escalate to include many different situations.
The passive-aggressive wife can angrily attack her husband while blaming him for
the attack. He becomes confused and angry "You're crazy!" which
allows his wife to prove her point "See how you treat me? Calling me names and
putting me down!"
Categories of
passive-aggressive people.
Although passive-aggressive behavior is generally hurtful to the recipient,
the intention is not always for the purpose of hurting the other person.
Therefore, whether the intention to hurt is present can categorize the type of
passive-aggressive person.
Malicious type.
Some passive-aggressive people deliberately attempt to cause the other person to
become angry so as to displace their own feelings of anger onto the recipient.
In this situation, if a man has a bad day at work he can create an argument at
home in a passive-aggressive manner and then take his anger out on his wife.
For instance, he comes home, glances around and asks "What have you been doing
today?" When his wife becomes defensive "Are you saying that I'm lazy?" he
responds with "You are really over-reacting! I was only curious about what
you did today. You are so sensitive and I can't even talk to you!"
This type of person
could be labeled an aggressive passive-aggressive in that the purpose is to
create anger or to try to control someone else. "You should really try to
treat your mother better after all the sacrifices I've made for you.
You're so selfish" is an example of trying to control behavior. By
negatively labeling a behavior, they hope to control the person's responses.
The malicious type is reinforced whenever they can successfully control the
other person or when they can escalate conflict while remaining seemingly
innocent.
Unintentionally
hurtful type. Another type of passive-aggressive person we could label as the passive passive-aggressive.
Typically, they are trying not to hurt the other person but in the
process may unintentionally cause frustration or irritation. This person
also is trying to control the other person such as trying to control the other
person's emotions. They don't want the other person to feel bad so they
will try to refrain from any communication that may seem negative.
However, their feelings may be readable at a nonverbal level.
Unfortunately, the other person may not read the feelings accurately.
For instance, a
girlfriend is hoping that her boyfriend will pick up on her hints about wanting
to get engaged but doesn't express her wishes; she becomes irritated with him
and when he picks up on the nonverbal frustration and asks if anything is wrong,
she says, "No." However, he becomes less certain about their relationship
due to this passive-aggressive interaction.
Another example is a
man who is disappointed that his wife passed up a job opportunity but doesn't
want to tell her how he feels because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings.
However, his disappointment leads to him unknowingly being less affectionate
causing his wife to believe that he is less attracted to her.
Types of
passive-aggressive behavior.
As you see from some of the previous examples, passive-aggressive behavior
is manifested in many ways. Although the bottom line in identifying the
behavior is that it succeeds in indirectly expressing anger; the
passive-aggressive individual does not have to take responsibility for the
controlling behavior and angry message. However, we can divide the
behaviors into several common categories as described below. Obviously,
you will see that these behaviors often overlap so more than one may occur in a
situation.
Denial.
This type of passive-aggressive behavior occurs when the individual appears to
be distressed, frustrated, bored, confused, or any number of emotions but when
questioned refuses to admit to the feeling. They may outright deny or they
may avoid by ignoring, working, or deflecting with humor. However, the
behavior has the outcome of frustrating the recipient because they are unable to
confront and resolve the problem. Thus, this individual is able to control
the other by not engaging in conflict resolution when an obvious problem has
occurred.
Blaming.
The skilled passive-aggressive blamer can rephrase almost any comment to make it
appear the recipient's fault. "You should have known!" or "You're too
sensitive!" are common methods of blaming the victim. Sometimes it can be
so extreme as to border on the ridiculous if it wasn't so hurtful; for example,
"You know I'm a grouch before dinner. I wouldn't have yelled at you if you
wouldn't have asked me a question." This person deflects all attempts to
communicate about problems by blaming the other person.
Revenge-Seeking.
This behavior is calculated to try to hurt the other person without taking
responsibility. An example of this is described above with the
"back-handed compliment." The individual somehow is threatened by the
other, whether real or imagined, and seeks revenge in an underhanded manner.
By doing so, they can claim ignorance if confronted such as "I had no idea you
would take it that way" or resort to blaming "You must be imagining that.
I would never do anything to hurt you."
Controlling.
This behavior seeks to control the individual in an indirect manner. For
instance, a man who emotionally abuses his partner says "No one could ever love
you the way I do" with the intended result being insecurity in the woman so that
she won't leave him. Another example is parents telling their adult
children that they should respect or love them because they are their parents
thus trying to control their behavior. Love and respect is something that
occurs due to the underlying relationship not because of a demand.
Guilting.
This behavior controls through using guilt either directly or indirectly to
control the other. An indirect form of guilt may be "Don't worry about
me...I'll be okay" followed by a sigh. A more direct form may be
describing all the efforts made on your behalf followed by an expectation "I've
only cleaned the house today, taken the kids to their activities, checked on
your mom. Taking me out to dinner isn't too much to ask, is it?"
Sarcasm.
Many of the examples above contain sarcasm probably because it tends to be a
favorite of mine. Sarcastic passive-aggressive comments are the ultimate
indirect form of aggression because they are calculated to avoid responsibility
such as "You know I was just kidding." Yet, they have the impact of
controlling the other person's emotions and potentially their thinking and
behavior.
Back-stabbing.
This behavior often uses techniques such as hitting below the belt by using
previously confided or sensitive information against the person or by
communicating through someone else but with plausible deniability. This
individual may even resort to showing artificial concern as a way of validating
their behavior "You know I wouldn't want to hurt you but I'm only saying this
because I'm concerned about you."
As you can see with
the examples in this article, many times the actual words that the
passive-aggressive person uses may seem reasonable or even caring.
Therefore, to determine passive-aggressive behavior, the context, the
relationship, previous experiences with the individual, and the non-verbal
communication needs to be considered. However, without even considering
all of these factors, you usually know that you are the recipient of
passive-aggressive behavior by your own emotional reaction. If you feel
frustrated, deflated, or crazy as a result of an interaction, it probably was
passive-aggressive.
How do you handle
passive-aggressive people? This needs to be the subject of a separate
article. In fact, what I would like to do is to use some real-life
examples that people submit and discuss them in detail in another article.
So, if you have an example, please submit it on the form below by describing the
situation in detail, your relationship with the person, and the specifics of
what was said and how it was said.
Although each
situation may vary, there are some basic steps you can take with
passive-aggressive behavior.
1) Identify
the reward. Determine what the passive-aggressive person achieves by
engaging in the behavior. Do they get something they want? Do they
make you feel bad? Do they discharge their anger on to you so they can
feel better? Do they escalate conflict so they can make you look bad?
2) Refuse
to provide the reward. If you refuse to provide the reward, they are
no longer in control of the interaction which tends to cause the situation to
backfire on them. For instance, when the co-worker I described earlier
would give me a back-handed compliment I would effusively respond "Oh, that's so
nice of you to say that! I really appreciate it!" as if it were a true
compliment. This would have the effect of making her believe that she had
not accomplished her purpose (which she hadn't anyway because I was thinking
"How silly of a grown adult to act this way") which tended to reduce the
behavior because she was getting her reward of feeling better at my expense.
If you determine
that the individual is trying to escalate conflict, then you want to become even
more calm almost to an extreme. The more calm you become, the more
apparent and ridiculous their behavior will appear. Plus, you are not
allowing them to get the reward of freely discharging their anger on to you.
What I mean is that if you allow the situation to escalate, they will then
engage in a full battle while blaming you for "starting" the argument.
3)
Indirectly confront. Obviously, as I described above, if you directly
confront the passive-aggressive person is likely to turn it against you.
But if you confront with "I" statements instead of "you" statements and remain
very calm you may be able to reduce the behavior. Although you are
unlikely to get them to admit they were wrong, since they do not like to take
responsibility, they are more likely to reduce the behavior if they know they
will be confronted every time.
The following
example uses the broken-record technique in which you repeatedly make your point
of letting them know how you feel when they act in a passive-aggressive manner.
"You need to be
careful what you're eating. You're getting fat."
"I feel hurt when
you call me fat."
"I'm just saying
that because I'm concerned about you."
"But I feel hurt
when you call me that."
"You're just too
sensitive!"
"That may be, but
I'm letting you know that I feel hurt when you call me names." This
statement uses the technique of agreeing with them but still using the broken
record to make your point.
"You need to just
get over it."
"Since I've told you
that I feel hurt when you call me names should I assume that you are trying to
hurt me when you call me names?" This last line should not be uttered
unless the passive-aggressive person persists.
Escalation of behavior when setting limits. When you start changing
a behavior pattern in which you've engaged with someone for a period of time,
sometimes you may see the behavior get worse. Although sometimes this is
because you are still learning and needing more practice, many times it occurs
because the person will try to escalate the behavior in order to obtain their
reward. It is much different from trying to change a child's temper
tantrums. If you have been rewarding the child by trying to quiet her with
a piece of candy whenever she has a temper tantrum and then you decided to stop
doing that, you will initially see an increase in the temper tantrums.
However, if you remain firm and consistent, eventually they will decrease.
It
will take time to learn to handle passive-aggressive people, however, it will be
well worth the effort. When I'm working with clients frequently it will
take a number of tries and adjustments in our approach but if we examine the
behavior and the reward process we can usually find a method that can work.
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2010 by www.excelatlife.com.
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