Stillness in the Storm

An Agent for Consciousness Evolution

Passive Aggressive Behavior in Relationships (and How to Change It)

By Leave a Comment

Spread the love

(Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford) Do you have a passive aggressive person in your life? Even more importantly, do you think that passive aggressive person might be you?

Related Admitting Your Grievances Against Your Partner: Your Best Hope For Healing Your Relationship

Source – Psych Central

by Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford, December 20th, 2018

Not you, of course…maybe.

Passive aggressive behavior can be seriously damaging to relationships, so if you’re acting this way, you should probably know about it.

According to Merriam Webster, the definition of passive aggressive as an adjective is, “Being, marked by, or displaying behavior characterized by the expression of negative feelings, resentment, and aggression in an un-assertive passive way (as through procrastination and stubbornness).”

How Our Passive-Aggressive Ways End Up Destroying Our Relationships

When someone displays passive aggressive behavior, they tend to mask their anger or aggression in strange ways.

For examples, remember your annoying college roommate who seemed to be unnecessarily noisy every time you turned on the TV? What about that ex who would leave a roll of toilet paper just out of your reach the day after you left an empty roll on the holder by mistake?

These are both examples of passive aggressive manipulation, and things like that happen all too often within relationships.

When passive aggressive people get angry, they let it out in ways that may not be obvious to others. They often appear to be going with the flow, but will procrastinate, sulk or give off other subtle signs that they’re secretly resentful.

Buy Book The More You Do The Better You Feel: How to Overcome Procrastination and Live a Happier Life

Passive-aggressive people who feel angry might repeatedly claim that they are not mad, insisting they are “fine” — even when it’s pretty apparent they’re actually furious and not at all okay.

To make things even more confusing, not all passive aggressive people behave the same way.

Everyone expresses this behavior differently; showing it through microaggressions like avoiding eye contact, showing up late, missing important events, self-isolating, feigning depression, being short with their responses, or sending glaring looks your way.

Buy Book Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists

Here are 13 examples of common types of passive aggressive behavior.

  1. Avoidance: Passive aggressive people will repeatedly avoid certain people as a way to express their dislike for them.
  2. Showing Up Late: They’ll consistently show up late for events or fail to show up completely, even though they said they’d come. This is a way for them to passively prove a point.
  3. Gossiping: They’ll take part in negative gossip about people they say they love or admire.
  4. Harsh Humor or Criticism: Their joking consists of sarcasm that can be extremely hurtful. They often make hostile comments but say they were just kidding.
  5. Self-Isolating: A passive aggressive person will sometimes ‘go missing.’ They’re really just cutting people off to make a point or in hopes that they’ll be missed.
  6. Giving the Silent Treatment: In order to make a point, they’ll stop talking to those who have ‘wronged’ them. They might stop answering your calls, ignore you at a party, or completely change their number.
  7. Making a Ton of Excuses: Passive aggressive behavior usually includes lots of excuses. They’ll give excuses for being late, not showing up, ignoring your calls, or acting rude.
  8. Blatantly Lying: A passive aggressive person will lie to your face instead of just saying “no” or telling you the truth.
  9. Chronic Procrastinating: If they don’t want to do something they agreed to, they’ll procrastinate rather than admit the truth.
  10. Unreasonable Blaming of Others: All of their problems are someone else’s fault. They don’t fess up to their own issues.
  11. Purposely Undermining the Work of Others: To passively make themselves feel better and others feel worse.
  12. Acting Like a Victim: Passive aggressive people act like the world is out to get them. Bad things keep happening to them and everything is out of their control.
  13. Being Rigid About Compromising: Passive aggressive people like things their way but they don’t want to come out and say it. Instead, when it’s time to compromise, they’ll passively act dissatisfied or rigid about the situation.

Buy Music Proven to Reduce Stress and Anxiety by 65%

What Makes People Passive Aggressive?

Passive aggressive behavior can be the result of growing up in an environment where someone was discouraged from expressing personal feelings. People who feel they can’t express their real feelings openly will find ways to passively channel their anger or frustration. Some people may also engage in passive aggressive behavior if they are unable to deal with or manage conflict.

Passive aggression may not always stem from a negative place, but rather from hesitance to hurt the feelings of someone they care about.

Learning How to Side-Step Another’s Toxic Behavior

Asserting yourself isn’t always easy, and it can even be a little scary for some people. For them, passive-aggression might seem like an easier way to deal with their emotions without having to confront the source of their anger.

Now that you understand what passive aggressive behaviors are, you may have realized that you fit the bill.

Buy Book An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life

If so, here’s how to stop behaving passive aggressively so you can build better relationships.

  1. Work On Your Self-Awareness: Now that you know what passive aggressive behaviors are, keep tabs on yourself and make sure you aren’t acting this way.
  2. Determine If You’re Acting Directly or Indirectly: Are you handling problems and emotions head-on? If not, make some changes.
  3. Recognize Your Own Passive Aggression: And make a point to change those behaviors immediately.
  4. Identify When the Behavior Is Most Likely to Occur: Does it happen around certain people? In certain situations? Try distancing yourself from those who make you angry or make you feel that you have to stifle your emotions.
  5. Keep Your Anger Under Control: Consider breathing exercises, reframing the situation in your mind, or even talking to a professional therapist.
  6. Express Your True Feelings: Be open about how you really feel. If you don’t want to do something, just say so. This way, you won’t keep bottling up your feelings.
  7. Don’t Play the Blame Game: Evaluate what’s going on in your life and how your own decisions played a role. What could you have done to change your situation?
  8. Own Your Feelings: Don’t pretend to be happy to appease others. If your roommate made you angry, just tell them (don’t hide the toilet paper or whatever other passive nonsense you thought up).
  9. Talk About Your Feelings: Tell the people in your life how you feel, whether good or bad. This will stop you from bottling it all up and harboring resentment. If they care about you, they’ll listen to what you have to say without judgment.
  10. Stop Procrastinating: Get yourself on a schedule and do what you say you’re going to do.
  11. Role Play: If you’re serious about squashing your passive aggressive behaviors, ask a friend to help you role play. Act out situations that would usually prompt passive behavior and practice acting in a more active way.

Buy Book Let’s All Be Brave: Living Life with Everything You Have

Passive-aggressive behavior can be destructive; however, we all respond in similar ways at times.

By understanding what causes passive aggressive behaviors and how to deal with them, you can minimize the potential damage to yourself and your relationships.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: What Is Passive Aggressive Behavior — And Why Do People Behave Like That In Relationships?

Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools

Stillness in the Storm Editor’s note: Did you find a spelling error or grammar mistake? Send an email to [email protected], with the error and suggested correction, along with the headline and url. Do you think this article needs an update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at [email protected]. Thank you for reading.

Source:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/passive-aggressive-behavior-in-relationships-and-how-to-change-it/

Notices and Disclaimers

We need $2000 per month to pay our costs. Help us one time or recurring. (DONATE HERE)

To sign up for RSS updates, paste this link (https://stillnessinthestorm.com/feed/) into the search field of your preferred RSS Reader or Service (such as Feedly or gReader).

Subscribe to Stillness in the Storm Newsletter

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

This website is supported by readers like you.

If you find our work of value, consider making a donation. 

Stillness in the Storm DISCLAIMER: All articles, videos, statements, claims, views and opinions that appear anywhere on this site, whether stated as theories or absolute facts, are always presented by Stillness in the Storm as unverified—and should be personally fact checked and discerned by you, the reader. Any opinions or statements herein presented are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, or agreed to by Stillness, those who work with Stillness, or those who read Stillness. Any belief or conclusion gleaned from content on this site is solely the responsibility of you the reader to substantiate, fact check, and no harm comes to you or those around you. And any actions taken by those who read material on this site is solely the responsibility of the acting party. You are encouraged to think carefully and do your own research. Nothing on this site is meant to be believed without question or personal appraisal.

Content Disclaimer: All content on this site marked with “source – [enter website name and url]” is not owned by Stillness in the Storm. All content on this site that is not originally written, created, or posted as original, is owned by the original content creators, who retain exclusive jurisdiction of all intellectual property rights. Any copyrighted material on this site was shared in good faith, under fair use or creative commons. Any request to remove copyrighted material will be honored, provided proof of ownership is rendered. Send takedown requests to [email protected].

What is our mission? Why do we post what we do?

Our mission here is to curate (share) articles and information that we feel is important for the evolution of consciousness. Most of that information is written or produced by other people and organizations, which means it does not represent our views or opinions as managing staff of Stillness in the Storm. Some of the content is written by one of our writers and is clearly marked accordingly. Just because we share a CNN story that speaks badly about the President doesn’t mean we’re promoting anti-POTUS views. We’re reporting on the fact as it was reported, and that this event is important for us to know so we can better contend with the challenges of gaining freedom and prosperity. Similarly, just because we share a pro/anti-[insert issue or topic] content, such as a pro-second amendment piece or an anti-military video doesn’t mean we endorse what is said. Again, information is shared on this site for the purpose of evolving consciousness. In our opinion, consciousness evolves through the process of accumulating knowledge of the truth and contemplating that knowledge to distill wisdom and improve life by discovering and incorporating holistic values. Thus, sharing information from many different sources, with many different perspectives is the best way to maximize evolution. What’s more, the mastery of mind and discernment doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is much like the immune system, it needs regular exposure to new things to stay healthy and strong. If you have any questions as to our mission or methods please reach out to us at [email protected].

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.