How to Overcome Passive Aggressive Behavior

Do you ever feel that you are not liked by your colleagues or friends because of the way you act? Do you want to say no but can only say yes to your friends? Do you then go complaining behind their back? Chances are you are passive aggressive. Passive aggression is a passive way of obstructing or showing resistance or resentment in the dayto-day activities and not being able to meet expectations of other people due to this. It is not easy to accept the fact that your behavior is passive aggressive. You may be seem and act nice to your friends but deep in your mind, you resent them. You often end up hurting your friends or spouse with this kind of indirect abuse. You wouldn't be physically abusing anybody directly. Instead you might be emotionally torturing them even with out you being aware of it. Passive aggressive behavior is not a disease. It is a behavioral aspect of the person which can be easily corrected using strong will and therapy. One of the first steps towards changing your passive aggressive behavior is to accept that you have passive aggressiveness. Not all people would be ready to accept that. Accepting that you need help is one of the huge steps you can take to correcting your behavior. Whenever you feel the hostility towards your colleagues, friends or spouse, stop and think. Ask yourself; why are you doing this. Confront yourself about your behavior and try getting an explanation of why you are feeling all these negative feelings. Usually, passive aggressive people say yes or commit to things and often end up not living up to those expectations they had committed to. Whenever anybody asks you a question or expects you to perform some activity, do not say yes right away. Stop and think about it. Do you have any negative feelings about this? Do you really think you would be able to do it? If you say 'yes' to these, it means that chances of you not finishing the task is high. Whenever you have negative feelings to anything, be assertive about that and let the other person why exactly you do not like doing that task. Do not hide your negative feelings to the other person. It always helps to open up about your feelings to some one close. It can be your friend, colleague or somebody in your family. Make sure that person can sympathize with what you are saying and can offer you support and advice. When you start to open up, you would notice that all that negative feelings and resentment that you had inside, start to dissipate. All that holed up resistance that has been building up for years would soon go away once you start to talk and open up. Ask your friends to point out when you are being passive aggressive. You may not always be able to acknowledge the fact that you are being passive aggressive.

Learn to be honest and not to lie. Whenever you are compelled to lie or feel the need to, stop and take a deep breath. Ask yourself; why are you doing this? Confront your negative feelings and let it not take you down. Try to work against those negative feelings and be truthful, to yourself and your friends. Try attending group sessions with people who might be recovering from similar things. If you feel that your passive aggressiveness is really affecting your relationships with the people around you, seek medical help. Therapy sessions can be effective. Passive aggressiveness can be changed with a strong willingness from you and a little help from the people around you.

Passive Aggressive Personality Traits What Does Passive Aggressive Mean?

Passive aggressive personality disorder has been categorized in the DSM IV (1994). There has been controversy as to whether it constitutes an actual personality disorder since it has been seen as a defensive pattern of relating that is a part of many personality types and disorders. For purposes here, it will be described as a set of traits or as a personality type. The DSM IV describes this personality type as having passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in social and occupational settings (DSM IV p. 733). It has also been referred to as a negativistic type of personality that involves more than just a passive resistance to demands. Included in the behaviors are fault-finding, moodiness, vascillating behavior, temper outbursts, sulkiness, with alternation between hostile assertion of self-autonomy, to dependent repentance or contrition. Passive aggressive types are characterized by their ambivalence about themselves and others. They have difficulty making decisions, are uncomfortable with having to make them, and often leave their decisions to fate or chance, rather than having to accept the finality of a decision. In addition to their ambivalence, they also exhibit a self-centeredness in that they need to have as many options open as possible, in order to not feel restricted or controlled, no matter what effect this has on others. If ever pinned down to making a decision, in a romantic relationship for example, they may vaguely state what they believe their partner wants to hear, only to take it back gradually, in their actions. If they are confronted about this behavior, they may exhibit anger and act as if they have been attacked and victimized, rather than own up to their ambivalence. Their goal is to postpone decisions, with the hopes that something will happen to decide for them. However, if the decision is made for them, they often backtrack to try to undo the finality of that decision. According to some theorists (Pretzer & Beck, 1996), persons with this personality view themselves as being self-sufficient but feel vulnerable to control and interferance from others. They believe they are misunderstood by others, a view that is exacerbated by the negative responses they receive from others for their vascillations. A primary conflict for passive aggressive types, is dependency. They fear the power of those on whom they are dependent, even if those they depend on never exert power or are not aware of the conflict. Rather than work on their own problems with this dependency, they vascillate between submissiveness and deliberate rebelliousness. Their relationships suffer because partners, friends, and/or family members cannot decipher or understand their evasiveness as attempts at independence. Often the passive

aggressive person is not entirely conscious of his/her behavior. Sometimes the passive aggressive person (PA for brevity) is acting against internal pressure rather than real expectations from others. The PA imagines everyone in his/her life to be making unreasonable demands. Often the PA is correctly perceiving that significant others have expectations of them, which triggers the dependency vs self-sufficient conflict, to which they act out accordingly. With so much internal conflict and energy spent on battling with the feelings that are generated (feelings of imprisonment real or imagined, feelings of limitations from making decisions, feelings of entitlement, etc.), there is little energy left to look at the self. The underlying conficts typically are rooted in childhood, where one or both parents did not allow the child to win any battles of self-assertion or power. The child only had the option of asserting him/herself via passive, hidden tactics. Since children "know" on some level, that they are dependent on their parents, openly asserting themselves when their parents have worked against this, would not be an option. On a preconscious level the child, who is too intellectually immature to question his/her parents, would pick up on behavioral ques, even if the communication from the parents was not overt. The impressions or conditioning the child would receive regarding assertion, aggression, individuation, would mold the child into picking other options for self-assertion. Since all living beings need to assert themselves, inhibiting that to a great extent assures alternate routes of expression to be found, whether they are adaptive or not. Displacement of this anxiety or conflict, onto present-day relationships of the adult PA, keeps the PA involved in the struggle with individuation, that could be resolved if the original conflict were addressed. Being PA does not mean one is not as aggressive as openly aggressive types. It means that the aggression is hidden, not open, but still expressed. PAs can be even more aggressive while preserving their own belief in their passive nature. The aim of the behavior is to aggress while hiding and appearing passive. Some theorists have considered that the PA may have been constitutionally more aggressive or sensitive as a baby. A parent might naturally try to curb aggressiveness in a toddler without considering future behavioral consequences. Passive aggressive behavior has been confused with narcissistic behaivor since the PA behaviors can have a narcissistic self-serving quality. However, PA behaviors exist in different personality types and not exclusively in narcissistic types.