How to Identify and Correct Passive Aggressive Behavior

Passive aggression does its damage quietly. It chips away at relationships without ever announcing itself, which is exactly what makes it so hard to confront. A lot of people who behave this way couldn't name the pattern in themselves if you asked them. It runs deep, usually rooted in an inability to say out loud that they're upset or angry. Some reserve it for one particular person: a spouse, a parent, a boss. For others it's woven into how they move through the world generally. Whether you're on the receiving end of someone's behavior or you've started to wonder if you're the one doing it, the signs become fairly obvious once you know what to look for.

The usual markers: lingering resentment, a habit of playing the victim, chronic procrastination, flashes of hostility, a steady stream of complaints and criticism, the silent treatment, and quiet self-sabotage that drags others down too. There are plenty of smaller tells beyond those. Subtlety is the whole point. Being overt would force a person to admit what they feel, say it plainly, and stand behind it. Avoiding conflict feels more natural, so the hostility leaks out sideways instead. The person still wants to undermine or wound someone, but doing it openly would feel ugly, so they aggravate on the quiet.

People who lean on a negativistic style do so because speaking directly is genuinely hard for them. The reasons vary. Perfectionism, a dread of confrontation, a pessimistic streak, a reflex to criticize. Their own traits tend to steer the reaction. Rather than stating what they want, what they feel, or what they need, they arrange things so the other person absorbs their unhappiness through back channels. It becomes a way to dodge the work of growing up emotionally and owning the discomfort they carry.

This is common behavior, not some rare disorder. Human beings dislike conflict on an instinctive level, and the brain will go to real lengths to sidestep it. Personal makeup plays a part, but social conditioning does a lot of the heavy lifting too. Anger is one of the most basic emotions we have, yet we've drifted toward treating it as something shameful. Plenty of people never learn to let anger out cleanly, so they bottle it. That's the pressure that passive aggression releases.

We also absorb the lesson, early and often, that we shouldn't make anyone feel bad. Passive aggression is partly a way of coating reality in sugar. It sidesteps a fight and, at the same time, hands the person a kind of upper hand. Take a mundane example. Instead of telling your spouse that you've grown tired of their constant small requests, you say yes, you'll clean out the shed. Then you don't. You potter around the house doing anything and everything except the shed.

That's more than procrastination. It's a quiet act of payback that does two jobs at once: it punishes, and it shifts the blame. You've withheld the one thing that was asked of you, reasonable or not, and you've cornered your spouse. Now they either clean the shed themselves or turn into the nag. And you've slipped free of any fault, because the motive is nearly impossible to pin down. If they accuse you of ignoring their needs, you just shrug and say you hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Real change has to come from the person doing it. You can learn to handle a passive aggressive person more skillfully, but you cannot fix the situation for them. It takes their own willingness to look inward and put in the effort.

If you're the one coping with someone else's passive aggression, start by not taking it to heart. People behave this way because something is wrong inside them, and odds are you aren't the cause. Strip out the emotions that make it feel personal to you.

Next, create distance where you can. That isn't always realistic. Your job might depend on this person, you might be married to them, they might be the parent who raised you. Still, for your own well-being, give yourself room when room is available. It sounds cold, but prolonged exposure to this stuff wears you down.

Try to be the steadier of the two of you. The only behavior you control is your own, so don't let yourself get hooked into their negativity. Humor can take the edge off a tense moment. Keep your language clear no matter how heavy things get, but don't pour yourself into arguments you can't win. Stay firm and direct, speak about your own feelings rather than cataloguing their faults, and hold your composure.

Sometimes you can also make the resistance cost them something. Set a consequence. If your spouse hasn't cleared the shed by a certain date, hire someone to do it. It's hardly a dramatic penalty, but the job gets done either way, and now it's come out of the household budget.

If instead you're trying to curb your own passive aggression, the first move is accepting that anger is allowed. It isn't an emotion to run from, it's one to manage. Talk it through, or burn off the worst of it with exercise or some other outlet before you respond to the person who set you off.

Then start watching for the patterns, both in what you do and in how people react to you. It can be hard to catch yourself mid-behavior. What's easier to notice is the way others bristle around you, or the low-grade frustration you carry because you can't get your feelings out cleanly. Keep track of who you treat this way. Notice the situations that trigger it. Figure out which moves you reach for most and which events set them off.

Admit, too, that you tilt toward the negative. In all likelihood your anger is landing in the wrong place. If passive aggression is your go-to form of "communication," then you're probably getting worked up over things that don't deserve it. That negativity can grow out of perfectionism, people-pleasing, a sense of never measuring up, a suspicion that everyone's against you. Hunt for the root. Are you scared of being told off by a manager? Do you resent how much your partner asks of you? Does some part of you feel the world owes you more than it's given?

Finally, stop avoiding the conflicts that need to happen. This isn't permission to pick fights. Becoming more assertive builds healthier relationships and healthier reactions. Practice saying how you actually feel. If you're angry that your boss keeps piling on work without a raise, raise it or make your peace with it. If you've been putting off a task your spouse wanted done because you're afraid of botching it, say so. Owning your fear instead of punishing them for your silence might let them see where you're coming from. Communication spreads. It breeds empathy, and it keeps things moving forward.

Melissa Lavery, M.S.

References: Carthage (2013, December 4), 8 Examples of passive aggressive behaviour, coachingpositiveperformance.com. Deschene, L. (2012, October 11), Passive Aggression: Meet Your Needs by Communicating Clearly, tinybuddha.com. Ni, P. (2014, January 5), How to Spot and Deal With Passive-Aggressive People, Psychology Today. Whitson, S. (2014, March 16), 7 Reasons Why People Use Passive Aggressive Behavior, Psychology Today. Yakowicz, W. (2014, June 24), How to Stop Being So Passive-Aggressive, inc.com.