The Dangers of Being Passive-Aggressive

So you’re a passive-aggressivist. You practice passive-aggressivism at every chance you get. For example, when someone bothers or hurts you, the FIRST thing you do is hop on Facebook and post a “general” status related to the conflict that happened and how devastated or annoyed you are. You wait for comments, and just hope that it made it on that person’s newsfeed. Sound familiar?

Just in case it doesn’t let me try another one: someone hurts your feelings and instead of telling them it hurt you, you shut them out, ignore their attempts to contact you, and make sarcastic comments until they finally ask you what’s wrong.

Wait, I’ve got another one! Someone asks you to go somewhere with them but you don’t want to go. Instead of telling them you don’t want to go, you agree to it because you don’t want to say no. However, the whole time you’re there you complain and act annoyed. Sound familiar YET?

As you can see, there are many ways to be passive-aggressive - and I think everyone has been guilty of doing it at one time or another, myself included! I want to spend some time discussing possible reasons why people resort to being passive-aggressive in response to conflict, and why it is very harmful in relationships.

Question #1: WHY are we passive-aggressive?

It protects us from confrontation (but only in the short-term) It’s the “quick” and easy way out. Maybe we don’t want to say “no” to someone, or we are scared to confront them directly because of how they might react. The thing to remember is that eventually the person is going to get the message, and the damage you’ve done by being passive-aggressive has escalated the problem.

We are afraid of anger
This goes along with being afraid of confrontation. If you confront someone, you risk witnessing their display of anger, and feeling anger yourself. If you have a dysfunctional relationship with anger, you may want to avoid it all costs, therefore it’s easier to be passive-aggressive instead of assertive.

It’s what we’re used to....
An article in Psychology Today states that for some people, “passive aggressive behavior is not just a situational choice, but rather a deeply ingrained personality type.” When you are taught as a child to suppress certain feelings you may not know how to express them constructively as an adult. In addition, if you learned how to get attention from caretakers during your childhood in indirect ways, you most likely treat the people in your adult life the same way. This is unfortunate, but it doesn’t mean this can’t be changed!

We expect people to read our minds or “get the hint”
Only in a perfect world would we be able to temporary open up the ability to read each others minds on command so that we didn’t have to face communicating with our words. Unfortunately people don’t know what we are thinking or feeling unless we TELL them (and I don’t mean telling them through your facebook status).

Question #2: HOW passive-aggressiveness damages relationships

Dishonesty and the delay of true closeness
If we are passive aggressive with the person we are in a relationship with, then we aren’t being totally honest with them, right? If you aren’t completely honest with a person, there is no way you can be truly close with them. Simple as that.

EXPLOSIONS
Being passive-aggressive causes more explosive arguments in a relationship. Instead of having real discussions, people bottle things up and then display feelings indirectly. When the one person does not respond to the others' indirect display of emotions, the feelings inside get worse and worse and eventually explode, leaving the person confused and surprised. It doesn’t work well for either person!

Self-esteem issues
Acting in a passive-aggressive way can actually lower a person’s opinion of themselves. Eventually it causes people to treat them differently and lose respect for them, which lowers self-esteem even more. One person with low self-esteem in a relationship increases the chance of conflict and keeps the relationships from growing.
As you can see, acting passive-aggressively can cause resentment and confusion in relationships. It fuels anger, is manipulative, and blocks effective communication. If you have passive-aggressive tendencies it is important to figure out what is preventing you from being open about communication, and find a way to safely express your feelings to other people. Yes, confronting people is scary because you can’t control their reaction. However, it can damage a relationship even more when you don’t confront someone! Keep in mind that what you want and need is just as important as what others want and need. On that note, I will sign off on this blog post. Thanks for reading! I better not get any passive-aggressive comments on this post….. =)

The Dangers of Being Passive-Aggressive