Passive Agressive Behaviour

It’s basically a form of aggression that is not clear. It’s always covered with a positive twist. Or sarcasm, or humor, or oblivion. A passive aggressive person usually makes use of indirect methods to hurt or punish other people.

And because passive aggressive people are usually people who don’t know how to explore and express their feelings easily  (in this case: anger, discomfort, jealousy, frustration and etc), and deep inside they fear direct conflict, because they avoid confrontation, they tend to use indirect alternatives to make other people wonder if something is wrong, causing an emotional roller coaster. This makes the passive aggressive person feel that he is in control. 

Because passive aggressive people need constant affirmation in form of attention to minimize a general feeling of insecurity and inferiority. At last, everything above was what I used to do myself. And thanks God today I’m not that person anymore. 

A passive aggressive person tends to confuse people around him, and those people can never be sure if the intention of the passive aggressive person was a good thing, or actually a covered way to hurt them. So, after being a victim of a passive aggression, people are left not really knowing what’s going on. So, they can’t defend themselves from future episodes. When confronted and questioned about his behavior, the passive aggressive person will most of the time excuse his actions by “being very busy, not having much time, having a bad memory, forgetting things easy, or he will say he was just joking”, or in the worst case they will make the other person believe everything is only in their heads and that they’re thinking too much. This is what makes a passive aggressive person a very dangerous person: The mind games he does that makes other people think they’re going crazy depending on the level of manipulation caused. Because passive aggressive people will never take responsibility for their actions, once they fear rejection if they do so. 

Yes! it is a very interesting topic for me. I have improved a lot about myself since I’ve started therapy. I was a deep passive aggressive person for many years (until I turned 24), so for me it is easy to identify this behavior in people around me. Since I know very well what I am talking about. 

It’s a very delicate subject because not everyone presents all the characteristics to be classified and there is no exact diagnostic for it. Some people (like me for example), present only few of the passive aggressive behavior characteristics. And in the end most of the passive aggressive people don’t know they have this behavior, or don’t know how serious can be the consequences of passive aggression to the victims. 

I guess some of the people in my life do things to me sometimes (very often I must say), that can be directly linked to a possible passive aggressive pattern of  behavior they suffer from. 

My question at the moment is if these people do it on purpose (I believe they do) knowing exactly the way they want to make me feel with that. Or if they don’t notice they do such  things.

Here some hints, 

1 - Silence: 

If a passive aggressive person is mad at you, this will be manifested with “the silent treatment”. He will totally disappear Instead to face the real  problem. This person will try to punish You by not answering your phone calls, e-mails and text messages. When confronted, he will say that he forgot it, didn’t see it, has a bad mind or was too busy. A passive aggressive person will make sure you know he received your communication and did not answer it on purpose. Cause he wants to cause you discomfort. 

2 - Dissimulation: 

A passive aggressive person can be late to meetings on purpose, or cancel meetings last minute, or to make you wait until last minute for his decision to join you or not. He creates expectations in you on purpose just to have the chance to frustrate you at the end. He makes this because he knows you are gonna wait for him. A passive aggressive person makes small things to show who is in control. 

3 - Do not share it’s feelings honestly. 

A passive aggressive person won’t admit when it gets hurt. He Rarely speaks about a bad day ou admits being hurt by someone. Instead, this person says that everything is fine and look for indirect ways to hurt the person with whom he is upset about. A passive aggressive person doesn’t know how to deal with Its feeling in a healthy way. He chooses to hide his true emotions from others, and this allows the anger to grow up inside of him. 

4 - Manipulation: 

The passive aggressive person is a master in keep calm and pretend being surprised when someone who is really tired of his indirect hostility, explodes and confronts him. In fact, the passive aggressive person finds pleasure in provoking you until you lost control, and after that, the passive aggressive person says that you are overreacting and that you are only missunderstanding things. That everything is only in your mind. Which is also an emotional abuse. 

5 - Deliberated Procrastination: 

Procrastination is usually a subconscious attitude. However, for a passive aggressive individual, it is a conscious attitude if he does not agree with what he has to do towards the other person. He feels wronged, and procrastinates what he has to do as a way of punishing the person that needs something from him.

6 - kings of mixed signals: 

 

They tend to make you confused by saying and doing things in one moment, and then saying and doing things completely different in another moment. They are very present, lovely and close in one moment and they turn very distant, cold and superficial in another moment. They are experts in double message and mixed signals. They show clear interest in you and your life on purpose, and then they make it look like it was nothing, also on purpose. They ask “how are you doing” and after that, they don’t show any interest in your answer. 

6 - Difference in what it’s said and done. 

The biggest characteristic of a passive aggressive person is exactly the incoherence between what he says and what he does. If you ask him if “there’s something wrong” and he says that “no”, but he acts as one of the ways above behind your back, he’s probably a passive aggressive person. He praises you all the time, but deliberately tries to establish an indirect criticism in between the lines.

”-Your hair is so cool, you’re looking like a cave man!” “-Wunder is no nice, sadly is not in the city center”, “-You have built a lot in Germany for a Foreigner man”, “your parties are always nice, but also very stressful”, “-Maybe you should make your drivers license?” “-you’re so handsome, I can't believe you’re gay!”, “-Your vídeos are so nice, people can’t not even tell you guys are not professionals!”, and the list goes on and on and on my friend. 

The aggressive individual does not recognize his own feelings and always attributes any level of responsibility for it, to others. Besides to claim a supposed injustice that applies to him. 

These people tend to be demanding, dependent, afraid to be alone and have little confidence in themselves. They are people with dual personality, who live between two extremes, which creates a great deal of confusion around them.  They are manipulative, pessimistic and resentful. Moreover, they do not conceive of self-criticism and do not feel guilty for anything they do. They try to justify all their acts or look for any excuse to exempt themselves from what they do.

Sadly, all the German and English material available on internet are not so good, and it’s much more focused on passive aggressive behavior at work, or how passive aggressive people act in their love relationship. Neither of them applies to the case of these people around me at the moment. There’s lots of good articles in Portuguese with the right focused approach on interpersonal relationships and specially friendship that I wanted to show them. Maybe I can translate some and post here later. This is a topic I want to keep talking about. Cause it’s a very important subject. Not only for me. But, for everyone else. 

Until there, I guess is probably healthier for me if I stop sharing things with some 

people on social media. A misunderstood perception of what I share on my social media, has been the reason why these people are acting this way towards me. That’s why I’ve logged out from Instagram yesterday. For a while I believe is better if I practice direct contact only with people. Without social media intermediation. 

Texting on the phone and hanging out together for example (when possible again of course). Maybe after the Quarentäne I’ll meet some of them to talk about it and how this has hurting me. 

I’m positive that this will end up being a huge plus factor in my friendship with those ones that choose to take a look at the situation with an open mind and more emotional responsibility. 

Some people would tell me now after reading all that: - What the fuck dude! Just tell this people to fuck off, take them out of your life, block them and keep going! 

I wish it was that easy. But, we’re talking about people that first of all I like very much, and in second place, that don’t even know sometimes they need help. I’ve been there before. If some people had given up on me like that I wouldn’t be here writing this text. So, it is also my job to be there for the ones needing some enlightenment. Is the minimum I can do. You know what I mean?