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Behavior is Crazy-Making!
It’s covert, stealthy even! You’re really not sure when or if you were hit, or when you may be
again. It causes you to question your words, your actions and your motives, as if something were
always your fault. You’re dealing with passive-aggressive behavior!
And, yes, passive-aggressive people can drive other folks around the bend. They lack the insight
into their own behavior that would allow them to see what they are doing, and therefore they
think others simply don’t understand them, continuously misunderstand them, or want more from
them than is reasonable.
What is Passive-Aggression?
Here’s the actual psychological definition from the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic & Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders:
“A. A pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate
performance, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by
four (or more) of the following:
B. Does not occur exclusively during major depressive episodes and is not better accounted for
by dysthymic disorder” (a depressive mood disorder.)
Passive-aggressive people are fearful of competition, dependency, and, yes, intimacy. You might
recognize that as the “push me, pull me syndrome.” Another way of expressing that is the mixed
message of “Come close but stay away.”
A passive-aggressive person can make chaos out of thin air, and they are secretly delighted in
their ability to do so. It feels like control to them, and that is what they long for. Because they
cannot approach situations, feelings, relationships or communication directly, they do so
indirectly. That causes the chaos.
Oh, yes, at work as well as at home? They make endless–seemingly rational (that’s the crazy-
making part!)–excuses for why they cannot, or did not, do things that were expected of them.
Because they have difficulty playing nicely with others, they tend to drag their feet in any work
team project. From not feeling well to not feeling included, from not having the information
given to them to not knowing what was expected of them, passive-aggressive people have a
reason for everything. They believe these reasons and will actively work to disparage anyone
who will not accept their reasons.
Not only are they obstructive, but they are also experts at procrastination. Of course, they always
have a reason. And, they love to play the victim. Passive-aggressive people will go to great
lengths to avoid recognizing their own weaknesses, but love to blame others for their own
failures. This is a hallmark of the passive-aggressive personality.