Passive Aggressive Much? What To Do & How To Deal When It’s Coming Right At You!
We’ve all been a victim of it (and if we’re being really honest, probably been the instigator a few times too, eeek!) Passive Aggressive behavior: it’s so annoying! Here are some simple tricks on what exactly to do to get this negative communication pattern to stop dead in its tracks! The best part? Although it might not be intuitive, it is super simple!
In this episode we will learn:
~What passive aggressive communication is and why it works.
~What to do when you hear a passive aggressive comment to get it to stop
~Moksha meditation: freedom and liberation from old patterns and behaviors
The Host for this podcast: Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist and Author
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[00:00] Hey, beautiful people. What’s up? So we’re moving along on our communication skills and today we’re gonna talk about the big one, the one that everyone talks about but no one knows how to deal with. It passive aggressive communication. What do you do when it’s going on? I’m gonna tell you today on Stress therapy. It’s season six tips and tricks that this psychotherapist wants you to know. So relax and settle in and listen up, because you are stress therapy session is about to begin right now. Beautiful people, it’s time for some Stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place to park my 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field. And now, your host, me, the stress therapist, Sherry Flake. Okay, before we get into the thick of it, we’re going to take a teensy tiny break. Be right back. Hey, beautiful people. How you doing? Okay, so today we’re going to talk about passive aggressiveness. And what I find so crazy is that I don’t think I even knew what it was until I got to grad school. And here my twelve year old is like, I think you’re being passive aggressive. I can’t believe how cool it is that there is so much mental health that is just like comets, like pop culture, people using the word trigger, not always in the right way, people calling them empaths, which is kind of weird, but okay. But at least they know what empathic is. I mean, I think it’s amazing that we have all these really cool ways to talk to one another because people have so much more awareness and mental health. However, now, I got to be frank. My daughter doesn’t always use the word passive aggressive correctly. She sometimes just sees it as you’re being mean. But I think what’s most important is that when someone is being passive aggressive, there is a knee jerk response that actually exacerbates it. And so during this talk today, we’re going to be going over what to do instead. When someone is passive aggressive, they are saying one thing, but they are meaning something else. They’re implying something that’s aggressive, right? So they’re saying something passive with an aggressive intention. Herein lies the problem. The person is not saying exactly what their intention is. And so if a hard conversation ensues or an argument, even the other party is not in a position to be able to name exactly what the other person thinks because they did not say that. Is that clear? So they get to say something passive and mean something else, but they can always just say, oh, I never said that though. I didn’t say that. Like you came up with that, right? Which is a little bit of gaslighting type of thing, which is another word that people know what it is. Now, I think I learned that in grad school, too. Although, honestly, I think because I don’t work with that population, but my friend Amy Baer does, and she wrote a book called From Charm to Harm about the narcissistic personality disorder. And I think I learned gaslighting in that book. I think that was relatively new for me. That was probably only, like, I don’t know, 15 years ago. I don’t think that was common like it is now, which is great. I think this is great because people can’t get away with the stuff like they used to, right? Like they really have to own it. And so when you’re dealing with someone who’s passive aggressive, they are saying one thing that’s passive and meaning and intending something aggressive. And so what you need to do as the listener is actually only respond are you ready for this? Only respond to what the person is saying, not what the person is intending, okay? Because that is speculation, because they haven’t made that known. Now, it’s difficult to do that because of the energy or because of intuition or because of just how we’ve had conversations. We can tell when people might mean something other than what they’re saying, because things like sarcasm, right, that’s actually saying the exact opposite thing than what you intend, and that’s a whole other thing. So you got to be clear. You have to discern between passive aggressiveness and sarcasm because they are two different things. Sarcasm is saying the exact opposite thing with a certain inflection, and it’s pretty well known what’s going on here. The passive aggressive person that’s speaking gets to hide behind their words, right? Because it’s not sarcasm. Okay, so let’s say you’re sitting at a table and you’re enjoying an after dinner coffee or cake or something and having conversation with other people that were at the dinner, and someone walks up to you and says, oh, it looks like you’re working really hard at those dishes, right? Okay, that’s the opposite. You’re not working hard at dishes at all. There are no dishes. You’re not even working on dishes. That’s not true. There’s nothing happening there. That’s a sarcastic remark implying that you should be doing the dishes. Okay? But a passive aggressive move would be more like, I guess I’ll do the dishes tonight, like I always do. Okay, that’s a whole other move. Okay, so I guess I’m doing the dishes tonight. You could actually say then instead of going with what is implied here, I want you to help me with the dishes. This person is not saying that, okay? This person is not asking for their needs to be met. They’re saying one thing and hoping that you get it or that you feel it. But if you actually do and confront them, they get to say, I never told you to help me with the dishes. I just said, I’m doing the dishes tonight. I do the dishes all the time. Like they’re going to go with launch into that. And so what you do is you respond to what was said. I guess I’m doing the dishes tonight. Oh, it looks like you are. Would you like any help or thank you for doing the dishes, that’s great. I do the dishes every night at my house so I really appreciate it. You respond to what the statement is because if you don’t, you’re going to get caught in that trap. And that’s what passive aggressiveness is. It is a trap because the person always gets to say I never said that, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Right. And it makes you look like the crazy one, which is this like little mini version of gaslighting. You got it. Okay. I hope you got that little trick. It works every single time. Respond to whatever they are saying. Do not speculate about what people mean. You will have a 0% success rate trying to do that. First of all, because it can change any second. Someone can be perfectly happy and perfectly sad in an instant. You have no idea what people are thinking. Yes, I tell my clients all the time, you could be right, you’re probably right. Maybe you are right. But maybe you’re not right and you’re going to fall into the passive aggressiveness trap. Just remember that someone who is behaving in a passive aggressive way, they might use sarcasm for sure, but they also are just trying to get away from having to confront you. They’re trying to have a little dig. That’s very indirect because a direct communication is going to scare this person. They can’t deal. So that is how you handle it. You listen to what they’re saying, the content and not the intention behind it. You address that or ignore it, they can start stonewalling which is actually being super silent with someone and giving the silent treatment. They can say something really nice that seems mean like oh look, you finally cleaned your house, it looks great. Like something like that where it’s something there. But they’re trying to color it like a compliment and it’s not. And so you can just take what they say and say yeah, I finally did and I think it looks great too. Okay, you address what they say, not what the malicious intent is and they are more likely to let that dissipate or at least find another victim for their passive aggressive behavior. I mean, there’s a lot that goes along with this and the severity of it can get to learned helplessness and all of these just like an overall moody behavior. But I’m talking about just one small interaction how you can handle a passive aggressive comment and just knowing that the whole idea is relatively immature and it’s just a way to avoid direct confrontation or communication that is not a comfortable place for this person. And so when you come at them in a kind way with that even though it might be hard to be kind, I tell my kids all the time, being kind to nice people is easy. Our work is being kind to not nice people or people that are giving us these little digs here and there. And if it’s just one little interaction, you can usually get right past it and they will move on and everybody feels good. And remember, we’re just covering a few little communication tricks that seem to come up with my practice all the time. And so I’m teaching the same thing over and over and so I’m putting them here so you have them and maybe you tried this and it didn’t work or maybe someone else did it or you do it a different way. That’s awesome. I’m just telling you what’s worked for my clients, me personally, with my family, with my kids in my life, and definitely for sure, if I have seen any of that validated in teaching it to my clients workshop attendees or seminars or retreats, I want you to have it, right? It’s just like one more little tool in your toolbox is all right, I am going to just throw this out here because I think this is really funny in my neighborhood. You know, the neighborhood lift serve that you have online where people can write in and say someone’s having an estate sale or this person is a great gardener. You could hire this person to clean your house or whatever, wherever people are talking and they have neighborhood meetings and things like that and so they can list things. There is a person on my list serve for my neighborhood and his email address is passiveaggressiveneighbor@blank.com. And I’m just saying as a therapist, I thoroughly enjoy every post by the passive aggressive neighbor. Even though it’s cowardly, even though it’s annoying, it is kind of funny. And I mean, he just lays it out there. He’s not really actually being passive aggressive, he’s actually just being aggressive. But I thought you’d get a kick out of that. Okay, so that’s what you do. You respond to what the person is saying and you ask for clarity if you need to. Okay? And as we move on, you are going to thoroughly appreciate the idea of actually saying what you mean when we move on to these other communication styles. We’re going to be doing this for two more weeks and then I’m kind of thinking over what we’re going to do. I think we’re going to have a short break. We’ll hear from other Ethereal Network of Shows podcasts that you can listen to, and then we will move into the New Year, which is my specialty, my favorite, creating healthy habits and how to actually please avoid the New Year’s Resolutionist mistake and have New Year’s resolutions that are actually workable, feasible, attainable and lovely and will actually really, truly change your life. So we’ll be doing that. So take a little break and just sort of shrug off that passive aggressive conversation that you had recently. And when you come back we’re going to meditate together.
[12:05] You take a moment to find a beautiful, comfortable space where your body has the ability to settle in and your mind is at one. With this very moment in time.
[12:36] Give.
[12:36] Yourself this gift of freedom from to do lists freedom and liberation from all of the other things that you could be doing right now. Allow yourself to luxuriate in this moment, in this time, recognizing that there’s always something you could be doing but you’re giving yourself the gift of love and peace and calm in decluttering your beautiful mind. As you take a long, slow, deep breath and exhale, relax your shoulders, close your eyes and begin silently repeating the mantra moksha moksha moksha mok sha. I am free, I am liberated from all of it. Moksha moksha. When you falter, when your mind moves to the next thing you could or should be doing, gently bring yourself back to the mantra moksha moksha. That is the practice time and time again. Moksha moksha and I’ll be back in a few minutes to guide you out. Moksha moksha moksha. Allow this mantra to leave your awareness. Take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth. Take one long, slow, deep breath in your nose and again releasing out of your mouth and one last long, slow, deep breath in letting it all go out. And when you’re ready and free you can open your beautiful eyes.
[24:09] Close. Okay, well, I hope you’re feeling free and liberated and Mokshed out. And the next time that someone makes a little passive aggressive dig, you’ll know what to do and how to be. I think my most famous passive aggressive dig might start with something like it must be nice to have someone handle this for you. Or must be nice to lay back and do this while I’m working hard at that. Or something like that, right? So there are some little sentences, indicators that kind of indicate here comes a passive aggressive dig. And with that you can see how it would work, right? Like if someone said to me like, oh yeah, it is nice. It’s pretty nice. Where am I going to go with that? It’s just kind of over, right? And remember, I don’t know all the communication tricks. I’m just taking a few here that I want you to just have in your little toolbox and take with you so you’re able to speak your truth. You’re able to be a better listener actually, when you’re a better communicator and you’re getting your needs met and other people are able to tell you what their needs are and they feel like you’re a safe place to come if they do have something to say or disclose or discuss. And that’s a great quality in a person and just being a better communicator in general, I mean, good for us. And if this works for you or it doesn’t, I would love to hear about it. I would love to hear from you. I love hearing from you guys. Let me know how it’s going, how I’m doing, and I’m wishing you a beautiful, wonderful, lovely, lovely day. Before I go, I want to tell you about another Ethereal Network shows podcast that I think you’re going to love.
[26:15] This is Terry Hummingbird, host of Soul Nectar Show, and I invite you to come over and check out our conversations about all things Essence. Gather around the campfire with us and share stories of connection to that which is bigger than us. The great mystery beyond the veil to those synchronistic moments that lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. We’ll see you over at Soul nectar show.
[26:45] How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good. Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist, on social media, at thestresstherapist on Instagram and at stresstherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. If you live in Georgia and you’re ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me. At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing. Until next time, have a lovely, lovely day
