Passive Aggressive Diaries

Amber’s mother should have found a way to express her anger towards her daughter in a less antagonistic manner. Using passive aggressive behavior against the perpetrator of such behavior only reinforces the notion that passive aggressive behavior is an acceptable substitute for the direct expression of anger. Amber’s silent treatment toward her mother may have been a culmination of years of being socialized to suppress anger in order to conform to society’s expectations that children learn to control negative emotions like anger, especially toward authority figures. The practices of childrearing and social and cultural influences are carried on from generation to generation; consequently, Amber’s mother expressed her anger toward her daughter by using counter-passive aggression. Although Amber‘s week-long silent treatment toward her mother was inappropriate, Amber’s mother could have chosen to break the procession of passive aggressive behaviors by acknowledging her daughter’s anger over not being allowed to seep at a friend’s house. She could have emphasized that Amber’s feelings of anger were normal, but that she should find healthy ways to express that anger. Furthermore, Amber’s mother should have set a good example for Amber by modeling proper ways to express anger. She could have spoken to her about her own anger before she left for school Friday morning; explaining why she did not feel she should comply with a written request to wash Amber’s uniform after a week of silent treatment. If Amber’s mother had taken that approach it would have given Amber the chance to open up a dialogue with her mother, or handle the dirty uniform predicament by herself; at least she would have had a choice. In addition, this story drives home the point that passive aggressive behaviors result in lose-lose situations that are unhealthy and can damage relationships beyond repair. Finally, if Amber’s mother had successfully communicated with her daughter she would have had the opportunity to watch her daughter play in her soccer game, resulting in a win-win situation, and the diffusion of potentially escalating passive aggressive behaviors.

Anger is a deep topic to explore. I am interested in learning about this "assertive" method of expressing it. I know suppressing anger can be unhealthy - it needs to be worked through. It's good for parents to take the high road and model better ways of dealing with conflict so children don't develop patterns of using anger as a tool to intimidate and overpower others. I am open-minded and curious to hear specific examples of this approach working, but admit to a bit of skepticism about encouraging children to express anger. The emotion may be released and diminished, but will the underlying conflict or cause be resolved? We don't always get what we want. How do we teach children, and ourselves, not to fall apart over it?

I think sometimes it can be hard for parents to accept when their children are angry, possibly because they may see it as the first steps toward open defiance of their authority. Parents should accept it nevertheless, because branding anger as unacceptable only leads to unhealthy levels of passive-aggressive behavior. Anger is perfectly natural and an unavoidable part of the human experience, so parents raise their children well when they teach assertive methods of confronting anger. Having been raised in a family that discouraged open airing of disputes, I know that teaching assertiveness best serves children to grow up to be emotionally healthy adults.

I believe it is almost impossible for anyone to not be passive agressive at one point or another in their lives. Like anger, passive agression is also a natural part of one's being. As humans we do not always want to express anger, instead we sometimes want to teach another person a lesson to make them feel exactly how they have made us feel. When i think of anger, yelling and screaming come to mind. Anger takes alot of strength and energy out of a person, it takes quite alot of practice to be assertive in a polite manner when you are really angry. The only way one can silence that anger is by getting someone back for what they have been putting you through and becoming passive agressive, like Amber and her mom in this article. I am also open to learning more about being assertive with my anger and how to really diminish all desires of being passive agressive in certain matters in life.

Passive-aggressive behavior is indeed a force to be reckoned with. In my own experience it is hard to not succumb to counter-passive-aggression or to even just lashing out when someone is using passive-aggression against you. I believe that the way that Amber’s mom responded was childish and by doing this she not only damaged the relationship she had with her daughter but also lost respect as a parent. It was her job to show her child the assertive road. Yet, I do believe that it is hard as a parent to always do the right thing especially when your children are constantly testing you. I know that some parents are hesitant to say yes or even embrace anger from their children but that is the only way to ensure that passive-aggressive behavior does not triumph. People are hesitant to embrace anger because they think that expressing anger always means screaming, hitting, or saying mean things. There is a thin line between asserting your anger and being disrespectful and that line can be confusing. This is another job for parents to make sure that their children know how to express their anger is a respectful manor that does not include yelling, hitting, or saying mean things. This way their children will know the difference between assertive and disrespectful. The lesson of being able to express your emotions appropriately will help them in all situations.

As a group, we were shocked by the reaction of the mother in the blog. We thought that she could have handled the situation a lot better. The mother shouldn’t have mirrored her daughter’s passive aggressive behavior; it just reinforces her daughter’s actions. We suggested that the mother could have taken the high road and confronted her daughter about the situation before it escalated. The mother could have risen above the situation by washing and drying her daughter’s uniform and leaving a note that said something like, “It’s okay if you are angry with me, I love you, and good luck today.” By doing this the mother would have shown her support as well as shown her daughter that the passive aggressive way is not the way she should handle situations. By reading the note, the daughter would have known that it was okay to be angry and may have decided to talk to her mother about her feelings.
In general, we agreed with the advice that was given by Whitson. The daughter needed to be taught that being angry is okay and that it’s all in how you express it. The daughter needed to learn to be assertive, not passive or passive aggressive. The mother also needed to learn how to handle her daughter’s aggression and how to be a more assertive parent so her daughter could model her behavior.

As a group, we were shocked by the reaction of the mother in the blog. We thought that she could have handled the situation a lot better. The mother shouldn’t have mirrored her daughter’s passive aggressive behavior; it just reinforces her daughter’s actions. We suggested that the mother could have taken the high road and confronted her daughter about the situation before it escalated. The mother could have risen above the situation by washing and drying her daughter’s uniform and leaving a note that said something like, “It’s okay if you are angry with me, I love you, and good luck today.” By doing this the mother would have shown her support as well as shown her daughter that the passive aggressive way is not the way she should handle situations. By reading the note, the daughter would have known that it was okay to be angry and may have decided to talk to her mother about her feelings.
In general, we agreed with the advice that was given by Whitson. The daughter needed to be taught that being angry is okay and that it’s all in how you express it. The daughter needed to learn to be assertive, not passive or passive aggressive. The mother also needed to learn how to handle her daughter’s aggression and how to be a more assertive parent so her daughter could model her behavior.

I thought the guidelines were really good ideas. If only more parents followed them. Sounds like it would be hard to do,to accept your child's anger. I for one was raised in that type of family. Where being angry was 'bad'. So I'm understanding both sides of the conflict. I think parents need to suck it up and help their child learn healthy ways of expressing themselves. I also think sometimes parents are tempted to get even with their kids because they don't know better or they don't know how to respond to their kids passive aggressiveness. I mean if my mom just cleaned the clothes without actually drying them I would of probably thought of something to do to get back at her. It would of been an ongoing thing between her and I. Passive aggressiveness in kids are caused by the parents. I mean it had to start from somewhere. It's up to the parents basically. Parents should be patient and be willing to take their kids anger instead of acting exactly like them.

We liked how this article emphasizes that it is a valuable parenting technique to help a child assert his or her anger. Many young people are expected to suppress their angry feelings because of society’s unrealistic standard of what it means to be “good.” However, anger is a natural part of being human. It is unhealthy to suppress anger. Also, a key part of building emotional intelligence is to accept the presence of anger and to deal with it in an assertive way. We support that in order for a child to be more open and direct with his anger, parents must be willing to accept both their child’s anger and their child’s expression of anger.

We believe that the ideas presented in this article sound good in theory. Difficulties arise when the ideas are placed into practice. Parents need to be very stringent when using an assertive parenting method. Once the parents back away from the examples they are setting, the children can become confused. The example we saw a similarity in was communism. We drew the similarities that on paper the idea works very well and everyone is happy and prosperous but when put into action, things can become awry. Communism and being assertive are not linked in their inherent value or tactics! One method we see as a way to reinforce expressing anger in a positive way is by using a reward system for socially acceptable behavior. The parents must be subjective when applying a reward system because the child is unlikely to completely understand anger and its expression. Like many other aspects of parenthood, monitoring anger and how to appropriately deal with it is the job and purpose of a parent. This situation could be an opportunity for operant conditioning with positive reinforcement. Both the parent and child can benefit by having a structured manner in which to deal with passive aggressive behavior.

When reading this, I am reminded of Dr. Steven Stosny's work with couples and families with anger (overt/covert), and abuse (psychological/verbal/physical):

"Living with a Resentful or Angry Partner (or teenager) - The biggest challenge of living with a resentful or angry person is to keep from becoming one yourself. The high contagion and reactivity of resentment and anger are likely to make you into someone you are not.

The second biggest challenge, should you decide to stay in a relationship with a resentful or angry person is getting him or her to change. Four major thorns are likely to obstruct transformation:

• Victim identity
• Conditioned blame
• Temporary narcissism
• Negative attributions

more:
http://compassionpower.com/Livingwithanger.php

and

Emotional Abuse
Note: Dr. Stosny posted some of this same material and much more on emotional abuse on the Oprah Winfrey website

You Are Not the Cause of Your Partner’s Anger or Abuse
Anger and abuse in relationships are about blame: "I feel bad, and it's your fault." Even when resentful, angry, or emotionally abusive people recognize their behavior, they are likely to blame it on their partners: "You push my buttons," or, "I might have overreacted, but I'm human, and look what you did!"

Angry and abusive partners tend to be anxious by temperament. From the time they were young children, they've had a consistent sense of dread that things will go badly and they will fail to cope. They try to control their environment to avoid terrible feelings of failure and inadequacy.

The strategy of trying to control others fails even if they are powerful, for the simple reason that the primary cause of their anxiety is within them, not in their environment. It springs from one of two sources: a heavy dread of failure or fear of harm, isolation, and deprivation.

The Silent Abuser
Not all emotional abuse involves shouting or criticism. More common forms are “disengaging” – the distracted or preoccupied spouse - or "stonewalling" – the spouse who refuses to accept anyone else’s perspective.

While verbal abuse and other forms of emotional abuse can be roughly equal between men and women, stonewallers are almost exclusively male. Biology and social conditioning make it is easier for men to turn off emotions. The corpus callosum – the part of the brain that connects its two hemispheres is smaller in men, making it easier for them to shut out information from the emotionally-oriented right hemisphere. On top of that slight biological difference, social conditioning promotes the analytical, unemotional male on the one hand or the strong silent type on the other.

The partner who stonewalls may not overtly put you down. Nevertheless, he punishes you for disagreeing with him by refusing even to think about your perspective. If he listens at all, he does so dismissively or impatiently.

The disengaging husband says, "Do whatever you want, just leave me alone." He is often a workaholic, couch potato, womanizer, or obsessive about sports or some other activity. He tries to deal with his inadequacy about relationships by simply by not trying – no attempt means no failure.

Both stonewalling and disengaging tactics can make you feel:

Unseen and unheard
Unattractive
Like you don't count
Like a single parent

What All Forms of Abuse Have in Common
Whether overt or silent, all forms of abuse result from failures of compassion; he/she stops caring about how you feel. Compassion is the lifeblood of marriage; failure of compassion is its heart disease.

It would be less hurtful if your partner never cared about how you felt. But when you were falling in love, he/she cared a great deal. So now it feels like betrayal when he or she doesn't care or try to understand. That’s not the person you married. Failure of compassion can feel like abuse.

Harmful Adaptations to Anger and Abuse: Walking on Eggshells
The most insidious aspect of abuse is not the obvious nervous reactions to shouting, name-calling, criticism or other demeaning behavior. It's the adaptations you make to try to prevent those painful episodes. You walk on eggshells to keep the peace or a semblance of connection.

Women are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of walking on eggshells due to their greater vulnerability to anxiety. Many brave women engage in constant self-editing and self-criticism to keep from "pushing his buttons." Emotionally abused women can second guess themselves so much that they feel as though they have lost themselves in a deep hole.

Recovery from walking on eggshells requires removing focus from repair of your relationship and your partner and placing it squarely on your personal healing. The good news is that the most powerful form of healing comes from within you. You can draw on your great inner resources by reintegrating your deepest values into your everyday sense of self. This will make you feel more valuable, confident, and powerful, regardless of what your partner does.

No One Escapes the Effects of Abuse
Families do not communicate primarily by language. That might surprise you, until you consider that humans bonded in families for millennia before we even had language. Even today, the most sensitive communications that have the most far-reaching consequences to our lives occur between parents and infants through tone of voice, facial expressions, touch, smell, and body posture, not language.

Though less obvious than interactions with young children, most of your communications with your older children and with your husband also occur through an unconscious process of emotional attunement. You psychologically and even physically tune in your emotions to the people you love. That’s how you can come home in one mood, find your husband or children in a different mood and, bam! – all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you’re in their mood. Quite unconsciously, you automatically react to one another.

Emotional attunement, not verbal skills, determines how we communicate, from our choice of words to our tone of voice. If attuned to a positive mood, you are likely to communicate pleasantly. If you’re in a negative mood, your words will be less than pleasant.

Now here’s the really bad news. Due to this unconscious, automatic process of emotional attunement, your children are painfully reactive to the walking-on-eggshells atmosphere between your husband and you, even if they never hear you say a harsh word to one another.

Everyone in a walking-on-eggshells family loses some degree of dignity and autonomy. You become unable to decide your own thoughts, feelings, and behavior, because you are living in a defensive-reactive pattern that runs largely on automatic pilot. No fewer than half the members of these unfortunate families, including the children, suffer from clinical anxiety and/or depression. (“Clinical” doesn’t mean feeling down or blue or worried, it means that the symptoms interfere with normal functioning. You can’t sleep, can’t concentrate, can’t work as efficiently, and can’t enjoy yourself without drinking.) Most of the adults lack genuine self-esteem (based on realistic self-appraisals), and the children rarely feel as good as other kids.

When it comes to the more severe forms of destructiveness, purely emotional abuse is usually more psychologically harmful than physical abuse. There are a couple of reasons for this. Even in the most violent families, the incidents tend to be cyclical. Early in the abuse cycle, a violent outburst is followed by a honeymoon period of remorse, attention, affection, and generosity, but not genuine compassion. (The honeymoon stage eventually ends, as the victim begins to say, “Never mind the damn flowers, just stop hitting me!”) Emotional abuse, on the other hand, tends to happen every day. So the effects are more harmful because they’re so frequent.

The other factor that makes emotional abuse so devastating is the greater likelihood that victims will blame themselves. If someone hits you, it’s easier to see that he or she is the problem, but if the abuse is subtle – saying or implying that you’re ugly, a bad parent, stupid, incompetent, not worth attention, or that no one could love you – you are more likely to think it’s your problem.

Important questions to ask of yourself:

Do I like myself?
Am I able to realize my potential?
Does everyone I care about feel safe?
Do my children like themselves?
Are they able to realize their fullest potential?
Do they feel safe?

http://compassionpower.com/emotional%20abuse%20verbal%20abuse.php

Love Without Hurt:
http://compassionpower.com/Bookorder.htm

Additional resources:
http://compassionpower.com/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement

The article helped me understand that passive aggressive behavior can be a way children express their anger.

It might be better for children to be taught an acceptable method of expressing anger.

One technique is to identify the cause of the anger, identify why it causes anger, and to request an alternative. But if this technique is not rewarded by the parent, it will not be practiced by the child.

The genetic passive agressives (rather than learned or copied tactics) simply cannot help themselves - believe me I have tried with my son, now 20. Yes, he expresses anger with me, but in the outside world he seems unable to just DO it. They hardly have genetic emotions, no or very low sense of duty (at home at least) and low sense of responsibility. HOWEVER, in their jobs they work hard, are loyal and excellent workers.... their goal is to be as popular as can be, admired, honoured, respected.... and they are often successful I think - hence the need to be p.a in their work environment is hardly there because they (really) are so popular.... whenever they are p.a there, it seems accepted as it is hard to create a victim I suppose - while at home it comes out in full swing.... I hope the experts realise that a p.a at home is often much more vicious than the p.a at work!! Please stop blaming the parents... in most cases it is genetic - I'm sure...