passive aggressive – how best to deal with someone like this?

Walk away, or tell them they are being passive aggressive. But I’m not a psycho or a therapist

Alternate between stroking her/him gently – murmuring ‘there there, sweetie, it’ll all be okay, promise’ – and then punching her/him in the face.

It’s a tried and tested solution. I heard about it from Carl Jung.

I think maybe you mean Carl Douglas

Context? I think a lot of things are called passive / aggressive when they are not really.

bite their face off?

Behaviour being expressed?

What’s she done now?

Context? I think a lot of things are called passive / aggressive when they are not really.

Indeed.

Indeed.

Can people please refrain from posting comments such as this as it’s a complete pain in the arse. 😀

Write them an anonymous note in green ink.

Indeed.
Can people please refrain from posting comments such as this as it’s a complete pain in the arse.

Totally.

(Sorry)

indeed.

I concur.

+1

hear hear.

….and so say all of us

Indeed.

This.

oooh, proper psychotherapists are a pretty rare breed even in the intellectual hothouse of the chat forum.

I work with one, but I would be three years of expensive chinstroking traning and corduroy elbow patches before I could call myself one.

So on with the frustrating “answers your question with another question”. Or six….

-What is your relationship to the passive agressive person?
-As per tj and toys19, are you sure they are being passive-agressive?
-What do you hope to achieve or change about your dealings with or relationship?
-Does anyone else you know feel the same way about them?
-…and has anyone else tried to challenge them or their behaviour?
-if so what happened?

in preparation, as much empirical and un-arguable/wriggle-outable information is key, as well as keeping your head screwed on and not making it into a ‘crusade’.

You are not going to change a person’s ways and personailty overnight in calling them out successfully over a disagreement or problem even if it is clear to everyone around them that they have screwed up or treated others terribly, and shaming them is unlikely to get anywhere in terms of your future interactions.

I’ve decided to end any contact with them beyond basic/essential. They’re not going to change and life’s too short for me to want to negotiate the mine field they have laid around them. As you were.

For anyone wondering what their behavior was like, clicky

Hmm that list on the wiki article sounds like the archetypal Brit.

lock them in the coal bunker and only let them out if they promise to change. But then I suppose the risk is that they passively die thus ruining your coal and coal store, the bastards!

It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.

Isn’t that just the definition of a typical job?

Send them for a night on the beer with Fred 😀

I have to say I’ve no idea what passive aggressive means and what I’ve been told does not put it into context or simplify it to something I understand.

I have to say I’ve no idea what passive aggressive means and what I’ve been told does not put it into context or simplify it to something I understand.

I think (and I mean think) that the most common examples of it are the notes that get left on your car if you’re parking somewhere a neighbour thinks is a bit naughty, or the notes that get left by the office busybody on the fridge, etc. – so the “aggression” is having a go at you about the behaviour, and the “passive” is not having the balls to do it to your face, just writing a calmly worded note. I think in the past there have probably been more “plain-english” descriptions but “passive-aggressive” is the current trendy phrase for it.

There are quite a few examples of it in the office environment (I believe) e.g. as mentioned somewhere above, someone in a chain of work, not doing their bit if it implicitly affects your ability to do your job…just to piss you off. Apparently it happens quite a lot in personal relationships and a lot of couples will whinge about partners being “passive-aggressive” but a lot of the time, this is just whinging 🙂

If you get my drift…

Ambiguity or speaking cryptically
Chronically being late and forgetting things
Fear of competition
Fear of dependency
Fear of intimacy
Making chaotic situations
Making excuses
Obstructionism
Procrastination
Sulking
Victimization response:

Otherwise known as being female 😀

Now, Zulu-Eleven, there’s a chap you could never accuse of being passive-agressive…he just goes straight for you.

Simply put passive/aggressive is saying one thing and doing another – it’s obviously more nuanced than that, but this is basically what it comes down to.

In a work context it can look like someone saying they are on board with something but then acting in a way that shows they’re clearly not; picture a meeting where the boss asks you if you’re on board, you nod in agreement and then their back is turned you pull a face that shows others you clearly didn’t mean what you just said.

If that person is a direct report, then you will recognise it as passive/aggressive if they never seem to follow through on their commitments.

One way to manage the situation is to get them to say what they are going to commit to doing rather than you telling them what you want them to commit to and then hold them to account to do it. It’s a subtle difference but if they are the ones volunteering the commitment, you less likely to get BS from them. If they still don’t follow through, then you can directly ask them why not, pointing out that it was they that made the commitment.

It won’t neccessarily cure the problem, but it makes managing them (out) easier.

I think (and I mean think) that the most common examples of it are the notes that get left on your car if you’re parking somewhere a neighbour thinks is a bit naughty, or the notes that get left by the office busybody on the fridge, etc

Not quite right, GT’s example is more like it I think. It’s stuff like deliberately NOT doing something that needs doing as a way of reacting against it.

Like, say, dragging your heels over a task whilst making excuses because you know that if it’s late it’ll cause lots of problems for the person asking and scupper the project; because you don’t like it and you want it to get cancelled and you want to upset the person concerned or want their career to do badly. Perhaps because you want to do better than them.

I guess there will be more personal examples (ie not work related) but I don’t hang around with people like this so I can’t give any 🙂

So why is there a whole website devoted to passive aggressive notes then? Or have we a Morrissette style screw up there?

Interesting – I fit in with the Passive Aggressive bit at work – say yes to stupid ideas (as can’t be arsed to argue) and then just do the sensible thing with total disregard to the agreed (and most often moronic ‘agreed’ strategy).

I call it ‘having no time for morons’ which is probably the same thing…

I call it ‘having no time for morons’ which is probably the same thing…

Posting that in STW must be the ultimate irony!

Simply put passive/aggressive is saying one thing and doing another – it’s obviously more nuanced than that, but this is basically what it comes down to.

In a work context it can look like someone saying they are on board with something but then acting in a way that shows they’re clearly not; picture a meeting where the boss asks you if you’re on board, you nod in agreement and then their back is turned you pull a face that shows others you clearly didn’t mean what you just said.

If that person is a direct report, then you will recognise it as passive/aggressive if they never seem to follow through on their commitments.

One way to manage the situation is to get them to say what they are going to commit to doing rather than you telling them what you want them to commit to and then hold them to account to do it. It’s a subtle difference but if they are the ones volunteering the commitment, you less likely to get BS from them. If they still don’t follow through, then you can directly ask them why not, pointing out that it was they that made the commitment.

It won’t neccessarily cure the problem, but it makes managing them (out) easier.

sounds like every programmer I’ve ever worked with.

Well my in-laws are staying with us at the moment and my FiL is being very passive-agressive. Which translates as being generally an arsehole and huffing and puffing and rolling his eyes whenever someone does something he perceives to be wrong which is basically all the time.

I feel sorry for his poor wife…

just give him a hug, that’ll stop it.