Let's say that you are married for some time now, and hope that things will improve with time...but there are some blockages where you completely sink. Some interactions with your significant other are leaving you feeling emotionally drained, dejected, and utterly distressed. Those behaviors are not only confusing and hard to accept, but they have the capacity to damage your confidence and self-esteem. Repetitive passive aggressive behavior can take its toll on you, slowly altering your personality, until you barely recognize your own actions. You might feel depressed, you could cry out of the blue, or yell more often than before, and you utterly feel out of control.
How do you identify passive aggressive behavior in a person you hold near? Let's help you look at the problem step by step: If you observe this behavior: - Unexpected, unprovoked angry outbursts, disproportionate to the issue at hand - Isolation or pouting without an obvious reason - Dismissing your feelings off hand - Ignoring or blocking you from communications with others - Being sensitive and caring one minute; acting hostile and resentful the next Thenm he could be doing some passive resistance to you, to the marriage and to life in general...How is this behavior different? Even when we all do some passive aggressive behavior here and there, especially when we are resisting some other person ordering us around, while we don't want to challenge him, everyone knows what this behavior looks like.
What you need to look for is not the occasional response that blocks cooperation while saying that it is forthcoming, but look for the passive-aggressive behavior which is ingrained and the habitual way of dealing with the world, you included. It can come across as a maddening mixture of evasiveness and contrition, agreeableness and resistance, connection and aloofness, and in severe cases is often masked by more obvious mental illness, like depression.
The classic description of passive aggressive behavior includes a "stubborn malcontent, someone who passively resists fulfilling routine tasks, complains of being misunderstood and underappreciated, unreasonably scorns authority and voices exaggerated complaints of personal misfortune." Sometimes you can even perceive him as doing a clever obstruction of all your plans to move ahead, progress and develop new experiences for both, so scared this person is of change and your role in any change happening to him/her. If you push a lot, then you will be served with aggressive outbursts, coming like "out of nowhere," but destined to protect his personality from any adult demand coming his way. Do you need to know more? If you think passive aggressive behavior is the cause of your unhappy situation there are steps you can take to resolve it.
Perhaps you need to get a copy of "Overcoming Passive Aggressive Behavior." This ebook will give you strategies to respond to Passive Aggressive tactics! If you are ready to break free of the chains of passive aggressive emotional bondage, if you are tired of feeling humiliated and alone, if you are ready to take control of your emotional well-being once and for all, then this e-book is for you. |
