Speaker 1 Dr. Carl, it's so good to have you here today. You are going to be talking to us about passive aggressive behavior in our relationships. And I have to be honest with you, I feel like this passive aggressive term is one that we hear pretty often. But I, if somebody would ask me to define it, I probably wouldn't be able to. So please define it for us.

Speaker 2 Yeah, passive aggressive behavior is where we indirectly express negative feelings to a person instead of directly and appropriately expressing that. Usually it's anger, but that negative or hurtful kind of feeling towards a person. So, like you said, it's thrown around a lot, and you see it a lot. But being able to really define it and have people sort of own up to it and understand it so they can do something about it. It isn't something that our society does very well.

Speaker 1 Well, you might be able to help us even understand it more by giving us a couple of examples of how it plays out in our relationships.

Speaker 2 Sure. So, you know, a classic marriage example is whenever people are having some trouble and some conflict, and there's some anger, they'll just give each other the silent treatment,

Speaker 1 I don't know anything about that.

Speaker 2 Avoidance, gossiping, when people sort of intentionally, act inefficiently, so especially in the workplace, lateness, you know, when people show up late and other ways of expressing some negative feelings, but they're doing it indirectly, instead of being able to confront the person directly. They have this negative feeling; they want to get at them in some way. They want to get back at them, but they're afraid of the confrontation, or they're not quite sure: how do I confront a person? So, it oozes out in this sort of indirect kind of way that we call this passive aggressive behavior.

Speaker 1 Okay, so do I hear you saying that with passive aggressive behavior, a person can display that behavior when they're afraid of some emotion that they're experiencing, or the other person might experience?

Speaker 2 It could be both, you know; a lot of people in our society don't really understand those negative feelings very well. We're not taught very well how to deal with our sadness, anger, hurt, frustration, embarrassment. So, we sort of push them down; we're not quite sure how to talk about them, journal about them or express them to or with another person. So, we only have like a thimble of room to be able to keep those negative feelings. So, they're going to lose out in some way. And so that's why they come out in these sorts of what we call passive aggressive kind of ways. Another situation is that we might want to express them to another person, but we're afraid of what they're going to do, whether they're going to be assaultive, either verbally or physically. In this situation we might be afraid to discuss it with them: Shall we try to keep it in, but it comes out in these other sort of subversive, subliminal kind of ways that we call passive aggressive behavior.

Speaker 1 Okay. So, give us like, say, in a husband-and-wife relationship, if one spouse is displaying that, how can the other spouse respond to that? Or how can the person doing it work to maybe change their behavior and that passive aggressive behavior? 

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, there's passive, and there's aggressive at two ends of the spectrum. And then there's assertive in the middle. So, for me passive is whenever we only take into account the other person's needs, feelings, thoughts agenda, and I ignore mine. Aggressive is whenever I take into account only my feelings, agenda, emotions, thoughts, needs, and I ignore the other persons. Okay? So assertive is where I take into account, your feelings, needs, thoughts, emotions, agenda, and mine. And as I'm taking both into those consideration, I don't want to ignore it, I want to express it. But I want to express it in a way that's kind, that's appropriate, that's respectful to you and your thoughts, so that we can hopefully engage in some kind of discussion. So usually, this passive aggressive behavior is a poor coping skill to deal with confronting a situation. Developing confrontation skills, or conflict resolution skills is an important and key solution to sort of get rid of this passive aggressive behavior.

Speaker 1 Okay. And does it look differently between a parent child relationship?

Speaker 2 To some extent, I mean, the depth that you can go in and discuss the actual problem is going to be different if it's a maybe a spouse, if your spouse is discussing it, as opposed to a parent and child. But the basic construct of wanting to acknowledge your feelings and thoughts, and the other person's, in a healthy way, is really important. I've developed a sort of a conflict resolution process that I call desk, D, E, S, C.

So D is describe the situation. So, let's say when you didn't pick me up at the airport, or when I didn't get picked up at the airport.

E is Express. So, I would express my feelings, I felt unimportant. I felt lonely, I felt belittled, I felt forgotten. 

Then S is specify what you want. Sometimes we expect the other person to be a mind reader, and know exactly what the solution is. So, I specify, if you're not able to pick me up, if you could just call me and I can find another way, okay?

And then C is consequences, your rewards. So, the consequences, if we don't do it, the right way is, our relationship is going to get farther apart, I won't trust you as much, I won't want to communicate with you, won't be able to rely on you. Or reward is, if we do it the right way, our relationship with grow will feel more confident each other and positive things will happen.

And so we go back and forth, I do my D, you do your D, sorry, I do my E and back and forth. So we both got a chance to put all the stuff out there on the table. And hopefully, as we come together and huddle that way, we can find out a solution. And I don't have to just get home from the airport and ignore you, gossip about you to my friends. So, while you know, she blew me off, she didn't pick me up at the airport, we can just come together and have a direct discussion about it. But in a way that sort of has rules and has structure to it that allows us to express what we need to express in a way that's respectful and hopefully finds a solution that we're both agreeable to

Speaker 1 Great. That's such good advice. And it sounds fairly easy to, at least, start implementing some of those in our relationships. So, we want to let you know that Dr. Carl has a wonderful website with all kinds of information and resources. You can connect with him on our website, CTV n.org. And Dr. Carl, thank you so much for being with us today.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you, Anna.



Last modified: Tuesday, October 15, 2024, 10:55 AM