An interlocutor who expresses hostility indirectly — sarcastically, shows stubbornness and other types of indirect aggression — often seems to us confident and invulnerable. But this is a look from the outside, but what does he feel inside? And what if we ourselves are sometimes like that?
Some situations make us smile, others make us feel shame, anger, jealousy. Pleasant emotions are easier to deal with, and the rest are often not entirely clear what to do.
Everyone copes as best he can: withdraws into himself, gives vent to feelings or tries to answer with sarcasm, a caustic joke, hiding vulnerability, confusion and pain. The latter allows you to express difficult feelings not directly, but on the sly, so that in which case you can make an innocent face: “What did I say?” or «Yes, I love.»
There is a duality in the phrase “passive aggression” itself. Aggression suggests outward activity, but the adjective «passive» says otherwise: I take no action.
By choosing passive aggression, I both want and do not want my irritation to be known. I want to respond, but I don’t. Often only the intonation of the speaker betrays aggression.
So, for example, a harmless phrase: “Great sweater!”, uttered with a mockery, can leave an unpleasant aftertaste. We feel that the speaker implies some subtext, but does not express it directly. We are unarmed and at a loss as to what his remark means.
Storm inside
Aggression is unlikely to arise when we feel good, calm, and the environment is predictable and safe. But if we feel threatened, then there is a need to defend what is valuable to us.
A person who chooses passive aggression experiences discomfort, but cannot directly express or respond to it. The difficulty is that the cause of discomfort is not always clear to us.
For example, passive aggression may be accompanied by envy. This is a difficult experience that is not customary to talk about, and it is even more difficult to express it than to talk about your discontent. Envy indicates the presence of a strong need that cannot be realized in any way.
Suppose we are tired, exhausted by work, we want to go on vacation, but we cannot afford it. Therefore, when a friend tells that her husband bought her tickets to the sea, many experiences arise inside. We feel the need to rest even more sharply, there is a feeling of injustice: it seems that everything is easier for others.
At the same time, it is difficult to find an opportunity to express feelings. Well, how to tell that we are angry with someone who did not harm us? We do not always have time to even realize what we feel. Therefore, the reaction is often hasty, unclear to us.
And there are situations when we perfectly understand what caused irritation, but subordination prevents us from defending ourselves. The opponent may be stronger, more confident, or have power. For example, angry at the boss, few will decide on an open conflict. A much safer way is to “merge” overflowing emotions in a conversation with colleagues or relatives, for example, by spreading gossip about the leader.
Passive-aggressive remarks, although they sound calm and seemingly innocent, mean that there is a lot of pain and repressed anger inside the person pronouncing them. Anger, irritation, indignation are normal human reactions, but expressing them is not always easy. And we weren’t taught that either.
In working with clients, I encounter an internal prohibition on the manifestation of negative emotions. Many people are afraid of their own strong feelings, and they try to avoid them. But being in touch with your anger doesn’t mean you become a monster who does nothing but harm those around you. Irritation often signals that we ourselves are having a hard time right now, and ultimately helps the person take care of themselves. But unexpressed anger accumulates and leads to sudden conflicts, dissatisfaction with life, as well as problems with physical health.
Why do we accumulate anger?
The first and most important lessons on how to deal with our own emotions come from childhood. Our attitude to our emotions depends on whether our feelings were accepted or, conversely, ignored.
For example, if an older child was jealous of a younger one, and his parents did not recognize his feelings, they shamed him, he will continue to suppress such feelings in himself. This forms the habit of blocking the feelings that cause a negative reaction from others.
And in adulthood, it is not always easy for us to admit our own anger or envy. Now we ourselves, like parents once, blame ourselves for the feelings that we experience. However, it is the ability to treat yourself with compassion that allows you to understand difficult experiences, understand where anger comes from and how to express it safely for yourself and others.
How to deal with your own passive aggression
Even if in a difficult situation you could not restrain yourself and reacted in the usual passive-aggressive manner, you can try to help yourself.
1. Ask yourself:
- What did I feel at that moment?
- What did you get angry about?
- What hurt me, made me feel vulnerable, perhaps weak, defenseless?
- What did I want to protect myself from?
2. Allow yourself to feel whatever feelings you find, acknowledge them. What did you really want to say if you had the opportunity to do so directly? What prevented you from expressing what you felt? Imagine how you could talk about what hurt you in a more direct way.
3. Try to keep track of situations in which dissatisfaction arises. Look for environmentally friendly ways to solve the problem. Do not accumulate discontent, because otherwise it will begin to corrode from the inside.
Everyone sometimes gets caught up in anger or resentment, but the ability to grasp what these feelings hide helps to better understand ourselves.