Overcoming Passive Aggression

By Jeanine Byers Hoag
What I like about the book is that even though it addresses the angry person as "the problem" and the focus is on how that person expresses or fails to express hidden anger, there is a strong call to action on the part of the person who is in a relationship with the angry person. And part of the call is being careful about the way we express anger.

The book identifies several types of passive-aggressive people and their deep inner motivations for expressing their anger passively. The authors point out that there are deep inner needs that drive the other person's behavior and they often stem from childhood. Understanding what those needs might be help to explain why they are using these sneaky expressions of behavior instead of expressing it directly.

It also separates the differences you encounter when the passive-aggressive person is your partner, your child, your parent, your boss, your coworker, or your best friend.

The authors give detailed descriptions and great case stories to illustrate how the different types of passive-aggressive behavior show up.

They have numerous checklists to take in case, you, the reader, are the angry person expressing it passively. And they identify the costs of anger in terms of health challenges, ruined marriages, lost job promotions, estranged family relationships and others.

If you are dealing with someone's hidden anger at home, at work or in some other situation, you are likely to recognize it as you read this book. Most likely, you know that already, but one of the possible problems they mentioned is that people enable and protect the angry person, denying, ignoring or minimizing the other person's behavior.

For me, the most helpful part of the book is the part where they describe enabling and issue the call to stop it. They make several suggestions about the changes you need to make if you are encountering someone's hidden anger...

(1) Immediately stop enabling it. Address it directly and clearly and set firm boundaries about what is or is not acceptable.

(2) But do so calmly, watching carefully the way you express your own anger, lessening your own reactiveness when something happens. Be as positive as you can during each interaction. Make the interaction about resolution and state clearly what you would like to see happen to resolve the problem.

(3) Don't accept excuses if you are clear that what happened is an example of hidden anger expressed in a passive-aggressive way. And be direct about the consequences of continuing the behavior.

(4) Don't be drawn into an argument about which one of you is right and which one is wrong.

(5) Be careful not to attack the person but to focus instead on what happened and what you believe needs to happen now and in the future. Behavior not character.

"About half of passive-aggressors are fully aware of what they are doing, Engel estimates. The rest act (or don't act) unwittingly and then wonder why they get people's blood boiling."-- therapist Beverly Engel, author of Honor Your Anger: How Transforming Your Anger Style Can Change Your Life.