Dear passive-aggressive person,

In the words of Dr Phil, how’s that working out for you?

You won’t put forward your thoughts, opinions and beliefs, but you will let people know you’re unhappy. You express your anger indirectly through your actions and behaviour.

You stomp around the house when you’re mad, give people the silent treatment, deny you’re angry, bitch behind people’s backs, and default to sarcasm – but you won’t tell people what the problem is.

You try to shut down emotionally honest communication, use a pleasant overtone to cover your cutting remarks, undermine others, and some of your favourite words are “whatever” and “fine”. You probably also favour a good eye roll. Because that’ll show ‘em.

Here’s the thing though – you’re creating a lose-lose situation.

You’re not getting your needs met because you’re not telling people what those needs actually are, yet you’re making sure other people aren’t getting their needs met either. What a negative, ineffective way to live.

Passive aggressive communication is manipulative, infuriating, and immature, but unfortunately so many people revert to this style and it damages their success and happiness in both their careers and personal lives (even if they’re not aware it’s doing so).

It prevents honest relationships.

But the good news is this – communicating in a passive-aggressive way doesn’t make you a bad person, it’s just a bad habit, and one that you can work at overcoming. It’s a behaviour, it’s not you.

The first step to change is recognising you have a problem. You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge. Be honest with yourself. And then work on doing something about it.

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If you’d like to learn more about dealing with a passive-aggressive communicator, or how to communicate in a more assertive way yourself, please contact me at leah@methmac.com.au or visit my website at www.methmac.com.au.

#passiveaggressive #communication