Do you want to know how to deal with passive-aggressive people? Well, that's
what we're going to be talking about in this video. I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach all about parenting,
communication, relationships, and everything I teach is through the lens of the principle of
self-government. So, we're gonna be talking about passive aggressiveness and what you can do to help
them in this video. I've got four tips for you today for how to deal with passive-aggressive
people and they work, I should know. I'm actually a passive-aggressive person myself. Well, let's
say I was, now I'm definitely an assertive person. Because I chose to be and these four different
tips that I'm going to share with you today will help you teach the person you love who has passive
aggressive tendencies to be assertive too. Before we get to these four tips. I just want to make sure
that we are clear what assertiveness is because that is our goal. So, when a person is assertive
that means that they plan ahead of time how they want to communicate with another person.
They say, "How should I be in this situation?", and then they also plan what words are going to
help me communicate best with this person. What words are going to help me get my point across
and understand them better as well. A person who is assertive does not just jump on their emotions.
They recognize they're having an emotional response and then they say, "What do I want to
do with this?". So they stop themselves and they think first, that is very important. In fact,
thinking and staying in that logical part of your brain a lot of the time is one of the things that
helps a person truly self-govern themselves. So, what is self-government? I'm known all over the
world for being the self-government lady and self-government is being able to determine the
cause and effect of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors,
so that you can control them. Which means that you analyze yourself and you make plans for the
best ways for you to succeed. This is something that I teach people how to teach their children
and we're going to be applying some of those principles today. Tip number 1 is to pre-plan if
possible. Now, I know that the passive-aggressive people in your life may not always be people
that are under your stewardship. But if they're your children or a spouse or a close friend or
family member & sometimes you can communicate honestly with them and you can help them make
a plan for communication. Now, this pre-planned step is actually the most powerful tip that I'm
going to give you. Because when a person plans ahead of time how they want to communicate and
how they want to connect and how they want to behave. That person is empowered to do the right thing in
the minute and to follow through with their plan. But if they never make a plan then it's really
hard for them to change once they get going. Once a person starts down a course they feel invested to
keep going in that direction. Especially, if they're in the emotional part of the brain. They don't want
to admit that they've done anything wrong. So they just keep going even if it's the wrong track. But
if you've analyzed ahead of time. Maybe what their weaknesses tend to be with communication and how
they fall into these traps or wrong paths. That don't lead them to happiness and places that
they want to be. Then you can also discuss with them ways that they could communicate in more
effective ways. Now, there is a skill that I teach parents to teach children, but this is not just for
children. In fact, this is an adult skill for life. This skill is called disagreeing appropriately.
So, part of pre-planning is learning a skill that's going to help you to communicate properly in the
minute. Now, I don't have time to teach everything about that skill right now, but there is a lot
of information about disagreeing appropriately at teachingselfgovernment.com. So you definitely could
go there to learn more about that skill. But I'll just explain a couple of pieces about disagreeing
appropriately right now. Number 1 thing when a person chooses to disagree appropriately
they are deliberately deciding to remain calm. A calm face voice and body. Number 2, the principle
behind this skill is seek to understand then to be understood. So the person always takes time
to explain the other person's point of view before they share their own point of view.
Now, if a person who has a tendency to be passive aggressive learns this skill. That can actually
talk them out and walk them out of that passive aggressiveness that might be building in their mind.
Just because they're focusing on the steps to that skill and there actually are seven steps to
that skill disagreeing appropriately. But I've just shared a little bit of the gist of a couple of
those steps right now. So that you get an idea of how powerful learning a skill like that could be.
So, pre-planning is super important. Prepare if you can ahead of time. Now, if you don't have the type
of relationship with the person where you can do the pre-planning. Then the best thing you can do
is you prepare, you pre-plan, for how you're going to handle the situation. So that you don't fall
into a power struggle and start communicating in passive aggressive or aggressive ways yourself.
Tip number 2 is to be calm. Now, I know everybody says that like, "Oh we'll just be calm. Focus on calmness,
learn about calmness." But what I've found over the years is that people want calm but in the minute
to try to have it and to be calm is a whole other beast. You can know that maybe it exists.
But if you've never used it right in that time where you're going to fall into passive-aggressive
or aggressive type behavior. You're not really sure that it's possible. Calmness is vital for a person
to actually have self-mastery or self-government. You can't govern yourself when you are in an
emotional state. That doesn't mean your emotions aren't there or that we should somehow close
them off and bottle them up, that's not the case. They are there but we need to know how to handle
them and what type of action steps to take to keep ourselves in our front brain. So that we can really
solve our problems even if there does happen to be some sort of emotional response. Many people
who are passive-aggressive feed their emotions and so they don't choose calmness even though, they look
calm sometimes on the outside. You have to remember that with other people, just because they're not
screaming does not mean they're calm. In fact, you can feel when a person isn't calm. There's a wall,
there's a type of an agitation, the tone in the room adjusts, and it's because their heart is not calm.
Their heart is engaging in selfish thoughts, in divisive thoughts. They're possibly judging you
or somebody else around you because they're in an emotional place in their brain. This can happen to
anybody. So, what do you do to help that person get calm? Now, if you have the opportunity to
pre-plan calmness with them and create a calm plan and a calm strategy with them ahead of time,
all the better. But let's be real, sometimes we're with someone we don't even know or
we just work with at the office or something like that and how do we help them become calm?
Well, step number 1 is you be calm, really calm, not passive-aggressive calm. But the kind of calm
where you value the other person where you say, "They're having a hard minute right now and I
recognize that. I know they want me to understand something and I'm willing to take that time. But I
might need to give them a minute to get calm." So, you're patient you're understanding, and caring
through their process potentially of not being calm. Your calmness will show them that their
power struggle is doing nothing. So, what you could say is, "I want to know what you have to say.
I can tell that this is important to you. Can we get calm? Let's be calm." A person who's truly
aggressive on the inside even if they're passive aggressive on the outside, they might walk away.
They might decide they don't want to do that, that can happen. But truly you can't solve the problem
until they are calm. So hopefully with your children you've talked about how to get calm.
Taking some calm deep breaths having maybe a calm place that they go to. In fact, in my course the
teaching self-government parenting course, I talk about two different ways that we help children get
calm. So, we have for younger children what we have is called the calm down spot. It's not like time
out it's different and it's a place that's a trigger spot for getting calm and I talk about
how to prepare the children to use this spot. When children are a little bit older maybe age
six or so and up, then I talk about using something called the rule of three and we modify it a little
bit depending on age. But this rule of three is a process that we go through it's a verbal process
that helps them transition from the emotional part of their brain to the front part of their brain. So
that if you can calm down some of those chemicals and stop firing them in mid or back brain then
the person will develop a calming and they'll be able to think more clearly. But usually you have to
force engagement with the front in order to stop the production of the chemicals in the brain that
are leaning to all the emotional firing that's happening. We use this rule of three procedure.
It's really just a skill, a parenting skill that we use to help our children choose calmness at those
times when they're truly going out of control. One of the biggest things is parents absolutely
have to step up and help their children be calm. Letting them just wallow and wallow just spins
them down to a pit deeper and deeper and then they don't get the opportunity to choose calmness or be
understood fully. Before I get to my last two tips, are you liking this video? Give me a comment down
below if you are and for sure subscribe. Do you know I have videos that come out on this channel
every day of the week. You won't want to miss some of those, so subscribe now. Tip number 3 is to
describe. So you need to consistently help a person control that impulse to become passive-aggressive.
Meaning bring them to calmness, bring them to assertiveness, and one of the ways that you do
that is by assertively describing what's going on and what should be going on. So you might say to
your child, "Right now, you are not looking at me and you are definitely not keeping a calm body. Because
I can feel right now that there's a wall that's getting put up. You're not talking to me about this.
So I can see you're not following instructions and you're not disagreeing appropriately." So those are
two skills that I teach the children how to do that I work with. These two skills are part of
learning self-mastery. So I would be describing possibly some of the steps to those skills
and then, I describe what they should be doing. What you should be doing is you should be looking at
the person, keeping a calm face voice and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately, and then do
the task immediately, and then check back. Those were the steps to following instructions. I might
describe the steps to disagreeing appropriately if I think they really need to talk to me. I need to
understand what's happening here. But they need to do it in a way that helps them remember not to be
passive-aggressive and that's where that disagree appropriately skill really comes in. It helps a
person feel empowered as they are communicating with someone instead, of feeling like they're
being shut down. Because they're choosing to use a skill that they already know and it often times
works for them. Tip number 4 is to send the love. So if you truly are calm, then when you are talking
to them maybe you're even correcting them. Because those describing phrases that I was talking about
are part of doing a correction. So in a correction we describe what happened, why it wasn't a good
idea, what should have happened, and then we move on to consequences earned and some practice
techniques. That we use so that the person doesn't have the same problem in the future. During this
whole interaction, I'm going to be looking them in the eyes and I'm going to be thinking, "I love you
I love you." Even when I'm correcting them because they need that correction. They need that analysis
or they won't choose to master themselves. Do you know that when you correct your children that is
one of the most loving and merciful things that you can do? You're teaching them a skill. You're
teaching them it's okay to find a problem with themselves and fix it that, that's a healthy part
of life. You're teaching them to analyze themselves and what's going on around them and to find better
ways to handle their problems. So that they'll have productive relationships in the future that's what
the describing does. Especially if it's done with love. When your children can feel closer to you
during and after a correction and you can feel close to them at the same time and not resent the
fact that you have to do that correction. Then that person has the opportunity to bond to you deeper
than they even did before. But what about if the person's not a child? I think that's also important
to talk about. Even if they're not a child, even if you can't fully correct them. You can just describe
a few things, you can still send love to them. Even if they are the type of person that isn't being
kind to you with their movements or their little snide remarks. Whatever it happens to be you can
think, "I love you, I understand nobody is perfect you're definitely not being perfect right now.
You have something you need to work on, I can tell that. But I can be patient, I can love you even if
I have to get away from you." Even if, because maybe sometimes even when the person's passive
aggressive you realize this isn't a good place for me to be. But you do not have to judge that
person if you do it feeds it. In fact, a person that truly wants to power struggle with you in
passive-aggressive or aggressive ways really does not engage in many power struggles if they do not
feel that it makes you hate them. Because in a weird way that's actually what they're going for.
If you've liked this video, I'm pretty sure you'll like the next one which is,
how to discipline a strong-willed child. Click on that link and we'll see you there.