What does passive aggressive mean to you? I'm Nicholeen Peck,
and I teach all about relationships communication and self-government
and we are going to be talking about passive aggressiveness in this video.
If there's one way that I'm gonna power struggle with people if I chose to power struggle. It would
definitely be the passive-aggressive way and that's because I'm kind of a strong-willed person.
So, many people choose passive-aggressiveness because they recognize that being aggressive seems
out of control. So, aggressive people they yell, and get really loud, they sometimes get physical.
They get really aggressive as they are attacking somebody. Their body language will be leaning
in and being a little bit more confrontational. But passive-aggressive people know that that just
seems a little bit too much. In fact, they do not want to let on that inside of them there is a lot
of aggressive going on. So, they look on the outside like they are just fine. But if you can tell
that's not really just fine. So you can feel that their heart is definitely not feeling loving,
connecting, in fact, there's a distance. So, even if they're quiet or saying snide little things. Maybe
a little bit of attitude, some sarcasm. They are not being calm. They might even tell you, "I am calm,
I am, I'm calm. What are you talking about? I'm calm " But they're not really calm, because their heart
does not feel calm to you and you know it. You can't maybe necessarily pinpoint to them
exactly what is not calm but you know that there is not a connection there.
So, when a person is passive-aggressive what they do is they put up an emotional wall
in front of you and in front of them. So that you can't break through but somehow it doesn't seem
like they're out of control. Passive-aggressiveness can be portrayed in words, it can be just in an
overall feeling. But it can also be in action. I remember one time as I was at a
home teaching a family the principles and skills of self-government. This was a family that had 12
children and one of their children was incredibly strong-willed. In fact, he always looked like he had
it together. He was 15 years old and he had an attitude problem. He did not want to do
what his parents told him that he needed to do. Sometimes he would say, "okay", but he didn't really do it.
So, passive-aggressive people will just not follow through with things that they don't
feel like they should have to do. They may not argue with you about them because maybe you're bigger.
Maybe you have more authority than they do. Maybe they just don't want to deal with an
argument necessarily. But they are not going to do something that they don't want to do.
So they'll just not do it or do it half-hearted trying to get away with as little as possible of
an effort. Well, this boy definitely did those types of behaviors and when it came time to discuss his
attitude to discuss his passive-aggressiveness. The parents were trying to get him to understand
what was calm and what was not calm and I remember he sat there saying, "I'm calm". But the whole time
he was tapping his finger on the table where they were sitting, tap... "I'm calm,
stop telling me to be calm because I am calm." tap... and finally I looked at the family.
I looked at the mother who was talking to her son and I said, "You can feel he's not calm
right but he says he is. I want you to just pay close attention. What right now in his body is
actually, showing you he's not calm?", and then all of a sudden this little light bulb went off
and she said, "Ricky, right now your finger is not calm", and at that point, he got mad he was like
that's it you know. Because he was trying to have one thing be not calm. So there's this
tendency for the passive-aggressive person to try to find a loophole to try. To find a way to
not fully comply with authority or something like that. That's a very common thing that happens with
passive-aggressive people. Another way that people show that they're passive-aggressive is by talking back,
giving snide remarks, or maybe even just being silent and walking by you. But let's talk a little
bit about those snide remarks. So, they might shoot little things back at you like, well you
don't really know or you weren't there or whatever it is and those are all passive-aggressive things.
So, remember that when someone seems like they're just talking back to you every chance they can
and throwing in little things even if it's under their breath. That oftentimes, that's a sign that
they're being passive-aggressive. For adults the most common type of power struggling behavior is
passive aggressiveness. This also has a tendency to start creeping into the picture when a person
is in their teenage years. Prior to that, the child would usually be aggressive. It's not until they
recognize what they look like and try to put up a bigger more intricate facade to break through that
they graduate into choosing passive-aggressive behavior instead. I have a little test that we're
going to go through to see if you have a tendency to be passive-aggressive or not, or if other people
around you are, and then also some suggestions that I'm going to share with you for how you can handle
passive-aggressive behavior in your relationships and maybe even within yourself. But before I get
to that. I would love to know in the comments below. What types of passive-aggressive behaviors
or words and statements have you been exposed to? What types of passive-aggressive situations
have you been in? That would maybe help other people even recognize more what passive
aggressiveness looks like. Because obviously, I can't explain everything. Here's a little test for you.
If you're shopping in the store and it's a busy day at the supermarket and someone happens
to come in front of you at the checkout line. Maybe there's all these baskets it's unclear
where the end of the line is and someone just happens to cut in front of you. What do you do?
If you are a passive person you would just stand there and say nothing and go, "Ugh, this
always happens to me", and feel more like a victim. If you're an aggressive person you might say,
"Hey buddy, get to the back of the line, I was here." You know or something like that. If you are a passive
aggressive person then what you might do is you might accidentally bump the person and say,
"Oh, I didn't notice you there", or you might say to your child or whoever you're shopping with
or maybe someone behind you, "I guess they didn't recognize that this is not the back of the line",
something like that. You would try to get the message to the person without actually confronting
them about the problem. But making it very clear to everyone around you that you are annoyed. Remember,
the passive-aggressive person is often the loudest person in the room. So, what is the solution then?
Passive doesn't sound like a good idea because then you're a victim always and walked on.
What about aggressive? That certainly isn't productive and passive aggressive just makes you feel awful
and everybody else around you feel awful as well, and it doesn't really solve problems. The solution
is to be assertive. When a person is assertive, then they would say to the person in that checkout line.
"Excuse me sir, you may not have noticed this when you were trying to get into this line. But
actually, the back of the line is over there. Would you mind kindly going to the back of the line?",
and thinking, "I care about you. I understand this could happen to anyone. But I'm just going to explain the
real situation." That's what an assertive person does. Assertiveness is a sign of confidence in
your communication and it shows that you value the other people around you. So, how do you become
assertive and how do you teach other people assertiveness too? Let's talk about that.
So how do you not become passive-aggressive and how do you help people that are passive aggressive
that you love? That's important for us to know. Number one thing I've already touched on which is
to become assertive yourself. Which means, that you have to be willing to identify
the truth and act on it with patience. A person who is assertive decides not to take things personally
when they do something wrong or when somebody else does something wrong and so they communicate with
themselves in a way that's productive. Do you know that you can actually communicate with yourself
in passive-aggressive ways too? So, a person could do something wrong let's say, I did something that
I'm not proud of or that was frustrating. I could say to myself, "Oh great job Nicholeen. You keep
doing this all the time." Now, I'm communicating with myself even in passive-aggressive ways. So if you
want to conquer your own passive-aggressiveness, you have to decide to first communicate with
yourself in a way that is fully honest and is calm. Which means, you need to determine
what does calmness feel like for me. What does it feel like when I'm being assertive with myself?
When I'm understanding myself. So that I can identify and take action upon the steps that
I need to in order to conquer this passive aggressiveness. So for instance, I might say
to myself, "Nicholeen, just a minute ago you spoke with that person and you know it didn't feel right.
Because you were speaking in a passive-aggressive way. The tone that you carried showed that you were
perturbed or frustrated by them. They felt that, which damages your relationship and might even
have made it. So they didn't understand the real point that you were trying to make. How about you
go and have that conversation again. But this time, do it in a way where you remember you value them
the whole time that you're talking to them." So, when a person is putting up those emotional walls and
being passive-aggressive they are in a selfish state. Every time we communicate with someone
like that it's because we want to be understood but we also are feeling a little bit selfish at the time.
So how do you help somebody else with their passive-aggressive problems and getting
those conquered, let's talk about that. There are other videos on this channel that talk about,
how to conquer your own passive-aggressive tendencies, that go into more detail.
Also, videos about helping other people be able to overcome their passive-aggressive behaviors
and thought processes as well. But to give you a little bit of something on this video
to help you with other people. I think the most important thing is to describe instead of react.
When you're trying to help somebody else conquer a problem that they have a behavior.
You reacting to it will only lead to power struggling. So you have to remember,
that when a person is being passive-aggressive they are attempting to power struggle with you.
So, if you take whatever they're doing or saying personally then you will be engaging in that
power struggle and it will just perpetuate a power struggle. It won't actually solve
their communication problem and they won't get understood either which is really what they want.
So what a wise person does is they describe what's happening? I might say to a person,
"Right now you're talking back to me. You're saying that you don't think that I care about what you're
sharing with me and I want to talk to you about that. I want to make sure that I fully understand
where you're coming from. So that I can help you with this situation. But we're definitely not calm
right now and I know that when a person isn't calm. Whether I'm not calm or you're not calm. When we
are not calm we can't actually problem-solve this because our front brain is a little bit detached."
So, just explain the truth of what it is. Describe, this is what's going on and then you say, "So this
is what needs to happen right." So you would say, "Let's take a minute and take some breaths and
get calm and feel like we're back to a place where we can connect with each other. Because
I'd really like to understand what it is that you are trying to tell me." So that description step
is enormous. Now, of course, this does kind of require you understanding how to keep yourself
calm that is vital. So, in the description of this video there is a calm parenting toolkit, that's free.
That you could go to if you want to. So you might want to think about doing that. Your ability
to analyze yourself and your willingness to follow through on a plan to describe instead of react are
some of the key first steps to helping a person recognize their passive-aggressiveness and choose
not to communicate in passive-aggressive ways. Really what we're talking about here is changing
someone's thought processes it takes time and usually some skill development. If you'd like to
dive deeper into understanding and helping people who have passive-aggressive tendencies. Then you
will probably want to watch my next video which is, how to deal with passive-aggressive people. Click
on that link now and I'll see you there for a little bit more in-depth discussion on this topic.