Passive-aggressive personality disorder is a condition in which people express anger and negative feelings covertly through their actions instead of directly taking out aggression on others. It is characterized by a tendency towards obstructionism, constant procrastination, stubbornness, feigned forgetfulness and deliberate inefficiency in all matters. People with a passive-aggressive personality type constantly complain about everything, are in a depressed state, actively express their pessimistic attitude and are unyielding in everything. Very often they try to realize themselves in dependent relationships, finding satisfaction in resisting all the partner’s attempts to achieve adequate productivity, productive independent work, equal returns in household chores, etc.
When was passive-aggressive personality disorder first diagnosed?
It was first described as a clinical case by Colonel William Menninger during World War II. He noted a peculiar deviation in some men that undermined their military fitness. Menninger pointed out the behavior of the soldiers that was clearly defiant, but not contrary to direct orders. It was expressed by “passive resistance,” such as deliberate slowness, failure to understand orders, making mistakes, general inefficiency, and passive obstruction. The colonel himself did not identify the disorder as a separate ailment and explained it by “personal immaturity” and a reaction to military stress.
For the first time, the classification of passive-aggressive personality disorder as a separate group of disorders was discussed back in the 50s of the last century, and this problem was widely discussed in the late 80s and early 90s, when, thanks to the capabilities of the World Wide Web, the massive prevalence of such a disorder was noted. communication behavior of Internet users. And although not all emails, notes and messages with characteristic content indicate that their authors have this problem, sociological and clinical studies have shown that ~96-98% of individuals belonging to the passive-aggressive personality type implement their usual behavior and in network communication.
Causes of passive-aggressive personality disorder
According to most modern researchers, in most cases, the roots of the problem originate in childhood. Analysis of data from various groups of subjects, depending on age, gender, race, nationality and social status, did not reveal a pronounced correlation and the indicator varied depending on the research methods used. At the same time, there is an unambiguous connection with a violation of the incentive system in early childhood. Most often this happens in dysfunctional families, where the child does not feel safe enough to freely express disappointment, anger and other feelings.
The same applies to overly conservative families, where the role of the dominant head of the family is clearly expressed and physical and psychological punishment is actively practiced. In such conditions, honest expression of feelings is prohibited, and children unknowingly learn to suppress and deny their emotions, using other channels to express resentment and disappointment. Not finding opportunities for natural release, the child over time begins to consider them the norm and in the process of growing up they become a kind of cliché by which a personality is formed.
What it is
Passive-aggressive behavior is a suppressed expression of anger. It manifests itself in sarcasm, clowning, procrastination, sabotage and unconscious sabotage. It destroys relationships, slows down the growth of a company, and prevents people from becoming happy.
Passive-aggressive behavior occurs when a person, for some reason, forbids himself to express anger: to describe it in words, to show emotions, to slam his fist on the table and “discharge.” Instead, the person blocks the anger and it seeps through the smoothed corners.
A CHILD CONSIDERING SUICIDE; HARSH, STOATED SPOUSE; AN EMPLOYEE WHO POSTPONES IMPORTANT THINGS IS ALL A FACE OF PASSIVE AGGRESSION.
Signs and main symptoms of passive-aggressive behavior
Individuals with passive-aggressive personality disorder are irritable or even agitated most of the time. They have a low tolerance for disappointment and mood swings that change in quick succession. Such people are impatient with others, and their interest in communicating properly is abruptly replaced by antipathy or boredom and complete ignorance.
With passive-aggressive disorder, people feel dissatisfied all the time, blame others for abuse and deceit, believe that they are underappreciated, and blame any failures on circumstances.
Individually, these signs may simply be character traits of a person and do not indicate a specific deviation, but together they often accurately indicate the problem. In particular, passive-aggressive disorder is indicated by the simultaneous presence of symptoms such as:
- constant resentment towards everyone;
- opposition to any demands of other people;
- postponing work until later to miss deadlines;
- slowness and making deliberate mistakes in any type of activity;
- a cynical, sullen, or hostile attitude toward everyone;
- frequent complaints from a person that he is betrayed, deceived and underestimated;
- unwillingness to solve your problems;
- complete rejection of criticism and cruel nitpicking in everyone who tries to give advice;
- envy and contempt towards all people who have power or are generally more successful.
If they are accompanied by self-doubt, the inability to express their needs and desires directly, as well as the person’s inability to ask the necessary questions to find out what is expected of him, then this is 99% likely to indicate the presence of this disorder.
Where does it come from?
Passive aggression is a scar from childhood. A person gets it when his parents restrict him from expressing anger. Perhaps they stop the child's anger with words like “Stop it! I won’t allow you to talk to me like that!” Perhaps they themselves were masters of passive aggression, and the child immediately absorbed their inability to openly express their feelings.
Like everything from childhood, passive aggression becomes part of the personality, and it is extremely difficult to notice it in yourself if you do not know its signs.
Classification of passive-aggressive personality types
Since much attention has been paid to this problem in the last two decades, today a more or less accurate classification of “negativist” or “passive-aggressive” personality types has already been compiled. For example, the famous American psychologist Theodore Millon identified four separate subtypes of this disorder:
| Subtype | Character traits |
| wavering | Uncertainty and confusion; inability to name the exact reason for one’s own capricious behavior; indecision both in interaction with others and as the main subjective feature of the course of all processes in the psyche. |
| dissatisfied | Grumbling, petty nagging, short temper over trifles, capriciousness, anger, complaints for any reason, irritability, pretense to avoid open confrontation. |
| disguised | Opposition is expressed in a veiled and ambiguous way. Most often it is feigned slowness, forgetfulness, inefficiency, disregard for statutes and rules, and stubbornness. The person also becomes very convoluted and tries to use only indirect methods of sabotage in order to avoid direct claims of sabotage. |
| sharp (rough) | Controversy, intransigence, uncompromisingness, capriciousness, grumpiness; character becomes caustic and irritable; a person takes pleasure in humiliating and insulting others. |
A detailed classification into categories, proposed by the American professor Preston Ni from the University of California, is also popular. His studies of interpersonal effectiveness, professional communication, as well as intercultural understanding and organizational change led him to focus on this issue. In total, he identifies ten general categories that people with passive-aggressive disorder fit into, and he believes that most exhibit at least a few of these on a regular basis.
- General verbal hostility
.
Examples
: spreading gossip; unfounded criticism of others; non-recognition of generally accepted rules and norms; condescending treatment of adults as if they were children.
What guides
: Humiliating others helps you feel dominant. Inflicting moral suffering on others and depriving them of emotional balance is done to alleviate one's own lack of peace and security. The main desire is to support your false sense of importance by criticizing others and making everyone suffer “for the company.” In the family, this is expressed in the form of competition for power over household members and complete control in relationships.
- Ridicule. Examples
: sarcasm, making hostile jokes towards others, teasing people to the point of making them angry. A characteristic feature is the need to humiliate a person as much as possible, avoiding open conflict and showdown, citing “just kidding.”
What guides
: Taking out one's own hidden anger and discomfort on a suitable victim. The main desire is to marginalize someone else's human dignity and authority to one's own level.
- General disguised hostility
.
Examples
: demonstration of disdain and resentment towards people, sullenness, desire to cause emotional pain by reproaching or ignoring.
What guides
: an attempt to compensate for one’s internal insecurity by deliberately creating a negative emotional background in the immediate environment and unbalancing people.
- Psychological manipulation
.
Examples
: duplicity, pathological tendency to intrigue, the desire to deliberately set a person up at any opportunity (for the sake of pleasure and often without any benefit for oneself), ostentatious sacrifice, twisting the same information in a conversation with different people, disclosing or concealing important facts depending on the situation. The characteristic feature is pretense and a strong desire to protect oneself from discovery.
What guides
: redirecting attention away from one’s own problems through endless interference in someone else’s life through intrigue and deception. Achieving a false sense of superiority by manipulating other people.
- Bullying
.
Examples
: unfounded accusations against someone else with an attempt to find the victim’s most vulnerable spot and cause her maximum mental pain.
What guides
: achieving a false sense of happiness and self-worth against the backdrop of the suffering of others.
- Sabotage and blaming others
.
Examples
: ostentatious slowness, lethargy, forgetfulness, “dullness”; the desire to create maximum red tape around oneself and upset as many other people’s plans as possible. The need is pathological and forces a person to act even without any personal gain.
What guides
: creating the illusion of self-importance and authority; the desire to put everyone in a position dependent on oneself in order to block the success of other people. Often experiences burning envy towards those who are more successful, which is expressed in unfounded accusations and harsh groundless criticism.
- Automatic counteraction
.
Examples
: stubborn intractability, rigidity, inefficiency, a tendency to complicate things, a habit of leaving any task unfinished, attempts to sabotage the work of others.
What guides
: compensation for one’s own insolvency. In this case, “victory” is achieved through the disappointment and negative emotions of the victim.
- Behind-the-scenes sabotage
.
Examples
: failure to complete any tasks, projects and activities; causing material losses or allowing overexpenditure of resources; pathological sabotage; destruction of well-established work and personal connections of surrounding people; deliberate dissemination of harmful information.
What guides
: obtaining moral satisfaction through revenge and “punishment” of other people; achieving emotional pleasure from observing the results of one’s “labor.”
- Ostentatious sacrifice
.
Examples
: exaggerating the importance of personal issues; manipulation of one's own health; deliberately inventing imaginary problems in order to tie the victim to oneself and enjoy her sympathy and favor; taking on the role of a martyr who sacrificed his well-being for the sake of others (usually with the reproach that this sacrifice was not appreciated).
What guides
: the desire to take advantage of the goodwill and care of the recipient and evoke a strong emotional attachment on his part in order to carry out manipulation.
- Self-flagellation
.
Examples
: deliberately creating a situation in which victim status could be achieved; groundless reproaches and reproaches; self-harm and suicide blackmail.
What guides
: the desire to intimidate or cause suffering to emotionally dependent people by causing harm to oneself. Love of creating drama to focus attention around oneself.
However, according to the professor, the latter symptom itself cannot be considered as a separate symptom of the disorder, since it can also be a kind of cry for help, being evidence of other mental illnesses.
Treatment of Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder
The difficulty in treating disorders of this group is that in most cases people are simply unable to obtain pleasure and moral satisfaction in other ways. The normal system of incentives does not work in this case, so the main program comes down to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, during which the patient is taught to isolate “harmful” thoughts and stimuli for their conscious replacement with “useful” ones.
According to the results of clinical observations, the following set of automatic attitudes and thoughts are most often typical of passive-aggressive disorders:
- “they don’t dare tell me what to do”;
- “I will only do as I want”;
- “I will do everything to spite them”;
- “no one is grateful for the work I have done”;
- “everyone around is just using me”;
- “I will never be able to achieve real success”;
- “people don’t want to understand me”;
- “my life is unhappy, and nothing can be done about it”;
- “I won’t succeed anyway”;
- “being honest and frank is weakness”;
- “People around me want to limit and suppress my personality.”
The therapist finds out exactly what pathological thoughts and stimuli operate in a person on an “automatic” level and teaches him to consciously block them. The course of treatment, as a rule, lasts at least one year, and during this time the doctor and the patient go from the stage of awareness of the causes and consequences of such behavior to the development of methods of gentle confrontation. The best results can be achieved if the immediate environment also participates in the process and gently but decisively stops indulging the patient’s weaknesses, using the substitution patterns created by the therapist. In especially advanced cases, it is possible to eliminate acute symptoms (depression, anxiety, outbursts of anger) with medication, after which traditional therapy is carried out.
Aggression of men and women
Researchers say that boys and men are more prone to aggressive behavior than girls and women. Men often abuse animals and children. This is due to the fact that the male body has higher levels of a hormone called testosterone. The more of it in the body, the more prone a person is to anger and aggression. Men show mainly physical aggression, while women are limited to the verbal form of aggressive behavior.
Gender differences in aggressive behavior have been studied by the following researchers:
- Bjorkvist
- Lagerspets
- Harris
- Gentry, etc.
The difference between the aggression of the two sexes lies in the attitudes regarding such behavior. Men generally experience little guilt and have low levels of anxiety. Women, on the contrary, think about how the victim will react to their behavior, whether she will show retaliatory aggression, whether she will be too depressed and upset, etc.
Aggression, in the understanding of men, is a means to achieve goals. For women, aggressive behavior is a way to relieve stress and calm down. These are in most cases short-term outbursts of anger. Differences in aggressive behavior between men and women are due to several reasons. The first is a genetic factor. Aggressive men in ancient times had a greater chance of dominance and reproduction. Using aggression, they defeated other contenders for the chosen woman. Scientists Verschoor, Kenrick and Sadallah, after conducting research, concluded that a man’s desire for dominance is positively assessed by women and is considered an attractive feature.
Differences in aggression of both sexes are also dictated by cultural and social factors. Women are considered more social creatures; they tend to empathize and make friends. And men show their self-confidence and tend to demonstrate strength. Women evaluate most actions as harmful and leading to anxiety or guilt.
Prognosis and possible complications
In general, with adequate treatment, the prognosis is quite good. If a person has been able to open up and understand the causes of the problem, supportive psychotherapy usually brings excellent results. Of course, being established in early childhood, this personality disorder, as a rule, persists for a very long time. But with the patient’s constant volitional efforts to overcome it, it can “burn out” with therapy and be replaced by positive life experiences.
However, there is such a thing as individual tolerance, on which the success of the entire event greatly depends. Even if a positive result seems stable, a person may not fully accept new ideas and teeter on the edge. The “dominant thought basis” is too deeply ingrained in his personality, so even the slightest push is enough for such a person to fall back into a state of chaos and dissatisfaction. Often complications arise when there is an imaginary or real lack of stability in life. This applies to any area: social, professional, spiritual, legal, financial, etc. Also, complications can arise when the patient weakens control over negative thoughts, and the immediate environment does not pay attention to this and indulges his behavior or, on the contrary, expresses strong opposition . After all, the key component of psychotherapy is precisely the gentle opposition to negative ideas.
Passive aggression at work
This part of the newsletter was prepared by Marina Sulimova: business coach, consultant.
Passive aggression slows down and destroys business. In addition to the signs mentioned above, passive aggression in the office is easy to recognize:
according to gossip and rumors that are readily discussed in the office;
leaving work without explanation;
based on behind-the-scenes complaints about heavy workload, management and difficult working conditions.
SOURCES OF PASSIVE AGGRESSION IN THE OFFICE
Rude and autocratic boss : not conducive to trust or constructive dialogue. Often people work under him simply out of fear of not finding a new job. There can be no talk of any innovation or growth.
Inattentive management that is not willing to listen to its employees: makes talented and hardworking employees feel unappreciated. Often, a manager has no idea how much more productive employees will be if their problems are addressed.
Radical innovation : Employees find it difficult to accept changes at work. New rules and procedures, a new call script, or even a new furniture arrangement can cause fierce resistance. Try to introduce new things gradually and with the support of employees. Often they themselves will suggest the right changes.
Provocateurs : greedy for power, but not talented enough for leadership work, these people swim through the bottom of office life and try to somehow capture the minds of their colleagues. And they do it very well. They influence the mood of employees, weave conspiracies and intrigues, love to give advice and assert themselves at the expense of others.
