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Topic: RE: virus: Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive. (Read 1776 times) |
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Blunderov
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RE: virus: Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive.
« on: 2004-11-17 03:07:00 » |
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[Blunderov] This article caused me to smart more than somewhat I do
admit. Fits like a glove. There I was thinking all this time that
passive-aggressive was the preferable life strategy to
aggressive-aggressive. ESPECIALLY in relation to authority - "Anything
you think can be held against you." (Phillip K. Dick, "We Can Remember
It for You Wholesale") Must have read Schweik too many times as a youth.
A post mortem spasm from the corpse of what Hannibal Lector termed "the
dead religion of psychiatry"? An obtuse observation of the quandary
inherent in struggle? Or an accurate description of a nasty pathology?
I reserve my own judgment on this for now but that doesn't mean that
anyone else shouldn't feel free to make of it whatever they wish.
Best Regards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/health/psychology/16pass.html?pagewant
ed=1&th&oref=login
Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive.
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 16, 2004
The marriage seemed to come loose at the seams, one stitch at a time,
often during the evening hour between work and dinner. She would be
preparing the meal, while he kept her company in the sun room next to
kitchen, usually reading the paper. At times the two would provoke each
other, as couples do - about money, about holiday plans - but those
exchanges often flared out quickly when he would say, simply, "O.K.,
you're right," and turn back to the news.
"Looking back, instead of getting angry, I was doing this as a
dismissive way of shutting down the conversation," said Peter G. Hill,
48, a doctor in Massachusetts who has recently separated from his wife.
Even reading the paper at that hour was his way of adamantly relaxing,
in defiance of whatever it was she thought he should be doing.
"It takes two to break up, but I have been accused of being
passive-aggressive, and there it is," he said.
Everyone knows what it looks like. The friend who perpetually arrives
late. The co-worker who neglects to return e-mail messages. The very
words: "Nothing. I'm just thinking."
Yet while "passive-aggressive" has become a workhorse phrase in marriage
counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character,
it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.
After some debate, the American Psychiatric Association dropped the
behavior pattern from the list of personality disorders in its most
recent diagnostic manual - the DSM IV - as too narrow to be a full-blown
diagnosis, and not well enough supported by scientific evidence to meet
increasingly rigorous standards of definition.
The decision is likely to have more effect on teaching guidelines and
research than on treatment and insurance coverage.
But psychologists and psychiatrists with long experience treating this
kind of behavior say it is hard to study precisely because it is so
covert, common and widely variable.
These experts make a distinction between passive-aggressive behavior,
which most people display at times, and passive-aggressive personality,
which is ingrained and habitual. In milder forms it can come across as a
maddening blend of evasiveness and contrition, agreeableness and
impudence, and in severe cases is often masked by more obvious mental
illness, like depression.
Yet whether pathological or not, they say, the pattern is often
traceable to a distinct childhood experience. New research suggests that
in many cases it stems from a positive, socially protective instinct -
to keep peace at home, avoid costly mistakes at work, even preserve some
self-respect.
"Some of the people being demeaned as passive-aggressive are in fact
being extremely careful not to commit mistakes, a strategy that has been
successful for them," if not entirely conscious, said Dr. E. Tory
Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia
University. They become difficult, he said, "when their cautious
instincts are overwhelmed by demands that they perceive as
unreasonable."
The classic description of the behavior captures a stubborn malcontent,
someone who passively resists fulfilling routine tasks, complains of
being misunderstood and underappreciated, unreasonably scorns authority
and voices exaggerated complaints of personal misfortune.
But the phrase itself has its roots in the military. Near the end of
World War II, a colonel in the United States War Department used it to
describe an "immature" behavior among enlisted men, many of them at the
end of long tours: "a neurotic type reaction to routine military stress,
manifested by helplessness, or inadequate responses, passiveness,
obstructionism or aggressive outbursts."
This kind of insolence, among adults protecting themselves from what
they saw as unreasonable, arbitrary authority, was in part an adaptive
behavior, psychologist say, an effort to preserve some independence amid
extreme pressure to conform.
A similar family dynamic accounts for early development of the behavior,
some researchers argue. Dr. Lorna Benjamin, co-director of a clinic at
the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Institute in Salt Lake City,
said people with strong passive tendencies often grew up in loving but
demanding families, which gave them responsibilities they perceived to
be unmanageable.
First-born children are prime candidates, she said: when younger
siblings are born, the oldest may suddenly be expected to take on far
more extra work than he or she can handle, and over time begin to resent
parents' demands without daring to defy them.
This hostile cooperation is at the core of passive-aggression, she and
other researchers say, and in later in life it is habitually directed at
any authority figure, whether a boss, a teacher or a spouse making
demands. These passive-aggressive people, Dr. Benjamin said, "are full
of unacknowledged contradiction, of angry kindness, compliant defiance,
covert assertiveness."
This history hardly excuses the multitude of hedging, foot-dragging
mopes that populate everyday life, but it can help explain some of their
exploits. One Los Angeles woman, who asked not to be identified (and
swore she was not being passive-aggressive), described a former
co-worker who intentionally made assignments late to employees when she
didn't approve of a project.
At the end of some days, she wrote, this archetypal passive-aggressive
used to hide under her desk to avoid saying goodnight to people.
Sometimes, however, mild passive-aggressive behavior can be an effective
means to avoid potentially costly confrontations. In such cases the
cooperation is more significant than the underlying resentment or
hostility.
"A joke can be the most skillful passive-aggressive act there is,'' said
Dr. Scott Wetzler, a clinical psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center
in the Bronx and the author of "Living With the Passive-Aggressive Man."
"They recognize a coming confrontation, and have found a clever way to
release the tension."
It is just this instinctive ability to pre-empt and defuse that,
paradoxically, may lead to more problematic passive-aggressive behavior.
Dr. Higgins of Columbia has described a personal quality he calls
prevention pride, a kind of native caution in the face of new
challenges, an effort to avoid all errors. He assesses whether a person
is high or low in this style by asking a battery of questions, like how
often they broke their parents rules, how often they take risks, how
often they have been in trouble by not being careful enough. The style
is adaptive, he said, in that it allows people with a certain
temperament to avoid failure and embarrassment.
In one recent experiment, Dr. Higgins and Dr. Ozlem Ayduk, an assistant
professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley,
tested how these especially cautious people reacted to conflict in
relationships. The researchers had 56 couples who had been together at
least two months keep detailed diaries, answering questions about
conflicts, thoughts about the relationship, moods and their partners'
behavior.
After three weeks, the researchers compared the diaries and found that
people who had a highly cautious personal style and were especially
sensitive to rejection were significantly more likely than the others to
respond to conflicts by going silent, withdrawing their affection and
acting cold.
"The people in this study were not the type who would ever say, 'I hate
you' to the person's face because they are so careful not to do
something that puts them out there," and directly offend their partner,
Dr. Ayduk said.
The evidence that this sensitivity can be appealing, at least for a
while, is recorded in millions of relationships that have lasted for
years. A 45-year-old college instructor in Hawaii recently broke off a
long relationship with a man she said was a "wonderful, devoted
listener, an extremely sensitive person."
But in time, she said, it was apparent that he was also
passive-aggressive. On one occasion, she said, he gave away her seat on
an airplane while she was finding a storage compartment for her luggage,
saying he thought she had taken another seat. On others, he would arrive
home early from work and finish off meals they normally shared, without
explanation. And when he was in one of his moods, the listening ceased;
she may as well not have been in the room.
"The challenging thing was, you never know what you did wrong," she
said. "That's the difficulty, all these scenarios, I could not point to
what I did. I never knew."
The person who has become hostile may not know exactly why, either. In
some cases, psychologists say, people unable to recognize or express
their annoyance often don't feel entitled to it; they instinctually let
the "little things" pass without taking the time to find out why they
are so angry about them. Unsure of themselves, they take care not to
offend a spouse, a co-worker or friend. The anger remains.
When the behavior pattern is deeply ingrained and compulsive, it is
neither adaptive nor merely bewildering, but can be dangerous, some
experts say. At her clinic in Salt Lake City, Dr. Benjamin treats many
people with multiple diagnoses, from attention deficit disorder to
obsessive-compulsive disorder to intractable depression, many of them
with other problems, like substance abuse or multiple suicide attempts.
"And I would say that in close to half of them this passive-aggressive
behavior is running the whole show," she said.
When and if they do get therapy, psychiatrists say, people with strong
passive-aggressive instincts are usually determined to fail: the
therapist becomes the scorned authority figure. The patients will take
their medications and then report with relish that they don't work. The
patients will follow advice and then complain that it is senseless,
useless. "They are not doing this on purpose; it's part of a deep-seated
ambivalence about getting better," a determination to expose the
authority as incompetent, said Dr. Marjorie Klein, a psychiatrist at the
University of Wisconsin.
It is left to the individual therapist's skill to deflect or disarm this
determination and get patients to at least experiment with an alternate
strategy to engage their lives. In one, called cognitive behavior
therapy, they learn to monitor their thoughts, moment by moment, to
recognize when they are angry, and to challenge unexamined assumptions
about confrontation. For example, some people assume that confronting
their boss about a raise will be a catastrophe, said Dr. Wetzler of
Montefiore, but it often simply is not the case, especially if they have
prepared themselves by learning the market value of their skills at
other companies.
Yet Dr. Benjamin said that often the childhood roots of the behavior
must be faced and felt, and that means revisiting the parental
relationship and learning that it does not have to set the pattern for
all relationships with authority. "The main challenge is to help them
shift from winning by losing to winning by winning," she said, "to see
that it is they who benefit most when they win, not their therapist,
their spouse or their boss."
Just living with the behavior in someone else can be as tough as
treating it. To manage garden variety passive-aggressive behavior,
psychiatrists often advise a kind of protective engagement: don't attack
the person; that only reinforces your position as an authority making
demands. Take into account the probable cause of the person's
unexpressed anger and acknowledge it, if possible, when being
stonewalled during a discussion.
And be sure to be on guard against likely retaliation.
"If he agrees to go over to your relatives' place for Thanksgiving, but
you know he's upset about it, make sure you have alternate
transportation to get over there," Dr. Wetzler said.
"He may take the car and not manage to get home in time to make it."
---
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rhinoceros
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RE: virus: Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive.
« Reply #1 on: 2004-11-17 13:19:51 » |
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[Blunderov] This article caused me to smart more than somewhat I do admit. Fits like a glove. There I was thinking all this time that passive-aggressive was the preferable life strategy to aggressive-aggressive. ESPECIALLY in relation to authority - "Anything you think can be held against you." (Phillip K. Dick, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale") Must have read Schweik too many times as a youth.
[rhinoceros] Interesting article. I thought I'd make a few rather uninformed but hopefully rational sarcastic-aggressive comments, just in case that makes the situation any easier for you 
Oh, and I think Schweikism as a behavior trait has its place, especially when the options available are limited.
>
[Blunderov] A post mortem spasm from the corpse of what Hannibal Lector termed "the dead religion of psychiatry"? An obtuse observation of the quandary inherent in struggle? Or an accurate description of a nasty pathology?
I reserve my own judgment on this for now but that doesn't mean that anyone else shouldn't feel free to make of it whatever they wish. Best Regards.
[rhinoceros] My vote is that it is a "potentially reasonable behavioral pattern". More in my comments to the article.
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/health/psychology/16pass.html
Oh, Fine, You're Right. I'm Passive-Aggressive.
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 16, 2004
The marriage seemed to come loose at the seams, one stitch at a time, often during the evening hour between work and dinner. She would be preparing the meal, while he kept her company in the sun room next to kitchen, usually reading the paper. At times the two would provoke each other, as couples do - about money, about holiday plans - but those exchanges often flared out quickly when he would say, simply, "O.K., you're right," and turn back to the news.
[rhinoceros] I can see the pattern, and I can also see two more alternative ways to handle this situation: an "aggressive-aggressive" one and a "longwinded-rational-nitpicking" one. I don't think I could say which is best, knowing so little about the characters involved, the specifics of the situation, and the specifics of the issue at hand. The "passive-aggressive" way could well be the best here.
>
"Looking back, instead of getting angry, I was doing this as a dismissive way of shutting down the conversation," said Peter G. Hill, 48, a doctor in Massachusetts who has recently separated from his wife. Even reading the paper at that hour was his way of adamantly relaxing, in defiance of whatever it was she thought he should be doing.
"It takes two to break up, but I have been accused of being passive-aggressive, and there it is," he said.
[rhinoceros] Ah... postmortem observations. It could be all Peter's fault or not, but it is not obvious at all that Peter's retreat was a cause and not a result (his personal reaction to what was going on there).
>
Everyone knows what it looks like. The friend who perpetually arrives late. The co-worker who neglects to return e-mail messages. The very words: "Nothing. I'm just thinking."
[rhinoceros] Yes, the "sheesh, leave me alone" mentality... I see how it can be annoying, but I don't find it an unreasonable response to the pressure life puts on many of us today. I'll take a sweeping guess: This is more common to people who (used to) have aspirations other that the particular cubicle where the demands/options of modern life put them.
>
Yet while "passive-aggressive" has become a workhorse phrase in marriage counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character, it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.
After some debate, the American Psychiatric Association dropped the behavior pattern from the list of personality disorders in its most recent diagnostic manual - the DSM IV - as too narrow to be a full-blown diagnosis, and not well enough supported by scientific evidence to meet increasingly rigorous standards of definition.
[rhinoceros] Besides definition and diagnosis, an interesting question here is the distinction between a "behavior pattern" and a "personality disorder". It is not as simple as it seems. When your job and your family life is at stake today because of an otherwise reasonable character trait, it is tempting to want to be "cured".
>
The decision is likely to have more effect on teaching guidelines and research than on treatment and insurance coverage.
[rhinoceros] Hmm... ya think so?
>
But psychologists and psychiatrists with long experience treating this kind of behavior say it is hard to study precisely because it is so covert, common and widely variable.
These experts make a distinction between passive-aggressive behavior, which most people display at times, and passive-aggressive personality, which is ingrained and habitual. In milder forms it can come across as a maddening blend of evasiveness and contrition, agreeableness and impudence, and in severe cases is often masked by more obvious mental illness, like depression.
[rhinoceros] "Common, covert and widely variable", occasionally displaying "impudence"... I can understand the difficulty to label and diagnose such as wide range of character traits. Depression, on the other hand, can be diagnosed I hear, and an "aggresive-aggressive" (TM?) is definitely easier to diagnose and possibly "cure".
>
Yet whether pathological or not, they say, the pattern is often traceable to a distinct childhood experience. New research suggests that in many cases it stems from a positive, socially protective instinct - to keep peace at home, avoid costly mistakes at work, even preserve some self-respect.
"Some of the people being demeaned as passive-aggressive are in fact being extremely careful not to commit mistakes, a strategy that has been successful for them," if not entirely conscious, said Dr. E. Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. They become difficult, he said, "when their cautious instincts are overwhelmed by demands that they perceive as unreasonable."
[rhinoceros] Of course much of our character is a result of childhood and much of our behavior is a result of conflicts between our character traits and the expectations; this is true of most character traits. It would be interesting to find out how people with that kind of childhood experience and outlook perform when they are in a position to call the tune, on their own terms.
>
The classic description of the behavior captures a stubborn malcontent, someone who passively resists fulfilling routine tasks, complains of being misunderstood and underappreciated, unreasonably scorns authority and voices exaggerated complaints of personal misfortune.
[rhinoceros] A whiner? Ok, I find this one a disgusting character trait, but this type seems different from Peter who retreated with his newspaper.
>
But the phrase itself has its roots in the military. Near the end of World War II, a colonel in the United States War Department used it to describe an "immature" behavior among enlisted men, many of them at the end of long tours: "a neurotic type reaction to routine military stress, manifested by helplessness, or inadequate responses, passiveness, obstructionism or aggressive outbursts."
This kind of insolence, among adults protecting themselves from what they saw as unreasonable, arbitrary authority, was in part an adaptive behavior, psychologist say, an effort to preserve some independence amid extreme pressure to conform.
[rhinoceros] This covers not only Schweik but many more kinds of good soldiers, thank Dog. It is interesting to ponder what is the expected "healthy" behavior here.
>
A similar family dynamic accounts for early development of the behavior, some researchers argue. Dr. Lorna Benjamin, co-director of a clinic at the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Institute in Salt Lake City, said people with strong passive tendencies often grew up in loving but demanding families, which gave them responsibilities they perceived to be unmanageable. First-born children are prime candidates, she said: when younger siblings are born, the oldest may suddenly be expected to take on far more extra work than he or she can handle, and over time begin to resent parents' demands without daring to defy them.
This hostile cooperation is at the core of passive-aggression, she and other researchers say, and in later in life it is habitually directed at any authority figure, whether a boss, a teacher or a spouse making demands. These passive-aggressive people, Dr. Benjamin said, "are full of unacknowledged contradiction, of angry kindness, compliant defiance, covert assertiveness."
[rhinoceros] Ok, childhood experience does play a part in the development of our character, but in the second paragraph Dr. Lorna sounds like she is full of shit. I can see how she would see a decent person as an "angered-kind" or "compliant-defiant" one.
>
This history hardly excuses the multitude of hedging, foot-dragging mopes that populate everyday life, but it can help explain some of their exploits. One Los Angeles woman, who asked not to be identified (and swore she was not being passive-aggressive), described a former co-worker who intentionally made assignments late to employees when she didn't approve of a project.
At the end of some days, she wrote, this archetypal passive-aggressive used to hide under her desk to avoid saying goodnight to people.
[rhinoceros] Hmm... the task becomes more and more challenging. Now we'll have to accomodate in our definition this archetypal passive-aggressive desk diver noticed by the sworn non-passive-aggressive LA woman...
>
Sometimes, however, mild passive-aggressive behavior can be an effective means to avoid potentially costly confrontations. In such cases the cooperation is more significant than the underlying resentment or hostility.
"A joke can be the most skillful passive-aggressive act there is,'' said Dr. Scott Wetzler, a clinical psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and the author of "Living With the Passive-Aggressive Man." "They recognize a coming confrontation, and have found a clever way to release the tension."
It is just this instinctive ability to pre-empt and defuse that, paradoxically, may lead to more problematic passive-aggressive behavior.
[rhinoceros] Hey! I don't believe it! They got me too! They figured out my act, and even when I am pissed with someone I am still covered by the "impudence" trait!
>
Dr. Higgins of Columbia has described a personal quality he calls prevention pride, a kind of native caution in the face of new challenges, an effort to avoid all errors. He assesses whether a person is high or low in this style by asking a battery of questions, like how often they broke their parents rules, how often they take risks, how often they have been in trouble by not being careful enough. The style is adaptive, he said, in that it allows people with a certain temperament to avoid failure and embarrassment.
In one recent experiment, Dr. Higgins and Dr. Ozlem Ayduk, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, tested how these especially cautious people reacted to conflict in relationships. The researchers had 56 couples who had been together at least two months keep detailed diaries, answering questions about conflicts, thoughts about the relationship, moods and their partners' behavior.
After three weeks, the researchers compared the diaries and found that people who had a highly cautious personal style and were especially sensitive to rejection were significantly more likely than the others to respond to conflicts by going silent, withdrawing their affection and acting cold.
"The people in this study were not the type who would ever say, 'I hate you' to the person's face because they are so careful not to do something that puts them out there," and directly offend their partner, Dr. Ayduk said.
[rhinoceros] How horrible... 
I only wish that the article mentioned how the non-aggressive-defensive crowd responded to similar situations, so that we can come up with pychiatric terms for them too. Did they throw things at people? Or kick doors? Or plan a revenge? Or become subservient to them?
>
The evidence that this sensitivity can be appealing, at least for a while, is recorded in millions of relationships that have lasted for years. A 45-year-old college instructor in Hawaii recently broke off a long relationship with a man she said was a "wonderful, devoted listener, an extremely sensitive person."
But in time, she said, it was apparent that he was also passive-aggressive. On one occasion, she said, he gave away her seat on an airplane while she was finding a storage compartment for her luggage, saying he thought she had taken another seat. On others, he would arrive home early from work and finish off meals they normally shared, without explanation. And when he was in one of his moods, the listening ceased; she may as well not have been in the room.
[rhinoceros] Huh! It took a long time, but the passive-aggressive one was eventually unmasked! They are not all "Mr. Nice Guy" after all! Now she knows better and I am sure she will always ask a non-passive-aggressive to watch her seat
>
"The challenging thing was, you never know what you did wrong," she said. "That's the difficulty, all these scenarios, I could not point to what I did. I never knew."
The person who has become hostile may not know exactly why, either. In some cases, psychologists say, people unable to recognize or express their annoyance often don't feel entitled to it; they instinctually let the "little things" pass without taking the time to find out why they are so angry about them. Unsure of themselves, they take care not to offend a spouse, a co-worker or friend. The anger remains.
[rhinoceros] A very good point, except... The people who don't ask questions, who don't explain themselves and who hold grudges are many kinds and can be also found outside the type described as defensive-aggressive so far. At the opposite side, we can narrow down the definition of passive-aggressive only to people who display these traits, or not. However...
It seems reasonable to me that when you do ask questions and you do offer explanations and they are evaded or they just "ping out", then you have to piss-off simply out of respect -- the same respect you expect for yourself in other occasions.
The reason is simple: Of course your self is important to you and your interactions with others are important too (your interactions with certain others even define your self). But this is a big world, and what you have to say may well be irrelevant to the other person. Not all problems "want" to be solved.
>
When the behavior pattern is deeply ingrained and compulsive, it is neither adaptive nor merely bewildering, but can be dangerous, some experts say. At her clinic in Salt Lake City, Dr. Benjamin treats many people with multiple diagnoses, from attention deficit disorder to obsessive-compulsive disorder to intractable depression, many of them with other problems, like substance abuse or multiple suicide attempts.
"And I would say that in close to half of them this passive-aggressive behavior is running the whole show," she said.
[rhinoceros] "Attention deficit disorder", "obsessive-compulsive disorder", "intractable depression," so many well-defined ills ascribed to something with such a volatile definition...
>
When and if they do get therapy, psychiatrists say, people with strong passive-aggressive instincts are usually determined to fail: the therapist becomes the scorned authority figure. The patients will take their medications and then report with relish that they don't work. The patients will follow advice and then complain that it is senseless, useless. "They are not doing this on purpose; it's part of a deep-seated ambivalence about getting better," a determination to expose the authority as incompetent, said Dr. Marjorie Klein, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin.
It is left to the individual therapist's skill to deflect or disarm this determination and get patients to at least experiment with an alternate strategy to engage their lives. In one, called cognitive behavior therapy, they learn to monitor their thoughts, moment by moment, to recognize when they are angry, and to challenge unexamined assumptions about confrontation. For example, some people assume that confronting their boss about a raise will be a catastrophe, said Dr. Wetzler of Montefiore, but it often simply is not the case, especially if they have prepared themselves by learning the market value of their skills at other companies.
[rhinoceros] The connection between what is described here (reporting that their medication does not work, deep-seated ambivalence about getting better, determination to expose the authority as incompetentend) and the aggressive-defensive behavior as described in the article so far becomes weaker and weaker.
>
Yet Dr. Benjamin said that often the childhood roots of the behavior must be faced and felt, and that means revisiting the parental relationship and learning that it does not have to set the pattern for all relationships with authority. "The main challenge is to help them shift from winning by losing to winning by winning," she said, "to see that it is they who benefit most when they win, not their therapist, their spouse or their boss."
[rhinoceros] She is onto curing something here. I assume that "them" are patients with a psychiatric condition related to authority. Can't tell anything more.
>
Just living with the behavior in someone else can be as tough as treating it. To manage garden variety passive-aggressive behavior, psychiatrists often advise a kind of protective engagement: don't attack the person; that only reinforces your position as an authority making demands. Take into account the probable cause of the person's unexpressed anger and acknowledge it, if possible, when being stonewalled during a discussion.
And be sure to be on guard against likely retaliation.
"If he agrees to go over to your relatives' place for Thanksgiving, but you know he's upset about it, make sure you have alternate transportation to get over there," Dr. Wetzler said.
"He may take the car and not manage to get home in time to make it."
[rhinoceros] This does not sound like non-confrontational behavior to me either.
There is a variety of intriguing ideas in this article, but I can understand why APA dropped aggressive-defensiveness from the list of personality disorders because of problems with definition and diagnosis.
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