Megan Hunter
Welcome to It’s All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict situations, typically with high conflict people. I’m Megan Hunter, here with my co-host Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Welcome, listeners. Thank you for taking us on your hike today. As you’re listening to this, Bill and I are probably in London, England, where we’re presenting to the Bridging the Gap Conference for Family Law Professionals, which we’re very, very excited about. So we’re wishing you a warm, well, hello from the UK. Today we’re going to talk about something a bit different from our norm. If you’ve listened to this podcast for long, you know we’re always talking about high conflict personalities. And yes, we’re going to do that today as well. However, it’s going to take a little bit different angle. It’s about passive aggressive behavior. What is it? Is it considered high conflict behavior or maybe conflict avoidance behavior? What can we do about it? So this came about last week when I was in Australia speaking at the International Women’s Day Conference in Tamworth, New South Wales. And there was a Q&A session after my talk, and an audience member asked the question, what do you do about passive aggressive behavior? And I was caught off guard a little bit because it’s not something we talk about very often. So I thought if she has the question, we probably have a lot more people with a similar question. So I thought we’d talk about it today. By definition, passive aggressive behavior is the indirect expression of negative feelings, such as anger, resentment, or resistance, rather than communicating them openly. Instead of addressing conflict directly, the person expresses hostility through subtle or covert actions such as sarcasm, procrastination, backhanded compliments, stubbornness, deliberate inefficiency. Oh, ouch. Or the silent treatment. I’ve never used that. The key feature is plausible deniability. The person can claim they’re not angry or hostile even while their behavior communicates the opposite. So I remember, I don’t know, twenty, twenty-five years ago reading an article titled Grinning on the Outside, Seething on the Inside. It just always makes me think of passive aggressive behavior, just not communicating directly and not being authentic about what we’re doing, right, or how we’re feeling. So some common examples might be agreeing to do something but forgetting, you know, air quotes, or delaying it, sarcastic or backhanded remarks, silent treatment or withdrawal, doing a task poorly on purpose. Yikes. Saying I’m fine while clearly signaling resentment. I’ve probably, I’m sure, never said, yeah, fine. I’m fine. Usually most…
Bill Eddy
Rumble grumble.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, most people understand “I’m fine” to mean I’m not really fine, and we probably need to have a conversation. So let’s go to Bill, whether passive aggressive comments and behavior is a part of high conflict behavior.
Bill Eddy
I’d say it’s a common part of high conflict behavior because I believe that passive aggressive behavior is really aggressive behavior with deniability or attempts at it. So when you really think it’s an aggressive behavior, then you need to start thinking of, you know, setting limits and imposing consequences because it’s a behavior coming at you even if the words try to deny it. And it’s like, well, whether you meant to or not, that’s not okay, is the kind of response to that kind of behavior. What’s interesting, he said, is it part of high conflict behavior? And I think, yes. If you think about personality disorders, and there’s a lot of overlap with personality disorders and high conflict behavior personalities, that for many years in the 1980s, there was discussion of whether to have a passive aggressive personality disorder. And they decided not to because they found that it was present in so many of the existing personality disorders.
Megan Hunter
Oh, fascinating.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, so why make it special when it’s more pervasive? Our high conflict personalities tend to be aggressive. And so passive aggressive is another form of being aggressive, and I’d say many high conflict people engage in that. So, you know, when you think of things that ninety percent of people wouldn’t do, I’ll give you an example. This is a good workplace example. So when I was working at a psychiatric hospital, there would be every morning, morning rounds, a meeting of about twenty people. I was a clinical social worker. There’d be psychiatrists, psychologists, recreation therapists, and about twenty people would meet and then go out to our departments and work with our clients. One of the cases I was working on was being discussed, and the psychiatrist on the case, who’s really in charge, and I’m clinical social work kind of somewhat assisting, but I work more with the family. He works more with the patient. Anyway, something wasn’t getting done. And it was his fault. But he said, I know, I don’t know when this will get done. I’ve got to talk to the social worker about that. Or maybe he even gave my name. And after the meeting, I said, that was terrible. You know this is because you didn’t follow up. It’s not my fault. It was your fault. And he says, oh, don’t worry about it. It’s like it was nothing. Well, to him it was nothing, but to me, and it’s that deniability. It’s like I kicked you in the knees in public, but don’t confront me on it.
Megan Hunter
And you should like it and forget about it.
Bill Eddy
Right, and I should like it. I should be happy. Yeah.
Megan Hunter
Yeah.
Bill Eddy
So that’s one that’s stuck. That was like forty years ago, but it sticks in my mind. I know that got into one of my books somewhere. But I think that was passive aggressive, and he used the deniability and avoided responsibility for it, and people frowned at me.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, it’s interesting, you know, that it stuck with you. And I can completely understand why we remember those big moments in life that make us feel uncomfortable or feel kind of less than, or you just know that something’s not right with it. And I think the passive aggressive behavior can get under our skin. I like that circumstance was sort of a bigger event that he wanted to, you know, just brush onto the carpet. But I think there’s little everyday passive aggressive events that build up and get under people’s skin in a big way. And they’re very memorable. And it can make working with someone like this or being around someone like this a lot pretty miserable. Speaking from experience, a couple of experiences I’ve had, I just want to draw that out of the person and say, just stop, just stop doing that.
Bill Eddy
Yeah.
Megan Hunter
You can be honest with me. You can be authentic. I can deal with whatever you have to say.
Bill Eddy
Right, right.
Megan Hunter
Just say the truth, be authentic about it. So yeah, this is one that I know gets under my skin. So would it be wise to say, just stop, just be authentic?
Bill Eddy
Well, that’s one thing you can do. And depending on your relationship, you may be able to do that. My relationship with him, because we dealt with a variety of things, I could have that conversation and tell him I didn’t like that. He hadn’t done that before. I don’t think I said, please don’t do that again. I might have. And I could have with him, but I don’t remember that being a pattern. It was just really convenient at that moment. But when people have a pattern, I think that’s very much along the lines of setting limits. And if you keep doing that, then I’m going to expose you doing that to other people. Perhaps that’s a consequence. But yeah, I think it’s appropriate to say please stop doing that or cut it out.
Megan Hunter
And then what happens if they don’t? That’s the issue.
Bill Eddy
That’s what’s so hard with passive aggressive behavior, because it really needs to be set limits on, and yet it’s evasive around that. And you really want to pin it down. I think you just have to think, what’s a consequence for this behavior, and not get distracted by the passive aspect of it. And also that comes up when thinking about our setting limits and imposing consequences, SLIC Solutions in two and a half steps. You set the limit, and you say, I’ll impose this consequence. And about half the time you say something that shows empathy, attention, and respect. But if there’s someone that’s going to disregard the consequence, you may not want to do that EAR statement, empathy, attention, and respect, and stay focused on your consequences. This is what has to happen now. Or this is what I’m going to do. Or I’m going to hereby withdraw my support from whatever it is you’re doing that I’m, you know, passively supporting in a sense, because if you’re gonna treat me with passive aggressive behavior, I’m not gonna help you. And that’s often one of the biggest threats you can make, especially in relationships, is if you keep doing that, I’m not gonna help you with this. I’m not gonna help with your homework. Or I’m not gonna, you know, help you fix these things around the house. It’s a consequence, and that’s what aggressive behavior often needs.
Megan Hunter
Well, that is the answer I gave to the person who asked the question. First of all, I said, you have to remind yourself no matter what that it’s not about you because this does get under your skin. And I find that if I tell myself in those under my skin moments that this isn’t about me, that is a really good first step. And then go to setting limits.
Bill Eddy
That gives you, it’s not about me, gives you some of the emotional energy to then go ahead and set limits. Because often people are self-critical. They say, what did I do to make this happen? And you didn’t do anything. This is this other person’s personality, but you’re going to have to deal with it. Let me just mention a brief side comment here, but I learned something exciting over the weekend when I was speaking in Chicago to collaborative people. I talked about the idea of giving yourself an encouraging statement to help you stay calm and not take things personally and not take in criticisms. And a woman came up to me afterwards. I was signing her book. So we did the book signing. And she said there’s a study out of Michigan that says for affirmations or encouraging statements, say you’re good as a parent or you’re good at communicating or you’re good at, rather than I’m good. She says what it does is it activates the part of your brain that feels like other people are saying it to you.
Megan Hunter
Oh, wow.
Bill Eddy
And so it’s a stronger impact. So when you do affirmations and give yourself encouraging statements, say you instead of I, and you get kind of a double benefit since you’re saying it, but it feels like someone else likes you too.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, now it sounds a little bit like a Saturday Night Live skit.
Bill Eddy
Somewhere in there.
Megan Hunter
We’re not going there. There is, I think when we deal in high conflict land, we have to focus on affirmations, on encouraging statements, because it’s so easy to be spun around in high conflict. And giving yourself those encouraging statements makes you the anchor—not anger, anchor, A-N-C-H-O-R. And you stop spiraling so much. People sit up straighter, they have more confidence when we give ourselves those encouraging statements. It becomes kind of your own superpower. So I’m also interested in talking about, is passive aggressive behavior sometimes a not high conflict behavior, but rather conflict avoidance behavior? Could it be categorized as someone who is so afraid to speak the truth or to speak their authentic feelings or what they want, so they just let things go for a long time and then finally kind of blow up or finally say something? Is that passive aggressive behavior or is that something different?
Bill Eddy
No, I think it can. And I think if people grow up in a high conflict family, or say they grow up in an alcoholic family where you can’t be direct, so you always have to be indirect. You have to imply things or do it under the table so no one knows, you know, that you’re kicking somebody else or whatever it is. But the idea that it’s not safe to just say, look, I’m angry with you and I want to talk about this subject. There’s people, and I’ve had this as therapy clients, who maybe wanted to confront me with something and felt afraid or just were indirect, or were nasty. Or maybe they came into a session and they were scowling at me and I’m like, what’s up? So, well, you know, last time. And it’s like, well, what about last time? Well, you looked at your watch and I thought you didn’t care about what I was saying at the moment. Maybe I remember and go, oh yeah, we were going over time and I was worried how to interrupt and didn’t want to. But anyway, let’s talk about that. Well, we can talk about that? Yeah, we can talk about that. And let’s figure out how to deal with that so it doesn’t happen again. Because I don’t want you to feel that I’m not attending to what your feelings are, because your feelings are important. And you already explained to me how you didn’t get people to listen to your feelings growing up. So I really value that. So that kind of conversation with someone who’s not a high conflict person, but doesn’t feel safe, like you said, Megan, that they didn’t feel safe to say I’m angry with you. And if you can give people permission to say they’re angry with you, often you don’t get passive aggressive behavior, because they don’t have to do it that way. They can just say, hey, Bill, I got a problem with something with you. Great, let’s talk about it.
Megan Hunter
So give the invitation, right? Give the permission. But you can’t beat them up when they do, verbally or whatever.
Bill Eddy
Right. Right. You then have to be respectful when they say the thing they were afraid to say.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, yeah. Otherwise they’re going to learn a consequence, which is don’t speak up for myself again.
Bill Eddy
Right. And sadly, people who grew up in families where they weren’t allowed to be direct may get into relationships where they feel they’re not allowed to be direct. But they are and they should be. And yet this may really get under the other person’s skin because they’re so indirect and passive aggressive about stuff. So part of it’s early in most dating relationships, you want to say, hey, let’s have a rule that if something bothers us, we talk about it. Because if we don’t, it’s going to leak out in our negative behavior.
Megan Hunter
I love that. Absolutely. So is passive aggression sometimes a precursor to, say, more overt conflict? In other words, can it be an early warning sign that someone is building a grievance narrative before launching open attacks?
Bill Eddy
It could be because if someone’s being passive aggressive because they don’t believe they can be direct, they’re gonna build up a backlog. And there are some people who become explosive like once a month because they’ve built up all this stuff. And the solution is talk about it when it happens. You know, don’t let it build up. Stuff that simmers really can eat at us and eat at relationships. Let’s get it out. Let’s talk it through. You know, if we have a good relationship, we should be able to talk it through. And if we can’t talk it through, then maybe it is going to sink the relationship. Because that’s one of the fundamental relationship characteristics is you have to be able to talk about problems.
Megan Hunter
So let’s talk about it in the workplace. Because we’ve spoken more, it seems like, about personal relationships, but when it’s in the workplace, and let’s say it’s someone that’s at our same level, or it’s an employee—it could be at any level—but you kind of live with this, live with this, live with this. You’ve tried to address it. You’ve tried to confront it, and it doesn’t seem to get you anywhere. Does it look a little bit different in the workplace, or can something differently be done in the workplace about it?
Bill Eddy
Well, it’s hard to say how common it is in the workplace, but high conflict people in the workplace do things like hiding someone’s pocketbook. Have you seen my pocketbook? I can’t find it, whatever. And you find out, oh yeah, I saw Mary with it. She was going near the trash can or something. You might look behind the trash. Yep. There it is.
Megan Hunter
Wow.
Bill Eddy
Right.
Megan Hunter
Oh, I sent that email.
Bill Eddy
And maybe you needed them to do something and they tell you they did it, but they didn’t. It’s the non-active. There’s the active passive aggressive behavior and the passive passive aggressive behavior.
Megan Hunter
Nice. Did you just come up with that or is that a real thing?
Bill Eddy
I don’t know. The passive passive.
Megan Hunter
I like it.
Bill Eddy
Okay. Well, I was thinking of that. You know, we had a neighbor once, this was about twenty, maybe twenty-five years ago, who—I don’t know why—unfortunately he was visiting a neighbor and then he left, but for about a month he was there and he had a dog that barked late at night, and he would go out to a bar and leave his dog tied up in the backyard. You know, my wife confronted him on that and said, hey, you know, it’s making it hard to sleep. Please put your dog inside. And he said, oh, okay, fine, sure. He never did it. Same thing. He just promised. And I’ve seen that, and I think that’s an antisocial trait, is to promise to do something at someone else’s request and then knowingly not do it.
Megan Hunter
Yeah.
Bill Eddy
Fortunately he moved on.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, never an intention to do it, but just saying, oh yep, I’ll do it.
Bill Eddy
Yeah. I remember in one of my books there was a guy, I put a story in there, a guy who was doing work on his house and he had a lot of construction materials in his yard and he stopped working on his house and left the stuff out. And it’s like twelve neighbors ended up suing him in small claims court, which was very clever, because they could only sue for like five or ten thousand dollars each, and everybody sued, because there’s a chance of kids getting cut and hurt and stuff like that. And he was kind of like, oh, okay, fine, I’ll do it. And he didn’t do it. And then they went back, they put some clause in there, if he doesn’t do something within ninety days, then we can get a fine against him. And so finally, like the week before the ninety days is up, okay, I’m gonna sell it. So, okay, he’s gonna sell it and he’ll be out of here. He sells it to his girlfriend. This guy is very antisocial, very manipulative.
Megan Hunter
Of course.
Bill Eddy
Finally, I think he may have ended up being fined like $60,000 from all these neighbors. But the idea of promising to do things and knowing you’re not going to do them, that’s a really antisocial trait. So I’d say of all the personalities, probably antisocial was the most passive aggressive. But people can be passive aggressive without being a high conflict person at all and not having an antisocial personality. So it’s a range, but just keep the bottom line principle. To me, passive aggressive behavior is aggressive behavior. So deal with it as aggressive behavior.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, so setting limits when you have the conversation, you know, use EAR statements. You don’t have to give up ground. I think you could start with inviting someone into the conversation, and then if the behavior and setting the limit, right? And if the behavior continues, then now you have some data, you have some information for which to proceed with. You’ve started with, you know, the light version of let’s have a conversation. That didn’t go so well. So okay, maybe this is something a little bit different. So maybe it’s a conversation with HR if you have an HR. I would think with some passive aggressive behavior there’s a complete denial about it, and, oh no, I didn’t do anything. I’m just getting along, you know, doing my business. So I think you just continue to set limits where you can, you don’t take it personally, and you remember to focus on what’s right and true. And you get your work done anyway. If it gets to a point where it’s interfering with you getting your work done, with a project getting done on time and being delivered, if it’s impacting clients, just anything that’s impacting in a negative way, then do something about it. Now go to the standards. What were the project deliverables? What is our company mission? If it’s going against that, now something should be done. And hopefully something can be done. I think it’s a tricky one. It’s a little bit tricky, but I think you don’t want to become this person’s enemy.
Bill Eddy
Right, right.
Megan Hunter
In the workplace, because I think that will increase the attack or maybe the aggression.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, I think to always set limits and impose consequences in a matter-of-fact way, so you’re not blaming and escalating. Even if you don’t give an EAR statement with empathy, attention, and respect, just say, no, no, this is the consequence for that. I have to follow through with this. At least you’re not escalating things, just being matter of fact. It’s not your fault if they take it personally. But the more you can be not rattled by high conflict people, the more they tend to respect you and treat you better.
Megan Hunter
It’s so interesting you say that, Bill, because on my big flight back from Australia a couple weeks ago, you know, people ask what—probably the same as you—they ask what you do and you try to explain this, right?
Bill Eddy
Yeah.
Megan Hunter
Some can catch on kind of quickly and then they will talk about, you know, different events in their lives or things. And so I was talking to this gentleman next to me on our fifteen-hour flight, explaining, kind of giving a little bit of a story, and it was a personal story. And he said, well, I’m really surprised at how unemotional you are about this. Most people would feel very emotional about this. And it really hit me that I just don’t take things personally anymore. You can reach a point where you just don’t. It doesn’t have to get under your skin. Because when you tell yourself enough times, this isn’t about me.
Bill Eddy
Right.
Megan Hunter
And this other person or the parties involved have different operating systems. All I have to do is remember I’m the anchor. Tell myself encouraging statements, it’s not about me. And I just have to focus on what to do and remind myself what is right and true. And it truly is a very different way of being. Also at that same International Women’s event, a question came up also about how do you just stay confident through conflict. And it was kind of the same. It’s just like I don’t have to let anything rattle me. I don’t absorb things anymore. And I used to in the past. I just don’t absorb them anymore because it’s not about me.
Bill Eddy
Yeah, yeah.
Megan Hunter
It’s just not about me. So it’s a much, much healthier, easier way to live. So I mean, it doesn’t all come in a day, right? But it does come. And I think a lot of people would be so much happier to live this way. It’s just, it’s not about me, so I just focus on what to do.
Bill Eddy
I think that’s the way to go. And what’s interesting to me is I think our culture makes it seem like you should be really upset about even little things, and that we’re big on drama because the media gets attention through drama. And we don’t have to. We can get attention by just saying, I’d like some help with this, instead of, oh my goodness, you know.
Megan Hunter
The world is falling. Sky is falling.
Bill Eddy
Yeah. So good point.
Megan Hunter
Well, this has been a really interesting one, Bill. Thank you for that. And thank you listeners for tuning in today wherever you are. If you have questions about passive aggressive behavior, let us know. You’ll find the links to our upcoming classes and training, specifically the Conflict Influencer class to learn how to handle high conflict behaviors. That’s a virtual online class. We have New Ways for Families, New Ways for Work. All of this is in there, right? And the managing high conflict behavior in the workplace training coming up April 23rd. All those links will be in the show notes. And there’s lots of other training that we do as well. We’ll include links to Bill’s book, Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life. And if you’re looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, visit ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace.
Megan Hunter
It’s All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at TruStory.fm or HighConflictInstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.
