Why Passive Aggression is So Hard to Deal With
As Dan Ariely explained in our interview, we are all quick to take mental shortcuts and make irrational decisions. We have cognitive biases that stack up on each other. Like The Princess and the Pea, we struggle to sense reality through the layers of bias. This is dangerous when dealing with a passive-aggressive person.
The power of passive aggression lies in the presentation. The enemy appears to be surrendering, when they are plotting revenge. The employee appears to be running late because of traffic, but they are using this passive front to exercise their power to resist your influence.
We experience so many challenges in a day, that it is extremely difficult to sift through all of them. When I trained pilots in the Navy, this was our constant struggle. How do we best sort through large volumes of information? The aviators built systems and patterns for managing everything coming their way. Your everyday life is less structured and requires more energy.
The solution for most of us is to accept the simplest interpretation of an event. This makes things easier to handle in the near term. The trouble with passive aggression is how it catches you in the long term. The passive-aggressive person is being both passive and aggressive at the same time. If they are subtle in their aggression, the result is that you see the passive part and interpret the whole situation as passive. Several instances like this can eat away at you while you assume that your aggressor is harmless. Years of this, like a toxic relationship, can be hard to recover from.
To resist passive aggression, do like the pilots and optimize your awareness. Pilots wear special sunglasses and helmet visors to see clearly in every situation. You may benefit from meditation or journaling to see clearly when emotional thunderstorms are rolling in. When you spot the passive aggressor, treat them like a cloud and go around. You don’t want to get lost in the storm.
This morning, I went to the beach with two friends. One I’ve known for about a year, the other is new in town. As we were preparing to surf, the new guy mentioned that he struggles with swimming. I tried to be gentle and suggest we switch to paddle boarding, allowing him to wear a life jacket. Rather than being equally gentle, he spoke up and announced that he did not want to paddle board, he absolutely wanted to surf. Then, he asked if I would help him. This spared us a passive-aggressive dialog, where we both try to persuade the other person while looking like the nice guy. I am so grateful to my new friend for speaking up and disagreeing with me. It caught me off guard, but now I have more respect for him.
If you have friends who are forthcoming, treasure them. When everyone is performing and being recorded on social media, honest people are gold.
How do you deal with passive-aggressive people?