8 Keys to Eliminating Passive-Aggressiveness

The author, Andrea Brandt, PhD, is a psychotherapist specializing in anger management. She counsels individuals, couples and families. Her work emphasizes positive routes to improved emotional well-being, and she's a keen user of mindfulness techniques, which she shares in this book.

So keep listening to hear how to recognize and accept your anger, how to communicate assertively, and how to reframe conflict to improve your relationships.

The book has a simple structure, which matches its name. There's an introduction, then the eight keys to eliminating passive-aggressiveness follow, each covering a different way to overcome this behavior. The book doesn't use the word "chapter." Each of these sections is referred to only as a "key."

The book wraps up with a summarizing afterword, and that's it. It's a practical handbook, with the emphasis on practical. Throughout, discussions of theory are kept to a minimum, in favor of exercises and examples.

Each key begins with a dramatized example, which Brandt then discusses to illustrate her points. These examples all involve relationships that have gotten into trouble as a result of some aspect of passive-aggressive behavior. They're a great way to bring the ideas to life and make the author's tips relatable.

After all, passive-aggressiveness is a difficult concept to get to grips with. People who exhibit it often don't know that they're doing so. They might be shocked to be challenged on their behavior. It's not always obvious to others that someone is behaving in a passive-aggressive way, either. Yet it can do untold damage to that person's relationships.

As you've heard, the roots of passive-aggressiveness lie in the suppression of emotions during childhood. The author covers the types of scenarios that can lead people to develop passive-aggressiveness. These include low self-esteem, and a deep-seated fear of separation from parents or other loved ones, which may lead in turn to a fear of conflict.

Although not all conflict is bad, as you'll hear later, passive-aggressive people are programmed to avoid it. This means they often suppress their anger, or turn it inward. Yet anger is one of the most natural and prevalent of all human emotions, and it can be useful.

The first key in the book helps readers recognize and accept this anger. This is important, because anger is behind one of the most common and most infuriating passive-aggressive behaviors: agreeing to do something, while actually having no intention of doing it. People doing this can seem perfectly reasonable, but they always find a reason not to follow through and do what they've agreed to. This is their way of exercising control over their situation, while avoiding conflict.

They may be angry at being asked to do something they don't want to do, but are unable to express that anger in a healthy way. What's more, they may not even be aware that they are angry. But anger is an important signal. It tells us that our emotional needs are not being met, and we need to take action to ensure that they are. Unfortunately, people with passive-aggressive tendencies don't see it that way.

Through the first three keys, Brandt unpicks the relationship between hidden anger and the flawed thinking it underpins. She does this through a series of exercises and examples that analyze the nature and development of an individual's anger.

Not surprisingly, these involve a lot of honest and open reflection, which might be difficult for people who are used to avoiding their emotional dysfunction. But the processes are simple, and delivered step by step. So, if you've got an open mind and a willingness to improve, you can learn a lot through these exercises.

There's an especially useful table in Key 2 – Reconnect Your Emotions To Your Thoughts – which helps readers distinguish between objective facts and the negative spin they give them. The problem is that negative beliefs can skew a passive-aggressive person's view of the people he or she interacts with.

For example, he might pass a co-worker who happens not to smile at him. His reaction is to assume that person is angry with him, or doesn't care about him. This probably has no basis in reality. Maybe his co-worker was thinking about something else, or running late. But the negative explanation will become lodged in the passive-aggressive person's mind, ruining his day and changing his behavior.

Suppressing anger like this creates stress, and stress, in turn, can have serious effects on your physical health. Key 3, Listen to Your Body, addresses the physical response to anger in detail, and shows how to be aware of what your body is telling you. It's also where Brandt first describes the benefits of mindfulness.

Here she explains the importance of getting in touch with your state of mind through paying attention to your physical sensations. This allows you to establish a sense of your physical and psychological identity. Passive-aggressiveness builds a sense of a false self, in which individuals cut themselves off from their true feelings. So building an authentic sense of identity is an important step toward defeating the limiting behavior.

The next key is to protect that sense of identity. To do this, you need to set the right sort of boundaries around it. First, they need to be clear to you and to other people. Second, they need to make you feel psychologically safe. And third, they need to be flexible enough that you can change them if you want to.

These boundaries can be physical. For example, if personal space is important to you, it's OK to tell people when they stand too close to you. They can also be psychological – for example, you can decide how much information you want to share about yourself.

To be clear, being a private person doesn't automatically mean you're passive-aggressive. It's all about what you say. According to Brandt, communicating your feelings and your personal boundaries clearly and openly is vital to overcoming passive-aggressiveness, whether it's yours or your partner's. This means you need to be assertive. This is Brandt's fifth key but, in fact, the whole book is as much a plea for assertive communication as it is a manual for eliminating passive-aggressiveness.

It's important to remember that assertiveness is not the same thing as aggression. Aggressive communicators threaten, criticize and browbeat the people they talk to. It's not nice, but at least you know where you are with them. Passive-aggressive communication is inherently two-faced. It usually consists of double messages, sarcasm and muttered asides. When challenged, the passive-aggressive person will say "Oh, it's nothing," and insist that she's fine.

By contrast, assertive communicators are open and confident. They listen calmly, seek to collaborate, and don't react to anger by getting angry themselves. They stand their ground, and keep their sense of personal identity intact. At its most effective, assertive communication encourages others to respond in the same way, which is what makes it such an important tool in overcoming passive-aggressive behavior.

Assertive communication also helps to establish another of the author's core ideas, which is outlined in Key 6, Reframing Conflict. Brandt argues that conflict isn't necessarily bad. In fact, openly expressing a different opinion can be constructive.

But using conflict as a way of eliminating passive-aggressiveness sounds like a tough stretch. As you've heard, passive-aggressive people have often had childhood experiences which lead them to avoid conflict at all costs. But the author offers some tested strategies to air and resolve conflicts to the benefit of both parties.

One is to structure conversations so that each person takes clearly defined turns to speak and listen. Another is called Win-Win Solution Brainstorming. In this exercise, two people who understand that they each have problems with the other brainstorm ways to overcome the problem.

Brandt shows that whatever the strategy, conflict resolution takes place in one of three ways. The first is through consensus, in which both parties arrive at an agreement. The second is through compromise, in which both parties make one-for-one concessions to the other. And the third is by negotiation, in which both parties gain benefits by talking through the problem.

Throughout, Brandt emphasizes the value of open communication, and in Key 7, she ties this openness to the practice of mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness anchors the practitioner in the present, making him or her keenly aware of her real sensations and feelings. It reduces the effects of the false beliefs passive-aggressive behavior depends on. Above all, it frees the passive-aggressive person from the burden of reactive responses and behaviors that may have been building since childhood.

Now, you might think that behaving mindfully is easier said than done. But Brandt shows that it's both possible and very desirable. Through a series of exercises, she leads the reader toward an understanding of both the nature of passive-aggressiveness and the possibility of shedding it, like an old skin.

The final key in the book, Disable the Enabler, is aimed at the person who's on the receiving end of passive-aggressive behavior. Brandt points out that this person is often not just a recipient, but an enabler. By reacting passively to manipulative behavior, he or she encourages the passive-aggressive partner to carry on behaving in the same way.

This sounds tough. After all, it's bad enough to be the target of this behavior, without being told that it's partly your fault. But the author's intent is positive and her tips are helpful.

You can challenge passive-aggressive behavior by holding the person responsible to account, in such a way that you force him to face the reality of his behavior, and to reflect on it. That should help him begin to change. This last key draws on lessons learned in the rest of the book. For instance, it emphasizes the importance of assertive communication and setting healthy boundaries.

So what's our last word on "8 Keys to Eliminating Passive-Aggressiveness"?

Well, it isn't a comforting or fun book to read. But it is pragmatic, and offers a very specific program of exercises and approaches.

It's a process for tackling this problem systematically, step by step. You could select an exercise from a particular chapter, but it wouldn't make sense unless you had an understanding of what had gone before.

Perhaps the book's biggest problem is the sheer amount of effort it demands. Passive-aggressive people, by their nature, are likely to be evasive and in denial about their problems. So it won't be easy getting them to commit to the book's program. The exercises are undoubtedly useful, but they require a big investment of time, even before you consider the emotional sensitivity of their subject matter, which some readers may find upsetting.

For managers and other "partners," there's plenty of solid information on the nature of passive-aggressiveness, but it comes with similar problems: how to get this book in front of the person who really needs it, and how likely it is that he or she will react positively to it.

The book also sets itself a big goal. It aims to help not just those who have passive-aggressive tendencies, but those who live and work with those people. As a result, it isn't always clear who a particular exercise or section is going to help. Is it the person reading it, or somebody else?

Despite these reservations, the book has much to recommend it. The most engaging elements are the dramatized examples that run throughout. These bring to life the problems that come with passive-aggressiveness more effectively than any amount of description could. And they feel realistic, too, like snapshots of the damage passive-aggressiveness can cause to relationships.

These vignettes are short, but it's easy to empathize with the people in them. In fact, you may find yourself thinking that a certain character seems a lot like someone you know. Maybe even yourself.

"8 Keys to Eliminating Passive-Aggressiveness," by Andrea Brandt is published by Norton and Company.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.