to think being passive aggressive

[drbonnieblossman]

didn't use to exist. Way back, if you were twatty and diggy, you were called a twat. Now you're being passive aggressive.

I think the term "passive aggressive" is very overused, for sure.

how far back is way back? I remember this term being used 25 years ago when I was a young teen is it that long? that's really scary, generally it was used for girls who would try to manipulate others into doing what they wanted by turning everything back around on themselves and implying that everyone else was bullying them. That's still what I think of when I see it being used. Whereas when I see someone being a twat, its generally in a less underhand way.

I'll be honest, I've only noticed it in the past few years. feeling out of touch with the lingo of teens is one thing. Being out of touch with every generation is concerning!!

enerally it was used for girls who would try to manipulate others into doing what they wanted by turning everything back around on themselves and implying that everyone else was bullying them. That's still what I think of when I see it being used

I don't think that's passive-aggressive behaviour. I tend to imagine people being, um, aggressive in a very passive way So, an example might be a work colleague who greets the news of a new plan with "You do what you think is best", thus implying that they don't think it's the right thing to do. And then deliberately following the new plan to the letter, happy to create the problems they predicted would happen rather than take preventative action if necessary.

I find you're 'twatty and diggy' a far better description of my SIL that PA and shall henceforth refer to her as such.

Your. The twatty SIL has got me riled.

Isn't it just a euphemism for being sulky and uncooperative, whilst building up a reservoir of bile?

I thought it was a specific kind of twattishness e.g. 'I'm sorry if you felt I was criticising your parenting skills, it's just that little Cznoflayke is so advanced when it comes to social skills that I forget other children his age are still at the hitting stage. I can see now why you've given up on discipline.'

or 'I wish I could just not care how I look - you're so lucky that you don't feel pressured to dress smartly or make an effort with your hair.'

It is technically pleasant, but it is couching spite and criticism in passive terms.

I probably didn't explain what I meant very well actually maid because the description you have given is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, yours is a much better description than what I wrote. I was thinking of a situation I witnessed many times where girl A would make superficially 'nice' comments to girl B, but always with an undercurrent of nastiness. Girl B eventually can take no more, and tells girl A to piss off whereupon girl A turns on the tears, cries 'what did I do to deserve that?' and everyone rushes to comfort her, shutting girl B out. That's the sort of thing I've always understood as passive aggressive, in that its not openly being nasty, its more like goading the other person into being 'the nasty one'.

In any case, definitely the term 'passive aggressive' is something I remember from teenage years.

We've all (society, I mean) gotten a lot more vocabulary when it comes to per-syk-olo-gee. So, possibly more people are spotting it than used to.

I'm probably only repeating what treaclesoda said but, to my mind, passive-aggressive mainly follows the format of the doler-out saying something that seems inoffensive, but that s/he knows, by the time it gets to the specified receiver's ears (note: Not everybody on the way, just the intended recipient), it will land there as aggressive.

The PA practitioner will use the receiver's weakness if s/he knows what it is, or more general guilt or anger or other negatives as a fall-back. The PA practitioner will also know very well what the third parties' level of interest/engagement is:, i.e. how much you can push the envelope when you send that message across their ether to the recipient's ears.

Interesting thread! Interesting how per-syc-olo-geee has developed formal labels and names for things we would have called twatty or 'aving a dig! I must admit, it does help sometimes to identify subtle behaviours and understand what's going on under the surface.

Coincidentally, I found a useful definition of PA yesterday only because I have been having problems with someone and wanted to find out what was going on (I just couldn't put my finger on what was happening and it was bugging me and making me bloody stressed out, to be honest).

A deliberate and masked way of expressing covert feelings of anger (Long, Long & Whitson, 2008). It involves a range of behaviours designed to get back at another person without them recognising the underlying anger

I thought whow that sooooo summed up the to a T! The words that really chimed with me were the designed to get back at that was sooo true. Its all the "oh but I was ooooonly joking" and the "well, other people do it that way but then again you always have to be different, don't you daisy-chain". Ummm yerr probably because I'm me not someone else?

Another sign of PA is that good old "back-handed compliment", quickly followed by "but I was oooonly joking"

I have recently recognised that I can be a twat as described up thread and need to think about how to address that issue and change it.

Aww hedgehog, I think I have been like it too, in my dim and distant past, probably why I recognise the behaviours as described.

It took me a while to get to the root cause of the problem, tackling that really helped me find a different way of being!

When I've been passive aggressive at times I've been "frightened" to express my real feelings to the person- mainly being huffy/ eye rolly etc. I'm mindful of that now and try to handle that better. If I find someone pa now I try to think why wouldn't they just say something straight.

A culture of nobody is to blame and "PC" - mn is a good example. You're not allowed to say "bloody hell you're a twat" (personal attack) - you can however leave a really spiteful, snide comment in a display of PA. Positively encouraged in fact. :(

Yeah you're right blousy!

I think years before we didn't really recognise the three types of behaviour: aggressive, passive (passive aggressive sitting between the two dependent on situation) and assertive.

I agree with Blousy too, honest is seen as undesirable and excuses and common place.

Also most PA behaviour I see is on social media and the people doing it are those who wouldn't and don't have the stones to assert themselves actually voice their complaints to the person. Or those who know that they are being unreasonable in what they're winging about so they post PA statuses to make themselves feel better.

The funniest for me being someone who wrote something along the lines of 'funny who you know who your friends are, what let downs. Going to rethink my friends list here'. She was pissed that several of her friends had come down with norovirus and couldn't come out. She knew she was being a dick and unreasonable in being annoyed over it and couldn't/shouldn't have a go at them but decided to do it over fb instead.

The funny thing was she deleted the status the moment she was called on it and now whenever we're on a mutual fb group for nights out, if people have to cancel they always say 'hope no one's going to bitch about this on fb later!

I think Mia has it - there have always been passive agressive people/behaviours but the growth of the internet and social media had created millions more opportunities for PA behaviour. The FB poster she's talking about - 20 years ago she would have maybe fumed quietly, or moaned, then someone would have told her to STFU and stop being so selfish. But because FB is there, she has the opportunity to be PA.

Culturally we've change too. It's now much more acceptable for, say, a politician to say 'I'm sorry my behaviour upset my constituents' instead of 'sorry I fucked up' - saying not quite what you should has become more and more acceptable. You see this in the workplace too - it's not really acceptable to say 'fuck sake, what the fuck did you do?' anymore, we have to have conversations where we work out what we can do to put things right and add something our personal development plans to ensure it doesn't happen in the future

Can you tell I'm fascinated by this stuff?

I'm fascinated too Wilson. Interestingly regarding passive/aggressive/assertive, it's down to both the doer and the interpreter, there's just tools that both can do to get to assertive

Also more often women are seen to be being aggressive and sometimes even 'bitchy' when they're being assertive, because traditionally women were seen as passive so deviating from that causes some people to think aggressive/bitch. Of course some are being aggressive but the mistake of assertive for aggressive tends to happen more towards women because we're expected to be more passive.

You have to be very careful with wording and emotion when being assertive but when receiving you have to own your own emotion and step outside of it to judge how the other is being.

The workplace one reminds me of school reports where you can't bluntly write what you want " to make progress, X needs to avoid being drawn into distractions". Really you mean X isn't learning enough because they keep pratting around, and they need to get on with their work.

I'm never quite sure of the efficacy of the "polite" version.

I must remember to try and use the term 'twatty digger' as soon as possible

I just think that PA is just being snidey and cowardly

This interests me heaps, too.

Definitely social media has actively encouraged passive-aggressiveness, in rl someone who finds it difficult to assert themselves would fume silently and go 'unnoticed', but the anonymity of a screen allows them to outlet; however, because assertive doesn't come naturally to them, they make a sort of aggressive post, but couched up in a passive coating IYSWIM.

Also totally agree that 'talk rules' actively encourage it - you can't come right out and say "you are being a twat", people do and get deleted, but some of the posts that stay are far worse IMO, skirting cleverly round the edges and delivering the venom but without the directness.

Definitely it's seen as a 'woman' thing Mia for those very reasons - assertion is interpreted as aggression, or women aren't comfortable being either aggressive or assertive, so the PA is the only place they have left to go. In bad comedy, a MIL will often be PA, for example.

MrsMook DS has SN and I think I have honed my PA skills on school reports! So much so that when the HT actually said something open, honest and 'true' last term (he can't do this and we don't know how to help him do it) I was weirdly happy - AT LAST! Someone is just talking properly to me!

bet some phsycologist on TV started using it I hear it everywhere nowadays oh she is being very P A no she is being a twat