The Toxic Truth About Being Passive Aggressive

Deep down, I’m a peacemaker. I always want to smooth edges, help people understand the other person’s side, and deflate a tense situation as quickly as possible. That tactic has helped me as a manager, student advisor and coffee-date companion over the years, but there’s an ugly shadow side to that need to cool things down: When the confrontation involves me directly, I want to run. Fast.

But, since I’m pretending to be an adult and dashing out the door without ever looking back isn’t really an option (let’s be real: I’ll run out of places to run away to real fast), I shut down the argument by shutting down, before anything can happen. I tune out, occasionally nodding along while a little voice in my head shouts “wrong, wrong, wrong, and I can’t wait to tell [Insert Friend Who’s Most Likely to Be Available While I Vent Here] alllll the reasons why you’re wrong later.” The other person can walk away feeling heard and that we’re on the same page, when really, I’ve closed the book and kicked it under the bed. (I’m cringing just admitting this.)

With each self-righteous grumble in my own head — and especially every second I waste venting to one of my poor, dear friends — I start building a case against the other person. Each one is a chip, and on their own, they’re harmless, but with every annoyance, the tower of grievances climbs, until the day they come toppling over in a rage blackout, like Jennifer Aniston’s “Lemons” fight in The Break-Up. (Spoiler: It’s never really about the lemons.)

I justify away every argument under a veneer of “it’s not worth it” excuses and a desire not to rock the boat (which is really, if I’m being totally honest, a desire to be likable, as sixth-grade as that sounds). I’ve been working on my own assertiveness, just so I don’t have these festering rage-outs, but I never saw just how toxic that stonewalling, passtive-aggressive trait can be in the workplace until  I read former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s perspective on it in an Mika Brzezinski’s Knowing Your Value:

“I’ve always said, ‘If you have an opinion, I don’t care what it is, we have a starting point. Which means I can convince you differently, and you can convince me differently. But if I don’t know what you’re thinking and then you leave and I think you think one thing and you never did, we will never get anything done.” — Carol Bartz

Looking at it that way — that this particular peacemaking tactic was really a barrier to making any sort of progress (and finding actual peace in a frustrating situation) was a game-changer. In this sense, speaking up — albeit as calmly as possible, without letting your emotions override the logic behind what you’re saying — is freeing. Sure, it may escalate things for the next few minutes, but at least you’re not forcing the other person to be a mind-reader, or worse, bottling your annoyance for the day when you can’t hold it back.

As a naturally argument-averse person, speaking up doesn’t come easy. I like to save my words for when I have a well-formed, irrefutable argument, and then I can voice my opinion. But, like a game of chess, if you never make a move until you have a perfect checkmate figured out, the only one you’ll be playing against is yourself.

 

PS — Yeah, I got kind of carried away with my references here. Lemon fights! Towers of passive-aggressive chips! Solitary chess games! But you get the idea.

 

This week’s Tuesday Takeaway was inspired by Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski. Each week, we’ll share one insight gleaned from a book, documentary, article or other source, designed to make your week run a little bit smoother.