Let's not forget the damage that we can suffer daily, through acts of passive violence. In other words, from those people who have been so damaged by their life’s experiences that they strike out at others: both intentionally and unintentionally, in one of the most violent and savage ways possible.
We think we can get away with being passively violent, and yet it eats away at all of us who communicate in this way. The target is always the other person. However, the unintended victim is us: we become the sad one, the angry one, the stressed one, the depressed one, the bitter one, and in the end, the unhealthy one.
Passive violence may not seem harmful compared to direct physical violence. However, it is exactly this kind of 'silent violence' that harms our psyche. It is practised within families, at work, within our intimate relationships, and in many other contacts during our everyday lives.
Often, communication takes place in a hurry — today usually via quick texts. This doesn’t allow us the time to consider how what we say may be perceived or interpreted and tends to reduce what is being communicated to a simplified version of what we mean to say. The result being that we think we are saying something positive and affirming whereas in fact, more often than not, we are saying the opposite: we are frequently communicating exactly what we are feeling. By this I mean that we allow our moralistic judgements to creep into the communication and make someone bad or wrong because we didn’t get what we expected from the relationship or the exchange. In other words we didn’t accept or agree with how they were treating us.
I thought I was a reasonable communicator, however, I discovered that I too was the perpetrator of such violence. In one of my intimate relationships I discovered, on many occasions, that my friend had an incredibly sensitive and accurate covert expression detector. To this day, I am most grateful for this skill of his and his ability to be direct with me.
All of us know deep down inside us, when someone is making such judgements, no matter in what language these good-bad/right-wrong judgements are couched. It doesn’t really make any difference whether the violence is intentional or not: it is perceived as strongly, regardless of motive. We rely on the receiver to bring it to our attention in an attempt to address the pain it causes them. However, often the object of our passive-aggressive communication is powerless to respond in such a way that resolves our aggrievement. There are two basic reasons for such powerlessness. Either way, this silent violence is the very thing that kills the human spirit. The most common cause of powerlessness involves competence — or lack of it: usually a lack of skill to know how to express the hurt or upset caused by a passive-aggressive communication.
The second cause of powerlessness is the environment in which such communication takes place: this is determined by the capacity of the person to respond and is influenced by the dominance or authority of the relationship. For example, in the workplace, it happens when we deliberately prevent someone from being able to do their job, when we don’t communicate honestly and with integrity, and, in fact, when we choose not to communicate in words at all.
Stanley Milgram, in his research experiments with electric shock introduced the “agentic” state. This is the state where people go beyond their own moral values to harm someone via obedience to a higher authority. The person still has a choice. But, Milgram says, 'relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority'. And once they choose the agentic role it is almost impossible to go back. Why? Because that choice would call their morals into question! The subjects were always asked whether was there anything the man could have said to stop them administering the shocks — and they say, 'No, I don’t think so'.
Passive aggression results in us, as the receiver, feeling varying degrees of discomfort, creating confusion and upset, making us feel ill at ease, hurt or even humiliated, angry, and 'stopped'. When a person receives a barrage of this at home, at work, or both, they can become demoralised. A demoralised person can choose to 'get back at you' with similar passive aggressive behaviour or even straight-out anger, perhaps sadly leading to physical violence. It happens when people say, in jest, what they really want to say, or to use the opposite of what they really mean to say. This makes it difficult for the other person to respond without questioning the meaning of what is being said. Generally, though, our bodies act and react more honestly. If we know what to look for, we can see what is really being said. We are puppets with awareness and perception. Could our awareness be the first step in our liberation from this powerlessness? Our feelings though, particularly anger, are often instigators for change. Anger can give us a reason to express how we are feeling and then to do something about it, should we so choose. We need to learn how to do something about what has happened to us.
It is often an inability to know how to communicate successfully with a passive-aggressive communicator, that makes people close down a relationship, separate from their families, or leave a job. More often than not in such cases, this is the intended outcome of the passive-aggressive actor. However, equally there are times when the passive-aggressive communicator is seeking co-operation or asking for assistance or help, sometimes desperately. However, all they get back is the opposite because their way of being, their words, their actions, create a barrier as they hit out at someone else with incompetent words and actions.
Many of us become frustrated by this way-of-being. It can be extremely difficult to get at what is really going on, and sometimes we simply don’t have time to deal with this sort of aggression — so we ignore it, walk away from it rather than respond. We are reacting: but sometimes very differently from what is often expected. A passive aggressive person is frequently asking for us to care about them or even love and accept them, but all they end up with is anger, suspicion and holding back, or at the very least, being ignored.
We don’t normally equate the actions of a person who goes out of their way to prevent us from getting things done to be acts of aggression. But this is exactly what they are. If an employee has to get a job done, but the employer hasn’t the courage to tell them to leave but rather constantly puts blocks in their way to force them to leave out of frustration, this is an act of aggression.
So what is the secret to breaking through this kind of communication? Someone, I’m not sure who, suggested using a technique named 'calling the process'. In other words, it is an authentic questioning of the passive-aggressive comment or response. This technique allows you to confront such a communicator without using moralistic judgements and language which generally only result in further conflict with the perpetrator of passive-aggressive communication.
