Deliver Us from Ghoulies and Ghosties and People Who Are Only Trying to Help
Please do not confuse Passive-Aggressive Histrionics with the old diagnosis of passive-aggressive personality disorder, which was removed from the Diagnostic Manual because the criteria were hopelessly unclear. Some people are consciously passive-aggressive, negativistic, and resistant to authority. They are not the people we are discussing here. Passive-Aggressive Histrionics are not aware of their own aggressive actions. They may fool themselves, but the people around them are seldom taken in.
Passive-Aggressive Histrionics hunger for approval. If you ask them, they’re always doing what they’re supposed to do, thinking what they’re supposed to think, and feeling what they’re supposed to feel. They’re relentlessly obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent—at least in their own estimation. You may wonder how such nice people could create problems for anyone. The answer, stated simply, is: what they don’t know can hurt you.
What these aggressively nice vampires don’t know is how real people operate. Like all Histrionics, Passive-Aggressives create a role for themselves and then become lost in it. Unlike their flamboyant Ham-It-Up cousins, the role these vampires create is more internal than external. In their minds, they are good children—innocent, happy, eager to please, and always willing to do more than their share.
Real people are complex, full of base motivations and unacceptable desires as well as the stuff of angels. Passive-Aggressive Histrionics have the frightening capacity to deny any but the most superficial and attractive thoughts. They blithely ignore the ugly stuff, even if it’s plainly visible to everyone else. Histrionics are not perfectionists; they’re more like perfectionist wannabes. Even then, they don’t necessarily want to be perfect; they just want to look perfect. It is as if they are trying to be Barbie and Ken, without realizing that their role models are nothing but plastic dolls.
Since the role they’re trying to play is impossible, no wonder they keep stepping out of character.
Vampire Meredith moves up to the counter to order her coffee. She eyes the double-fudge brownies in the case, but virtuously passes them up in favor of a container of yogurt. She makes quite a show of checking the nutritional labels. “Oh, look,” she says. “This one is only 120 calories!”
“Come on, Meredith, live a little,” Erin says. “Get one of these brownies. They’re great!”
“Yeah, right,” Meredith says. “If I even like smell one of those, it goes right to my hips.” She pats her rather ample derriere.
As Meredith sits down with her yogurt and nonfat latte, Erin shakes her head. “You’ve got more willpower than I do. I’d die without my daily chocolate fix.”
Meredith shrugs. “It’s like so not hard once you get used to it. I haven’t had chocolate in such a long time, I hardly even remember what it tastes like.”
“You’re incredible,” Erin says as she takes another bite of her brownie.
On the way home, Erin passes the coffee shop. Inside, she sees Meredith pointing at the double-fudge brownies in the case. The counter guy takes out four, bags them up, and hands them to her.
Erin, excited about catching her friend in the act of being human, hurries in and sneaks up behind Meredith. “If you give me one of those brownies, I won’t tell anybody I saw you here,” she says, giggling.
Meredith turns slowly. Her eyes seem unfocused. She looks at Erin for a second or two before appearing to recognize her. “Hi,” she says. “I was just getting some brownies for my niece.”
“Oh, okay,” Erin says, feeling embarrassed. As she hurries out to catch her bus, she seems to remember Meredith saying that her niece lived in Chicago.
Erin thought she saw a regular person succumbing to the urge for a little illicit chocolate. To her, there was nothing unusual about it. She occasionally binges on brownies herself and jokes about it later. What Erin actually saw was a Histrionic stepping out of her perfect role while hypnotizing herself into believing that she was still in it.
Meredith is operating as two people at the same time: a person of exemplary willpower who always follows her diet, and a regular person who occasionally binges on brownies. The one with willpower is the one she sees as herself. The other one she hardly sees at all.
This kind of splitting of the personality is the hallmark of Passive-Aggressive Histrionics. Please don’t call them “schizophrenic.” Schizophrenia is a biochemical psychotic disorder in which the splitting is from reality. Histrionics are the people who divide their personalities into acceptable and unacceptable parts, then do their best to ignore the unacceptable. If you want a name for it, dissociation comes closest.
The real problem is not with brownies and diets. Had Erin pressed, Meredith would probably have admitted that the chocolate was for her. There are other things that Meredith would be far less likely to recognize. At the top of the list are the aggressive impulses that such a confrontation would evoke.
To a psychologist, aggression refers to a continuum of thoughts and actions that have to do with imposing your own will on the world. At one end is angry, assaultive behavior; at the other are simple attempts to act in your own self-interest and get your own way. Histrionics, who accept only the loving and giving in themselves, reject the whole continuum. They prefer to believe that they live their lives for others and never put themselves first. Many of them have problems acknowledging their sexual impulses as well.
The problem is that all people, Histrionics included, are biologically hardwired for sex and aggression. We all want things for ourselves that may be embarrassing or inappropriate. Normal people recognize that they can’t act on their impulses. Passive-Aggressive Histrionics try to believe that they have no inappropriate impulses to act on. This is what makes them dangerous.
Back to Meredith and Erin. At work, most people like Meredith, but they see her as a bit ding-y. They call her “Little Miss Perfect,” knowing full well that she is neither little nor perfect. To Erin, catching Meredith in flagrante delicto with a bag of brownies is wonderful material to share at coffee break. In a day or two, the brownie story is all over the office. In a week, it’s forgotten—by everyone but Meredith.
Inside, Meredith feels hurt, misunderstood, betrayed, and angry, but she can’t acknowledge these feelings even to herself, much less to Erin.
Not being aware of her anger doesn’t stop Meredith from acting on it. Suddenly, she begins to realize that Erin is not really such a nice person. Meredith likes her and all that, but she is a bit hypercritical and, well, bitchy. Everybody says so—especially a few disgruntled employees in Erin’s department with whom Meredith finds herself spending more and more time.
Eventually, Meredith tries to help Erin by telling her in a very nice way that a lot of people really don’t like her. Not only does Erin not listen, she actually gets mad!
Meredith is frantic. The only person she can go to is Jane, the department manager.
“Knock, knock.” Meredith taps tentatively on the fabric of Jane’s cubicle. “Do you have a minute? I really need to ask you a question.”
“Sure, come on in,” Jane says.
Meredith sits down and opens her planner so that she can take notes. “I need some ideas about how to work with Erin. I’m absolutely at my wit’s end.”
Jane waits a minute to see if there’s more to the question. Apparently not. “Did something specific happen to make you feel that way?”
“It’s just, well, everything. Since she came here, there’s always been something. I mean, I really like her as a person and all, but she’s just so totally unpredictable. You never know when she’s going to bite your head off for some little comment.”
“Did you get into an argument with her?”
“I don’t know if you could call it an argument. I mean, she was the one yelling. I was just standing there with my mouth hanging open.” Meredith demonstrates the astonished expression she wore at the time.
“Was there something in particular that Erin was upset about?”
“She said I was trying to undermine her authority.” Meredith does her astonished face again. “Can you believe that? It is so not like me to try to undermine anybody. I was only trying to help.”
“How were you trying to help?”
“I just told her that some of the people in her department were going on stress leave because they can’t take her management style.”
“Really? Who’s going on stress leave?”
“Well, nobody right now, but a lot of people are thinking about it. They come to me because they’re afraid to talk to her. I just told Erin about it so she could maybe talk to them or something, but instead she went completely ballistic.”
Under the guise of being helpful and standing up for the poor underdogs who are too frightened to speak for themselves, Meredith mounts a Passive-Aggressive assault on Erin. There’s a good possibility that everyone in the unit may be hurt as a result of a stupid bag of brownies.
Passive-Aggressive Histrionics love giving. Most of it is truly sincere, but some crosses the line into manipulation. They believe that the Golden Rule is a binding contract: if they do unto others, others are supposed to do back.
Everybody takes. Some people ask you for what they want. Passive-Aggressive Histrionics are more apt to give and give until you finally get the idea they want something. If you don’t get the message, they’ll keep on until they make themselves sick and make you sick of them. But, in their own minds at least, their accounts payable look great. Everybody wants something, and everybody gets angry at not getting it. This is a law of nature, but Passive-Aggressives keep thinking they can break it.
Many Histrionics also believe that the more you deny yourself, the better you are as a person. Viewed in this context, anorexia is the height of nobility.
Histrionics are also frustrated and angry. Not that they would admit it. They will, however, point out the well-documented fact that they do for everybody else, but nobody even listens to them. All they can do is keep giving, suffer in silence, and throw more fuel on the subterranean fires that keep them burning with resentment.
This pattern of pathological giving, though not specific to women by any means, does correspond to what has been expected of females throughout thousands of years of male domination. Pathological giving may also be the result of the mind-warping influences of a dysfunctional family. As always, however, knowing where a problem comes from is not the same as solving it.
It is possible to consider Passive-Aggressives as being victims of forces beyond their control. That’s probably how they see themselves, and that in itself is a big part of the problem. Another law of nature is that victims victimize.
Jason comes home from his fishing trip late at night to find Danielle sitting up in the living room. Her eyes are closed, but she’s not asleep. She has a heating pad on her stomach.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Jason asks.
“Just a little tummyache,” she says. At the same time, she winces and draws in a sharp breath.
“Do you want me to get you your medicine?”
“I already took some, but it doesn’t seem to help.”
Jason puts his hand on her forehead to see if she has a fever. She puts her hand on top of his. It’s ice cold.
“How long …”
His question is cut short by a moan of pain.
“We need to get you to the Emergency Room,” Jason says as he calls Danielle’s mother to ask her to come over to stay with the kids.
This is not the first time this has happened. Danielle and Jason have spent several previous nights in the ER when she was having attacks. She’s been to several specialists. All the tests have been inconclusive. Nobody can figure out what’s wrong.
Jason hates himself for being suspicious, but it seems to him that the attacks all seem to happen when he has gone fishing or hunting. Could the problem be in her head? Before he left, he broached the subject with Danielle, but very cautiously.
“Maybe it’s too stressful for you when I go away—I mean with the kids and the house and everything.”
“No, I can handle it, except for this stupid tummy stuff.”
“Do you want me to stay home?”
“No, no. You work hard. You need your relaxation.”
Jason is in a bind. On the one hand, he thinks that Danielle’s attacks are related to his trips with the guys, but she keeps telling him that he needs to go. What is he to do?
Early the next morning at the ER, after all the scans have come up negative, the gastroenterologist shakes his head. “The only thing left is exploratory surgery.”
The chances are good that Danielle’s surgery will discover nothing unequivocal. The sickness in her body is, at least partly, an expression of the tumult of unacknowledged aggression in her mind. Her psychological state is hard to grasp for people who have never been there, and almost impossible for people who have. Think of it this way: the little angel on her shoulder is saying that Jason needs his trips (and all the other forms of recreation he always seems to be involved with), and that she should be able to take care of her job, the kids, the house, the dogs, her mother, and everything else. The little devil says … what little devil? If there is one there, Danielle is not aware of her. Nevertheless, the resentment the little devil might have spoken about still plays out in Danielle’s body.
Let me make this perfectly clear: Histrionics’ ailments may be stress-related, but they are definitely not all in their heads. No self-respecting Passive-Aggressive Histrionic would ever fake an illness. They really are sick. What causes their sickness and what you can do to get them well is the part that’s confusing.
Here’s how stress-related disorders work.
Back in Chapter 8, on Bullies, I brought up the fight or flight response, which almost everyone has heard of and experienced. Few people understand just how complex and pervasive that response is. Virtually every physiological system is affected when huge doses of hormones shift the body into overdrive. Every bit of energy is diverted to the organs involved in fighting or running. The heart and lungs speed up, muscles engorge with blood, the brain goes on the alert for sources of danger, and the digestive process shuts down. If there is any food in the system, the body tries to dump it from whichever end is closest. Needless to say, this process is hard on the physiology, especially if the stressors causing the fight or flight response are chronic.
We tend to think of stress as coming from outside—rambunctious kids, critical parents, money problems, a demanding job, or whatever. Actually, most people can handle external stressors pretty well. The most damaging stress comes from inside, when you’re being pulled in two different directions at the same time—loving your parents, but hating to be around them; having a job that drives you crazy, but that pays more than anything else you could get; or not being able to stomach the conflict and negative feelings that would arise if you asked your husband to stop taking so many damned fishing trips.
Passive-Aggressive Histrionics like Danielle are often too nice to ask for anything for themselves, like a little help once in a while. Sometimes, their bodies have to ask for them.
In addition to being medical phenomena, Histrionic illnesses are a form of self-expression. They are metaphors for what Histrionics feel about themselves and their world. These vampires feel confused and overwhelmed; therefore, their disorders are confusing and overwhelming to the Histrionics themselves, and to the people who have to treat them. Living with a sick Histrionic is confusing and overwhelming as well. You are always wondering what you should do and what you should be feeling.
Jason has gone to Danielle’s appointments with her. On the one hand, he worries that some terrible undiagnosed disorder is causing her pain. He pushes the doctors to do more tests, consult more specialists, do whatever it takes to find out what’s wrong.
On the other hand, he agrees with her primary-care doctor, who long ago said that it could be stress. Jason knows Danielle thinks this means that medical science has given up on her, so he doesn’t talk about it. He just stops going on fishing trips and takes on more and more of the household chores.
If you’re thinking, “Good for him!” think again. Even if he is absolutely correct and should be around more and helping out more, doing it this way will make the situation worse, not better. Jason is rewarding Danielle for being sick instead of asking for what she wants. He is merely shifting the load of unexpressed resentment to himself.
Resentment does not just evaporate, as Histrionics so devoutly wish; it merely comes out in some other form. Jason will get grumpier and more withdrawn, and Danielle, in response, will get sicker. The battle can continue for years without anyone ever raising his or her voice.
The problem with stress-related or psychosomatic disorders like this is not the stress itself but the passive avoidance of conflict. Dealing directly with the stress by eliminating it or medicating its symptoms away with anti-depressants or, worse, with benzodiazepines or alcohol merely perpetuates the problem or creates a new one, substance abuse.
The most effective cure is getting the dynamics of the situation out in the open. To break the cycle, Danielle needs to recognize what she wants and ask for it. This is probably not something that Jason and Danielle can discuss themselves. It usually requires a skilled therapist who can guide them around the possible misinterpretations, so that Danielle doesn’t think she’s being told that the stomach pain is in her head, or that she is selfish for wanting some time off of her own.
Many Histrionics will resist therapy because they are sure the problem is medical and not adequately diagnosed. Sometimes they are correct. For some doctors, stress-related is a synonym for I don’t know.
To a psychologist, psychosomatic disorders follow patterns just as physical disorders do. They occur in particular personality types, and there is almost always an element of internal conflict and external confusion.
The most effective thing Jason can do is help Danielle to find a doctor she trusts and insist that she follow up with whatever treatment is recommended.
If he is serious about helping, Jason can also look at balance in the relationship. Histrionics almost beg to be taken advantage of. They rarely ask for what they want as directly and effectively as, say, a typical male. It’s easy to let things get way out of balance with respect to the most valuable commodity in most relationships: free time without kids.
If Jason willingly sacrifices some of his autonomy by insisting that free time be evenly and scrupulously balanced, there is likely to be more free time for both of them, without all those trips to the doctor or the emergency room. This will not be easy; Danielle will probably say that things are fine the way they are, except when she is having tummyaches. Which, of course, means that they are not fine at all.
The critical difference between this strategy and just not going on fishing trips is that it is communicated directly and explicitly in words rather than symptoms. Danielle gets time off not because she is sick, but because she deserves it as much as Jason does.
The more vehemently a Passive-Aggressive Histrionic like Danielle insists that she doesn’t need something, the more you should insist that she take it.
The other thing Jason should look at courageously is his own behavior. Wives of alcoholics who are afraid to tackle drinking head on often express their disapproval by getting sick. If this particular shoe fits, Jason should put it on and walk himself to the doctor’s office to have his substance use evaluated.
For their medical metaphors, Passive-Aggressive Histrionics favor vague maladies that are as debilitating as they are hard to diagnose. Allergies are big, as are all forms of gastrointestinal disorder. Also popular are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome as well as designer diseases, like hypoglycemia and malevolent yeasts.
Many Histrionic disorders are psychological, ranging from depression and anxiety to delayed posttraumatic stress. The symptoms are usually pervasive, confusing, and frustratingly sporadic. Some of the psychological epidemics of the 1980s, especially recovered memories of sexual abuse and multiple personality, may have been the result of overly protective therapists mistaking Histrionics’ metaphors for actual reality. These disorders do exist, but not in the vast numbers diagnosed at the height of the “me” decade.
With all the ambiguity surrounding Histrionics’ medical and psychological disorders, there is a temptation to believe that they get sick in order to get out of doing things that they don’t want to do. That is not really what is going on. Histrionics do get out of doing things that they don’t want to do, but the price they pay for it is ridiculously high. The technical name for this getting out of things is secondary gain. The primary gain is escaping conflict, both external and internal. That is what Histrionics are willing to suffer for.
Passive-Aggressives can cloud minds better than the Shadow in the old radio program. The only trouble is it’s their own minds that they cloud. They create an alternate reality in which they are admired and loved by one and all because they never need anything for themselves, and they never, ever do anything bad. The logical contortions they go through to maintain this illusion are enough to make anybody’s eyes glaze over.
If you listen closely to them, you’ll find yourself entering another dimension, where everything is entertaining, but nothing makes much sense—Alice in Wonderland is a fairly realistic portrayal of a Histrionic’s world. It is somewhat humorous viewed from the outside, but imagine living there.
People react differently to Passive-Aggressive hypnosis. Some are enchanted enough to want to rescue the poor waifs; others get a pounding headache. Everybody gets drained, especially the poor souls who keep trying to get Histrionics to admit that they really are angry.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote a book about a sad and unintentionally dangerous creature sewn together from mismatched bits and pieces. She could have been describing another kind of monster created out of the scraps of late-twentieth-century pop psychology—the person with high self-esteem.
Self-esteem used to be the effect of success, but somehow an insufficient amount of it evolved into the cause of failure. Over the past 40 years, most human problems have been ascribed to the pernicious forces of low self-esteem. Self-esteem is taught in school, and people are advised to repeat affirmations under the assumption that raw good feelings about yourself can be shaped into any sort of achievement.
Self-esteem now seems to be regarded as an end unto itself, the prime mover of the human mind, like motivation in the world of business.
There is a logical flaw in this concept: anything that explains everything also explains nothing. The worst problem, however, is that many approaches to improving self-esteem are unwittingly teaching people to be more like Passive-Aggressive Histrionics.
The basic idea is to improve self-esteem by accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, which is fine in theory. The only difficulty is that the negative isn’t eliminated; it’s merely plastered over with affirmations and often projected onto other people. It has become fashionable to see low self-esteem as the result of some form of abuse or mistreatment in one’s past. People are supposed to get better by bringing their resentments out into the open. Everybody except abusers is loved and affirmed, and anything that makes good people feel bad is defined as abuse.
What’s missing in this popular approach to psychology is the same thing that is missing in all Histrionic creations—namely, an attempt to go below the surface and deal with the self in all its complexity. The human psyche is constantly aswirl with contradictory thoughts and impulses. The great challenge we all face is to understand this roiling mass of instinct and emotion and organize it into moral and productive behavior.
Even if my concerns about popular psychology are prejudiced and unfounded, there are still problems with the idea of making people better and more successful by raising their self-esteem. As we’ll see in the later chapters on Narcissistic vampires, high self-esteem itself can be a destructive force.
Don’t get mad at Passive-Aggressives; get smart.
Often, Passive-Aggressives have a history of interpersonal problems that, according to them, come out of nowhere to plague them. Their world is two-dimensional, full of villains and victims. In a job interview, they will usually tell you about personality conflicts in their previous job. On a first date, they might tell you about their last dysfunctional relationship because you’re a nice person and will understand. Be warned: Nice person or not, in their next interview or on their next first date, they’ll be saying the same things about you.
The more these hapless vampires like, respect, or fear you, the less able they are to say directly, “I’m angry,” or, “I don’t want to do that.” They have to rely on misunderstanding, forgetting, getting sick, or falling apart to do the job for them. That’s the way it is; accept it or pay the price. The most frequent cause of headaches is pursuing the one goal that is absolutely unattainable with Histrionics—having them admit to their actual motives.
Even if Passive-Aggressives don’t understand their motives, you should. Remember that they hunger for approval, and they cause the most trouble when they aren’t getting it.
The most productive goal with these vampires is preventing their Passive-Aggressive outbursts by giving them the approval they want, but making it contingent on specific behaviors. Never let them guess what you want; the consequences are too great if they get it wrong. Tell Passive-Aggressives in explicit detail what it takes to please you, and praise them profusely when they do it. This strategy is simple and almost foolproof, but it is seldom employed. It’s hard to praise somebody who gives you headaches. Hard as it is, it’s far easier than the alternative.
As long as they are getting explicit direction and plenty of praise for their successes, Passive-Aggressives can perform most social tasks even better than normal people. They’ll be caring friends, devoted lovers, and hardworking employees. They’re happy to give and give as long as they’re getting something back. But then it isn’t giving, is it? Never mind. If you try to apply logic to the behavior of Passive-Aggressive Histrionics, you will always end up frustrated and confused. Instead, just love them and praise them. If you can’t, stay away from them.
Frustrated Passive-Aggressives will come to you with all kinds of stories about who said and did what to whom. It is important to remember that their perceptions are often distorted by their belief that they couldn’t possibly do anything wrong. Histrionic tales may be dramatic and convincing, but you should never believe them without getting corroboration.
If Passive-Aggressives tell you that other people are upset with you, it means they’re upset. The way these vampires ask for anything is by telling you that somebody else wants it.
Dealing with Passive-Aggressives will teach you an important truth about the human condition—you can never know what is really going on, because there is no such thing as an objective source. People will see the same events differently, according to their own needs. In the end, verification is always a judgment call.
Understand yourself and your own motivations, both acceptable and unacceptable. Always assume you are acting in your own self-interest, and know what you expect to get for what you give.
Be direct. Tell people what you expect to get. Make it very clear what you feel and what you want. If you’re angry, say so. Don’t try to disguise attacks as constructive criticism. Better yet, wait until you’re over your anger before you approach the problems that Passive-Aggressive Histrionics cause. As with all vampires, you should think about what you want to happen rather than about what’s wrong with what’s already happened. Let your goals determine your actions. Easy to say, hard to do.
The maddening thing about Passive-Aggressives is that their words are so different from their actions. If you ask them what they want, they’ll say they want to make you happy, even as they do things to make you miserable.
On the surface, their actions make no sense, but there is an underlying logic. If you want to understand Histrionics, read their actions as if they were sad, angry adolescent poems about how the expectations of others are a prison from which they can never escape.
If you’re involved with Passive-Aggressive Histrionics, you cannot avoid being perceived as the person who is imprisoning them. Don’t try to convince them that they are free. Instead, focus on your own behavior, and try to be a compassionate jailer.
Forget any attempt to make Passive-Aggressives admit to what they really feel. It’ll only make your headache worse. Don’t make the mistake of demanding that they talk to you directly about problems. You might as well demand that they speak in rhyming couplets.
With a Passive-Aggressive, there really are no battles you can win. Once the situation turns into a battle, you have already lost.
The battles you can win are all with yourself. Dealing with Passive-Aggressive Histrionics requires you to go beyond your own conceptions of how things ought to be done.
At work or in relationships, Passive-Aggressives want to be rated excellent on all performance reviews. You can use their powerful need for approval to teach them how to be less Passive-Aggressive. Here are some suggestions.
Always Pay Attention If you ignore a creature whose major goal in life is to get your attention, there will be consequences. Remember, you aren’t the only one using contingencies. Headaches are powerful tools for modifying your behavior. You’ll get them if you forget to notice all the wonderful, helpful things the Passive-Aggressive vampire is doing.
Make Contingencies Explicit Passive-Aggressives want to please you, and hope that you’ll please them in return. If you don’t specify clearly what you want, these vampires will give you what they think you ought to want and expect you to shower them with what they want in return. If you value your sanity, never accept this sort of implicit deal, no matter how good it looks on the surface. If you take it, you will pay, believe me. Your life and the vampire’s will be much easier if nobody has to guess.
If you live or work with Passive-Aggressive Histrionics, tell them what you want them to do.
Always Give Lots of Positive Feedback Explicit instructions, while absolutely necessary, will not work as well as you think they ought to. Passive-Aggressives deal with the world by misunderstanding and by being misunderstood. The thing they never misunderstand is praise. Use gobs of it.
Avoid Punishment, Because It Never Works Berating Passive-Aggressives will make the situation worse, because they’ll have more reason to fear you or get back at you. Criticism of any sort will elicit explanations rather than behavior change. If you try to induce guilt, you’ll trigger an equal amount of resentment.
For all passive-aggressive behaviors, prevention is the best strategy. We have been through this before, but it’s important enough to mention again. Most passive-aggressive people, vampires or not, feel chronically underappreciated. They need more praise than other people. Figure at least four times what you’d need (more if you’re particularly macho).
Be Consistent If the contingencies you set don’t apply evenly to everyone, all the time, they don’t apply to anyone, any time.
Be Fair Passive-Aggressive Histrionics will almost beg you to take advantage of them. Don’t, because you’ll regret it. Do unto them as you would have them do unto you.
Be Sensitive If you discover clear evidence of hidden hostility, don’t rub a Passive-Aggressive’s nose in it. Instead, offer a positive way to resolve the problem. All these vampires really want is your approval.
Telling Passive-Aggressives what they’re doing and why it’s wrong always makes the situation worse. Many people will assume that they just haven’t explained the situation well enough, so they will go through it again, this time in more detail. Engineers and other left-brain types are particularly likely to persist in this kind of error. Their careful efforts get them nothing but bigger headaches.
Dealing effectively with Passive-Aggressive vampires is often a matter of semantics. Your words must reflect an understanding of their view of the world, rather than demanding that they accept yours. Passive-Aggressives live in an alternate reality where their thoughts are pure, their motives are selfless, and all their mistakes are caused by misinterpretation. That is where you must go to have any meaningful communication with them.
Phrase everything in a way that doesn’t assault their view of reality. Instead of criticizing them, acknowledge that Passive-Aggressives were doing their best, then let them know how to do better. Don’t even think of talking to them when you’re angry. They’ll see it as verbal abuse.
They will do better if you phrase instructions as a personal request for their help, and specify what you’re willing to do to reciprocate. Forget about explaining; just ask and pay up.
If Passive-Aggressives seem angry and you want to know why, you’ll get more information if you approach the situation indirectly. Ask them what other people might be concerned about. Always use emotionally neutral words like upset or concerned to describe the emotional state. Passive-Aggressives will usually be only too happy to tell you the kinds of things that may be bothering somebody else. If they have a chance to voice their concerns, however indirectly, they may have less need to act out.
Passive-Aggressive Histrionics throw passive tantrums. When they’re upset with you, they show it by getting sick, misunderstanding your instructions, or talking about you to somebody else. If you get angry, they’ll see you as an abuser and feel justified in taking further retaliatory action. In the short run, it can seem easier not to deal with them at all, but instead just do whatever they were supposed to do yourself. Big mistake. One of the reasons these vampires are so difficult is that most people deal with their passive tantrums passively, by absolving them of their responsibilities. This approach ensures that the next time there is something difficult to be done, Histrionics will again handle it by not being able to handle it.
If you can’t control your own temper, you should never even attempt to deal with Passive-Aggressive Histrionics. They’ll make you hate them and yourself. If you feel angry at one of these vampires, walk away and cool down before you commit yourself to words or actions that you’ll regret.
Passive-Aggressives cause far more trouble than they should. Their dynamics are simple, and they respond well to praise and attention. The problem is that their annoying behavior can distract you into fighting with them when the really important battles are with yourself.