10 Faces of Passive-Aggression (Covert Narcissism)

Okay, it's a fine sunny day here in lovely North Macedonia and today I'm joined by the clinical adviser to this episode, Professor Donald Duck. Where is Minnie, you ask? Up in arms. Minnie is hanging with some mugs in the local dishwasher. And I am Professor Sam Unstoppable Vaknim, the SUV of psychology and the author, how Else of malignant self-love, narcissism revisited. This episode is dedicated to the buffoons and buffoonets of the ongoing failing smear campaign against me and Aquapo failing smear campaign. The topic of today's video is passive aggression. I've dealt with it in other videos, I know. Bear with me. Today, I'm going to try to give you yet another angle. The 10 phases of passive aggression. You see, people are used to externalized aggression. Anger, rage, road rage, eruptions, you name it. But it's very difficult to identify passive aggression because it involves deceit. Passive aggression is deceitful. The very phrase passive aggression like if you're aggressive, you're not passive. You're active. Aggression is an active thing. We we we say that aggression is directional. And when you couple it with passivity, passive aggression, we are talking about someone who is stealthy, surreptitious, deceitful, duplicitus, mendacious, and double-faced. This is why passive aggression is a major clinical hallmark of covert narcissism. But there's a lot more to it than merely the facade, merely the surface. You see, passive aggression is a form of signaling. The passive aggressive person signals something. What is this something? It's an a desperate attempt to communicate an internal, usually unconscious need. It is a need that is perceived by the individual as illegitimate or unlikely to be met if it were to be communicated sincerely and openly. So passive aggression is chosen as a modern channel of communication which is subterranean underground but is judged by the individual to be more efficacious, more likely to secure favorable outcomes in the environment and acting on the environment. So there's a signaling of internal usually unconscious need and this is coupled with punishment for those who fail to meet the need. These are the two critical elements in passive aggression. It's as if the individual is trying to tell you this is what I need. I feel entitled to it. I have a right to it and you have an obligation to supply me with it. And if you fail to do so, I have the right to punish you. I have the right to become punitive. These are the two components of passive aggression which distinguish passive aggression entitlement from narcissistic entitlement. Narcissistic entitlement is not always punitive. It could have other manifestations, different ways of exerting or asserting itself. Passive aggression is invariably coupled with punishment. And that's why that's where the word aggression comes in. The passivity is an expectation of special treatment, endowments, gifts, catering to one's needs. And when all these fails, mainly because the communication is very garbled and encoded and encrypted and very difficult to decode and decipher. When all this fails, invariably and always, there is the punishing element, the aggression. Let me give you an example. Imagine someone who is constantly late for meetings, constantly keeps people waiting. On the surface, you could say that's an a-hole or someone who is not very good with time and schedules or, you know, you can make excuses, but actually it's a form of signaling. Obviously, being late constantly to meetings is passive aggression. And what it signals is, I am special. The rules don't apply to me because I'm unique. And if you do not recognize how special I am and if you do not accept these the implied privileges of my uniqueness, you deserve to wait for me. That is your punishment. So let us now transition to various manifestations of passive aggression which are often mispersceived by people. People do not realize that it's passive aggression. As I mentioned, passive aggression involves deception. The deception is often founded on some kind of informationational asymmetry. The deceiver, the passive aggressive person knows more about the situation, the circumstances, the environment, other people has has privileged access to knowledge or arcane knowledge that you are denied. And this creates an asymmetry, a slope, a gradient where the passive aggressive person knows more, you know less. The passive aggress aggressive person takes advantage of this attempting to gaslight you or to lie to you or to manipulate you in Machavevelian way somehow and failing that to aggress against you. So this is the first element. The second element is pseudo stupidity. Passive aggressive people often pretend to be stupid. Obstinately and objurately refuse to understand. Won't listen to reason. Insist that something is wrong which they know who they which they know is they know is right. Insist that something is right when they know it's wrong. Pseudo stupidity is an integral part of passive aggression. In the Israeli army, they call it rashkatan, small head or shrunk head. It's like a shrinking of the mind, the constriction of the potentials of uh the individual so that no demands can be made on him or her. The passive aggressive person is broadcasting to the world, I'm inadequate. I'm incapable. I'm too stupid to do this. Don't ask that of me. It's a form of sabotaging and undermining tasks, assignments, jobs, employment, and so on and expectations of society and one's nearest and dearest. Now, covert narcissists are not going to do that. But passive aggression is not unique to covert narcissism. It is pretty widespread actually. When the individual feels that they are denied legitimate modes of expression, when the individual develops learned helplessness, when the individual feels that there is no other way to get his or her way, then passive aggression sets in. Procrastination is another example of passive aggression. I'll do it tomorrow, next day, next year. constantly daydreaming and planning and fantasizing but never ever executing, never ever committing or investing, never ever taking the first step. That is passive aggression. All passive aggression leads to sabotage. All passive aggression is about defeat. Not selfdefeat, but the defeat of others. If necessary, if the only way to defeat others is by selfdefeating and self-destructing, so be it. And so phenomen phenomena such as forgetfulness, neglect, constantly forgetting to do important things, to pay bills, to pick up the kid from school to I don't know, constant forgetfulness, constant neglect, constant wandering of the mind, constant attention deficits, constant. This is a form of passive aggression. It it disrupts the normal flow and fabric of daily life. It undermines projects, tasks, dreams, and hopes. Forgetfulness and neglect are critical tools in the armory of the narcissist. Concealed humor is also a form of passive aggression. the smirk, you know, the knowing smirk. So, one, the the passive aggressive person leverages humor in order to sadistically torment people, humiliate them, shame them, put them in the in their place, reduce them to size. And so, humor is weaponized in the hands of the passive aggressive person. Humor also is sublimated. It's a socially acceptable way of expressing aggression. So when the passive aggressive person uses weaponized humor to impact you or your life or your plans or your projects or whatever, they always have an alibi. I was just joking. I didn't mean it. Come on. Sabotage is a critical element. And very often the passive aggressive person holds other people in contempt and disrespects them because somewhere deep inside this kind of person feels superior, the lack of recognition, the lack of accomplishments, the lack of social standing, the absence of status are all interpreted by the passive aggressive person as some kind of malign conspiracy against him or are and hitting back being impossible. Passive aggression is the venue and the choice. But many other phenomena are actually expressions of passive aggression and we don't know it. For example, boredom. Boredom is actually a form of aggression. Attention deficits. I mentioned the wandering mind. These are all forms of passive aggression. Boredom is a signal, is a message. You're not interesting. I don't care what you have to say. I'm going not not going to pay attention to you. I'm not going to invest resources. I'm not going to commit to the communication. I'm not going to be here. And consequently, all your efforts are wasted on me, on us. And so, it would never lead anywhere, my way or the highway. There's a bit of a psychopathic defiance in this. Similarly, narcissistic behaviors such as condescension, patronizing, overt contempt. These are also forms of passive aggression. They do not lead to actual aggression. There's no violence involved usually, but they create an asymmetry, an implied asymmetry in the worth, in the value of the people involved. You are less worthy than I am. I'm more worthy than you are. This asymmetry is a foundational concept in passive aggression. It is founded on asymmetries and the disruption of communication is mainly intended to foster and engender such asymmetries. Now what I want to do, I want to I want to simulate for you a counseling session with someone who has negativistic passive aggressive personality disorder. And then following the simulated session, I'm going to delve deeper into the personality type, personality organization and personality disorder or suggested personality disorder involving passive aggression. So now we are transitioning to a bit more clinical picture of passive aggression. Those of you who want to say goodbye, that's your chance. Those of you who want to stay, I can't help with masochism. You know, I'm not a clinician. Here we go. Let's imagine a male. He's 52 years old, Mike, and he has negativistic or passive aggressive personality, if not personality disorder. Now, I'm not saying personality disorder. You will learn why a bit later. Mike, let's say, is attending counseling at the request of his wife. She complains that he is emotionally absent and aloof. Mike, when confronted with this claim, Mike shrugs and says, "We used to have a great marriage, but good things don't last. You can you cannot sustain the same levels of passion and interest throughout a relationship. But isn't his family worth the effort? Another shrug. He doesn't pay to be a good husband or a good father. Look what my loving wife did to me. In any case, at my age, the future is behind me. Carpedium is my motto. Does he consider his wife's demands to be unreasonable? And now Mike flares. The aggression is externalized. He says, "With all due respect, that's between me and my spouse. Then why is he wasting his time and the the uh counseling time?" "I didn't ask to be here," he says. Okay. Did he prepare a list of things that he would like to see? improved in his family life or list of things he would like to discuss. Uh he was asked to do so but he forgot. Okay. Can he compile it for our next meeting meeting? He takes a second and then he says only if nothing more urgent pops up. It would be difficult to continue to uh to do this if I have other priorities. Okay. I tell They're very difficult to continue to work together if you don't keep your promises. And he he says he understands and he will see what he can do about it. But there's not great conviction in his promise. And I'm not holding my breath. The problem is says Mike that he regards all this consultation thing as con as a form of con artistry. Uh even psychotherapy is snake oil and psychotherapists are snake oil salesmen letter day witch doctors only less efficient. He hates to feel cheated or deceived and so he avoids all these settings of consultations and therapy and counseling coaching. He doesn't do these things because he feels deceived. I ask him, "Do you often feel that way?" And he laughs dismissively. He is too clever, he says, for run-of-the-mill crooks. He He is often underestimated by them. He's implying, of course, that I'm one. Do other people beside crooks underestimate him? I insist. He admits to being unappreciated and underpaid at work. He's never promoted. It bothers him. He deserves more than that. He should be recognized for his contributions. Obsicuous intellectual midgets rise to the top in every organization. He observes with virulent envy and at the same time he claims that he is being envied by them. So, how does he cope with this discrepancy between the way that he perceives himself and the way other people evidently evaluate him? He ignores such fools, envious fools. But it's not clear how can one ignore one's co-workers and one's superiors at work. I just don't talk to them, he says. In other words, you sulk. Not always, says Mike. Sometimes I try to enlighten and educate these people, but only the ones who seem worthwhile to me. It often gets him into arguments, and he has acquired a reputation as a contankerous caron, but he doesn't care. So, would you describe yourself as an impatient or irritable person? What do you think? He counters. During this session, did I ever lose my cool? Well, truth be told, frequently. When I say this, he half rises from his chair and then thinks better of it and settles down. Okay, he says dismissively, "Do your thing." He's now silent and contemptuous. Let's get it over with. So this was a simulation of a counseling session consultation with a someone with passive aggressive personality um organization. Passive aggressive is an adjective. It is a characteristic of behavior that is seemingly innocuous. Remember the deception part, accidental or neutral. But it's none of the above. It is definitely not innocuous. It's vicious. It is not accidental. It's a pattern that repeats itself. And it's never neutral. It's directed at specific people. But the impression is the impression given by the passive aggressive individual is that this is this just happens. It's not intentional, not deliberate. Indirectly though, passive aggression displays an unconscious aggressive motive. And then we have passive aggressive personality disorder. It's a personality disorder among the first suggested actually. And initially it was described as a personality in which there is ambivalence. Ambivalence, love, hate. Yeah. Emotions that contradict each other but coexist. So there's ambivalence towards the self and ambivalence towards others and this ambivalence creates dissonance. And in order to avoid the inevitable consequence of dissonance anxiety, the ambivalence is expressed by such means as procrastination, dawling, stubbornness, intentional inefficiency, forgetting appointments, misplacing important materials, and so on. In short, sabotage. These maneuvers are interpreted as passive expressions of underlying negativism. The pattern persists even when more adaptive behavior is clearly possible or even useful to the individual. And this is the self-sabotage, self-defeat part. In order to hurt other people, in order to harm other people, the individual hurts and harms himself or herself. It's kind of I'm going to I'm going to shoot myself so that the bullet passes through my brain and hits you kind of um I'm going to take my I'm going to gouge my eye out so that you you keep seeing an ugly person. the and and so this disorder initially was classified in an appendix of the text revision of the fourth edition of the DSM and there were at the time proposed diagnostic categories and the the general idea was to actually come up with a negativistic personality disorder. Um and it relied very heavily on the work of Theodor Millan who by the way also suggested other personality disorders such as sadistic personality disorder. And so today you can find the equivalent of negativistic personality disorder in the text revision of the fifth edition of the DSM under other specified personality disorder. So negativistic passive aggressive personality disorder is not yet accepted or recognized by the DSM committee and it appears in it appeared at the time in appendix B of the DSM titled criteria sets and access provided for further study and as I mentioned it's an outstanding diagnosis first described in 1945 by an army psychiatrist William Manninger and he called it below the surface hostility. But now negativistic personality has evolved to comprise a host of behaviors. Temporary behaviors, delayed compliance, intentional inefficiency, escalation of unresolved problems, hidden but conscious revenge, self-deprecation and self-depreciation in the pursuit of vengeance and destruction and so on so forth. Some people are perennial pessimists. They have negative energy. We all know these kind of people. They suck. They suck the air out of the room. They deplete you. Even in a short encounter, they take away your energy and they have negativistic attitudes. They say good things don't last. It doesn't pay to be good. The future is behind me. All kinds of thing. These kind of people disparage the efforts. not not only of themselves but of others. They make it a point to resist demands to perform in the workplace to act appropriately in social settings. They frustrate people's expectations and requests even when the expectations and requests are reasonable, minimal, beneficial to the passive aggressive individual. The pleasure of frustrating people is stronger. Such persons regard every requirement and every assigned task as impositions. They're consumatious. They reject authority. They resent authority figures, bosses, teachers, parent, parental or parent-like spouses. They feel shackled and enslaved by any type of commitment investment and they oppose relationships that bind them in any manner. And in this sense, passive aggression in intimate relationships is reminiscent of some types of insecure attachment styles like the dismissive avoidant attachment style. Whether these attitudes and behaviors are acquired, learned or whether or maybe they are the outcome of heredity, we still don't know. It's an open question. Often passive aggression is the only weapon of the weak and the meek. When you are a suppressed minority, I don't know, women, blacks, Jews, you are besieged by frustration and helplessness and envy and spite and hatred and humiliation. And so this is your only weapon, passive aggression. The organizing principles of the emotional landscape and the engines of the main motivating forces of of such people coales around a passive aggressive machavellian manipulative assortment or repatory of coping strategies. And the thing is even when the circumstances of these people change when they become rich and powerful represented accepted and so even then they maintain the passive aggression. This is true for any minority and it's politically incorrect to say this but if we study minority groups or minor not minority groups but repressed groups suppressed groups if we study their behavior before and after the suppression or the repression or the oppression we would see that they have kept the tools, the passive aggressive tools that they have developed when they were in less favorable circumstances. Passive aggressiveness whereas a multitude of guises as I mentioned, procrastination, malingering, perfectionism, forgetfulness, neglect, truency, intentional inefficiency, stubbornness, pseudo stupidity, outright sabotage, etc., etc. So it's a proliferating malignancy and this repeated and advertent misconduct has far-reaching consequences and effects. Consider for example someone who is negativistic in a workplace, someone with passive aggressive attitudes in his job or employment. So he or she invests time and efforts in obstructing their own chores and in undermining relationships and the accomplishments of other people, the highly envious. But these self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors wreak havoc throughout the workplace or the office. It's not limited to the individual. People diagnosed with negativistic passive aggressive personality disorder resemble narcissists in some important respects. Despite the obstructive role they play, passive aggressives feel unappreciated, underpaid, cheated, misunderstood, and envied. They chronically complain, whine, carp, and criticize. They blame their failures and defeats on other people aloplastic defenses. They pose as victims and martyrs uh of some corrupt inefficient heartless system of impersonal institutions or of specific individuals who are targeting them. In other words, these people have aloplastic defenses coupled with an external locus of control. Everything is happening to them from the outside. Their lives are determined externally. Passive aggressives sulk. They give the silent treatment in reaction to real or imaginary slides. They suffer from ideas of reference, referential ideation. They believe that they are the butt of derision, contempt, mockery, jokes, and condemnation. They're mildly paranoid. The world is out to get them, and this explains their personal misfortunes, defeats, and failures. In the words of the diagnostic and statistical manual, they may be sullen, irritable, impatient, argumentative, cynical, skeptical, and contrarian or contrary. They are also hostile, explosive, lack impulse control, and sometimes reckless. In other words, the ideal partner. Inevitably, passive aggressives are envious of other people which they perceive to be more fortunate. more successful, more accomplished, famous, their superiors, those in favor, those who are happy golucky. They envy these people because they believe that these people have attained their position unjustly, that the injustice that constitutes an integral part of the fabric of the universe has relegated them. The passive aggressive has relegated them into a position which is unjust. They think if someone for example has accomplished something, it's by luck or accident or maybe they have contacts or they come from a family that that supported them or introduced them to the right people. They would never say someone is successful because they're intelligent or they are talented. They would never ever say this. And so they vent this venomous jealousy openly and defiantly whenever given the opportunity. But deep at heart, passive aggressives are craven. They're bullies in effect. They bully passively or they bully under the carpet, under the under the blanket, invisibly. And so they are craven. They're cowards. When they are confronted or reprimanded, they immediately revert to begging forgiveness, cowtowing, modland protestations, turning on their charm and promising to behave and perform better in the future all the time, seething with hatred and resentment. It's a perpetual state. It's a defining matrix. The passive aggressive has no way out. Except through the hearts of other people which he has every intention of piercing and demolishing.