Passive aggression is an adaptive behavior that develops when a child isn’t allowed to express anger directly. If being angry gets you hit, ignored, or punished, you learn to get your needs met through indirect means. Joe tells the story of his daughter who cried instead of getting angry at her sister — because sadness got compliance while anger got hit. That substitution of one emotion for another to manipulate outcomes is the seed of passive aggression.
We’re born with aggression, and life gives us things to be angry about. If that anger has no acceptable outlet — “good girls don’t get angry” — it goes underground. Joe observes seventh-grade girls in cultures where female anger is forbidden displaying intense passive aggression: gossiping, making people feel small, talking behind each other’s backs. It’s all aggressive behavior, just as destructive as physical bullying, but society doesn’t recognize it as such because we buy into the victim story.
“If you don’t get to have that temper tantrum, if you don’t get to have that anger, if your girls good girls don’t get angry don’t yell, then it’s going to be more and more passive aggression.”
Related Concepts
- Anger unresisted is determination
- Suppressing one emotion suppresses all
- Passive aggression is aggression that isn’t being owned as aggression
- Passive aggression invites active aggression from others