Frustration with Passive Aggressive or Aggressive Behavior - Self-talk for Hard Times

Passive aggressive, and even directly aggressive, behavior is very difficult to deal with.

For me, the real challenge comes when it's someone who is ostensibly my friend or family.

I couldn't figure out why a stranger being a jerk only bothers me during the actual behavior, but a friend, family, or someone who I looked up to, being a jerk really pushes my buttons and the pain lasts for a long time.


1. People who say they are friends or family acting selfishly or in hurtful ways starts the downward emotional spiral. What really solidifies my angst is when I try to address the issue of how their behavior makes me feel, and they either deny they did anything, ignore me, blame me for their behavior, or bring up something else that pisses them off more. It's the not being able to address the issue that bothers me more than the actual behavior. When a stranger does this kind of thing, I just go "bah," whatever - I don't feel the need to address the issue. When a friend spits a hurtful remark at me, tells me to go away aggressively, or gives me an indirect insult, I feel trapped and aggravated. I need to address it, but I can't. Also, I invested caring and love into this relationship, and I have given a lot, and to find out that the relationship is really just about them feeling good, and doing whatever they want to me, and my feelings don't matter, it pushes me into grrr mode.

2. Once I commit to something, I fall easily into a full emotional commitment. Relationships, but also jobs, clubs, groups, etc. That also means I will forgive bad behavior for a long time until it reaches a boiling point, because I have an idyllic view of how the relationship is supposed to be and hold steadfast to that until my bubble is burst. I don't commit easily. So when I do, it must be great, right? I must have decided to commit because it's great, right? So when it goes sour, it tweaks the image I have of it, and I want so much for it to be what I thought I was getting into.

3. Because of my upbringing, I didn't learn how to deal with the pain of emotional neglect and rejection. I had to piece together a mishmash of coping mechanisms. When a stranger doesn't care about me, I'm OK with that because I know how to handle that. But when I feel that a friend or family member (or someone who I look up to) is rejecting me or neglecting me, it throws me back to the many times I had to deal with this kind of pain as a child without help or support. I know what my inner child is doing is not good for me. But she takes over and wants so much to learn how to deal with the pain and have someone who will listen and accept her. When the very person who she had assumed would be there, turns out, yet again, to be the person who brings pain instead of love, boom! back in time.

So, what do all of these have in common?

Attachment issues.

I am a nearly 40 year old woman who has attachment issues.

Sounds sad, huh? But as much as it might be sad, it's incredibly common. In fact, in Buddhism, attachment is the ultimate cause of our emotional suffering.

If any of us suffer emotionally, it's because we have attachment issues.


Reading this article today, help me put together the common denominator in all the places I feel hurt, sad, disappointed, embarrassed, afraid, and other painful feelings - needing to detach.

How do we deal with people who are passive-aggressive, aggressive, blaming, hurtful, crazy-making? Examine our attachments. Detach.

Detachment (or non-attachment) is not: pushing away, neglect, ignoring someone, not talking to them, blaming them, not caring about them, or denying love.

It is a way of relating to the world that allows the world to be what it is, and not being attached to wanting to make it reflect the ideal version we have in our head. Detachment (or non-attachment) is another dimension to acceptance.

I put this together for myself, to have something I can go to when my child doesn't know how to deal with intense emotions. When she wants to change something, fix something, or bend over backwards to keep someone from being upset, I can go to this and remember - oh ya. Perhaps it can help someone else, too. And together, we can heal our attachment issues.

Self talk and mindfulness for hard times:

• How old am I right now? (eg. I feel like I'm 17.)
• Is there an event in my past that is triggering this feeling?
• What exactly am I feeling right now?
• What does this feeling create in my body?
• Wait to act on these feelings and spend this moment just feeling them and fully understanding and loving myself first.

Do I need to detach?

• Am I addicted to wanting the person to like me?
• Does it seem like the other person is emotionally unavailable to me?
• Do they seem coercive, threatening, or intimidating to me?
• Do they seem to be trying to punish or abuse me?
• Do I feel I'm not making progress or feeling reinforced in our interactions?
• Do I feel smothered?
• Do I feel like the other person needs me to survive?
• Do I feel like I need the other person to survive?
• Does the other person's actions and what they say impact the feelings I have about myself?
• Do I feel a chronic need to fix, rescue, or enable this person?
• Do I feel obliged and loyal to the point of never being able to leave?
• Does the other person seem chronically helpless, lost, or out of control?
• Is the other person self-destructive or suicidal and I feel guilty my actions might make them hurt themselves?
• Does the other person have an addiction that I feel I must fix?
• Do I feel manipulated or conned?
• Do I feel chronically guilty?
• Do I fantasize that the other person will come around or change to be what I want?
• Do I feel like our relationship is a competition for control?
• Do past hurts get brought up again and again, and not forgiven even after having a heart to heart about it?
• Do I feel ignored?

Letting go of painful attachment:

• I am not responsible for other people's emotions.
• I am not responsible for other people's actions.
• I do not need to fix anyone.
• I do not need to fix a relationship.
• Only they can change how they react to me.
• Show up, pay attention, be honest, then let them be who they are.
• Create a safe space between myself and those who trigger pain in me.
• I am free to feel my own feelings without having others approve or acknowledge them.
• They will be OK without my emotional involvement.
• I am not shunning or abandoning another by making space and allowing them to be who they are.
• Their anger, frustration, and all other feelings are theirs to own.
• I can empathize with one's pain without sharing it or being responsible for it.
• It is OK to create space if I feel uncomfortable, scared, hurt, or otherwise out of sync with another, without having to announce that space, apologize, or tell the other person to back off.
• If a person is in my face, and is relentless, I have the right to say "back off," but not to punish, only to create space for myself.
• I am not responsible for another adult's emotional tantrum, even if it's a mini tantrum (Passive aggressive).
• I am not responsible for taking care of someone who is chronically helpless, a victim, or incompetent.
• Unless it's a true emergency (which is extremely rare), I do not have to react immediately, and can take my time to assess whether I want to become involved or not.
• I am not responsible for another person's reaction to me saying, "No," including if they decide to have a tantrum or manipulate with fear, obligation, or guilt.
• What beliefs do I have about why I can't let go of my image of the relationshp? How can I replace those beliefs with healthy, strong ones?
• If I still feel guilt about detaching, why do I feel guilt? Who is speaking in my head making me feel guilty? Who am I trying to make happy by feeling guilty? Whose rules am I trying to abide by? Do I feel OK according to my own integrity?
• If not, is there anything I can to do make amends without having to involve the other person?
• If not, can I make amends to forgive myself, without the need to get forgiveness from someone else?
• If I am OK with my own rules of integrity, can I make a new statement about what I did, how they acted/reacted, or how I feel that creates a healthy detachment?

Guilt and the Ringing Doorbell

When the doorbell rings, and it's not a neighbor or Fed Ex, I dread it.

The reason for this dread, is that I know what's coming - a guilt trip.

Whether it's someone selling magazines, an evangelist, or someone wanting to tell me about their political candidate of choice, I'm going to be faced with an indirect, and sometimes direct, accusation that I'm being "bad" for not doing what they want me to do. Guilt.

Today, the doorbell rang, and I went to "guilt management" mode. I reminded myself there is a note on the door that clearly says to respect us and not knock on our door (except for fed ex and friends). I reminded myself that I am an easy guilt target, and that I have the right to say "no" if I do not want to do what the person is asking of me. And I also have to remind myself that it does not matter of the person on the other side of the screen has a good opinion of me. I psych myself up like this, but it's still hard.

So the doorbell rang, and I opened our little window, to see who it was, and I didn't recognize her, but she didn't look to be selling anything or handing out propaganda. She could be a neighbor who I haven't met yet, or someone looking for help. So I opened the door. She said, "I painted the numbers on the curb, would you please give a donation?"

Now, a week ago, someone came over and asked me for a donation before they painted the curb. I said, "We're not interested in having our curb painted. Thanks." Then, we got a note a few days later informing us that our curb was going to painted (like it or not) and to "please consider" giving a donation.

So when she came to the door today, I said, "No thank you, we don't want our curb painted."

She replied, "I already did it."

I replied, "We didn't ask for it."

She said, with a sigh, "If you change your mind, here's my information where you can make donation."

I replied, "Thank you."

So far so good, not a ton of guilt... a little, but I didn't feel bad about saying "no". Her little bits of sighing and pushing me to give her a donation didn't push any buttons.

Then, as she walked away, she said, "I painted everyone's curb." Now, the words, not so bad in a blog, but the intonation was, "and you're stingy and heartless to not give me something for it."

That's when the pang of guilt hit. Also, a pang of anger. Flash! Guilt and anger. (Why is passive/aggressiveness so good at tapping into both of those feelings?) I felt guilty not because I was being stingy but because I made her feel bad, I made her mad. I felt guilty because she was scolding me. I felt angry because it was an obvious ploy for money, using my personal feelings as a weapon against me.

Guilt is a tool of the vast majority of people who ring my doorbell and want me to give them money. If I feel guilty enough, I'll pay them to go away and make them stop throwing guilt at me (and hence, making me feel better).
They put me in a position where if I do what I want to do, I have to let them down. If I do what they want me to do, I let myself down. Either way, I lose.

So it's up to me to decide what I want, what I believe is right, and what is good for me, and then support myself, and allow the person who knocked on my door their own feelings even if those feelings are negative towards me.

After she left, I felt guilty for a short while, then I was annoyed with her, and finally I was happy I said "no". She did paint my curb, she did do something nice for me, but she did it without my permission, then expecting me to pay her money. Essentially, she expected me to make good on a contract that I never signed.

It is hard for me to stand my ground when I feel guilt vibes coming from the other person. The feeling of guilt is strong and human nature is to make it go away. And the easiest way to make it go away is to simply do what the person is asking. But although that may result in short-term guilt reduction, it all too often then results in long-term resentment, anger, and guilt turned towards the self.

Guilt used as a weapon is heartless and destructive. Sometimes, we need to feel guilt because it points us in the right direction, but sometimes, our guilt monitors go on overdrive. Being in the moment, knowing ourselves, and reminding ourselves to not get wrapped up in trying to "feel better", is the only way to know if the guilt we feel is a guiding light, or a decoy.

May we all be able to acknowledge and accept our feelings in the moment and to be able to make mindful decisions for ourselves in the long-run, without hurting others. Also, may we allow others to feel their own feelings, and not get caught up in trying to appease others for the sake of running away from how we feel, or trying to fix the other person so we can feel better.

The Pencil Sharpener and the Trash

This morning, I went to empty out the over-full electric pencil sharpener. There was so many pencil shavings in it, it had solidified in several places. I had to empty it in stages, putting my finger in to the mass, and coaxing it out slowly. Then, I had to bang it forcefully against the trash can to get the shavings out of the grinding mechanism.

I was pretty proud of myself for getting it all emptied out without cursing or getting frustrated that it was so difficult. In that state of pride, I went to put the cover back on, piece the top together with the latch, and stuck a pencil in the sharpener.

Nothing. It didn't work. I think I broke it.

So I look at it closer, and I notice a gap between the bottom of the cover, and base of the sharpener. There's also a little button that needs to get pushed to complete the electrical connection to the device. It was missing a piece. The piece that fit under the cover, and pressed the button.

I didn't see a piece fall out, I didn't see any other bits. But it was obviously missing. There was a quarter inch gap, and the sharpener wouldn't work without that piece. So I went back to the trash where I dumped the shavings, and went through the trash bit by bit. Ew.

Still, I managed to not curse, not get mad. Just go through the trash, just go through the trash. It had to be there somewhere and cursing or getting mad wasn't going to make it easier, I told myself. I remembered the monks who use cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors as practice. Just go through the trash.

After going through a bit of the pile, I reached last night's meal of burritos, refried beans, and salsa. It couldn't have fallen this far, could it? But it wasn't anywhere else. Plus, I didn't even know what I was looking for, since I didn't remember seeing the piece fall off. I imagined what the piece must look like, and kept digging around. In the muck. In the goo. Ew.

But after much digging, and several mantras later, there was no denying it. The piece just wasn't there. Or, I simply wasn't seeing it. I started berating myself - how could I have been so dumb to drop that in the trash? Why couldn't I find it? Now it's broken, and I'll have to buy a new one. One more chore to do! My husband is going to be annoyed, and think I'm an idiot. My kids will be disappointed. All I wanted to do was clean out the pencil sharpener, and look what happened.

I was deflated.

As I was looking at the machine, mad at myself, kicking myself for adding more to my to do list, and going through all the things that were wrong with this particular situation - about a pencil sharpener! - I saw the solution.
Not sure how it happened upon me, but it did. I had put the cover on upside down.

I flipped it over, and it fit perfectly. There was no missing piece.

Let us reduce our suffering by having the awareness to see problems from multiple directions, and letting ourselves have patience before assigning blame, projecting into future problems, and worrying what others might think.

Why People Don't Like Each Other - Letting Go of Us/Them

It's logical to think that when someone treats us badly, we like them less.

But that's not true. It's actually the other way around.

When we treat others badly, we like them less. 

It can take a long time for someone treating us badly for us to finally get the message that our love and affection is better spent elsewhere. Why would we put up with years of abuse, or let a "friend" bully us, or keep going back to partners who talk down to us if people treating us badly makes us like them less?

Whereas, when we treat others badly, we are less likely to want to be around them, to like them, or to give them future affection or love. When we treat others badly, we significantly increase the chance that we will spend our affection elsewhere.

Why is this? It stems from cognitive dissonance. Deep down, we all want to think of ourselves as good people. We wouldn't hurt anyone, or do anything bad. Well, unless, the other person deserved it. In order to maintain that we are good people, when we hurt someone or treat another person badly, we have to create a story in our mind that the other person deserved it. It was something bad about the other person that makes us treat them badly. It's their fault we behave the way we do, so we like them less.

With this understanding, we can see that treating people well isn't effective at getting them to like us better. Treating people well helps us like others more. Treating other people well cultivates a continuation of being compassionate to others and of continuing to treat them well - no matter how they treat us.

That's the key to this meditation - if we treat other people with respect, integrity, and compassion, we will like other people more, be happier, and even like ourselves more. When we like other people more, and we treat others well, we will feel more loved, and feel like we have more friends in the world. The concrete number of people who we can count as friends makes little difference. Our feeling of support and love comes from the feeling of how often we treat people well (not how often they treat us well). Think about this again. Our feeling of love and support doesn't come from how others treat us, but from how we treat others, and why we treat others that way.

If we understand this, when other people treat us badly, we will see not that this other person is a bad person or anything is wrong with them, but that they are simply treating us badly. It's when we treat others badly that we think they are bad people. If we want to get out of the "us/them" paradigm, the key is simply to treat others well. Treating others well isn't for them, but for us. How much they like us won't stem a whole lot from what we do. They will base their feelings for us much more on how they treat us.

So it's fruitless to treat others well to try and manipulate people into liking us. That not only doesn't work, but it sets up the scene to feel unappreciated and used. Instead, what works better is setting our boundaries and not allowing others to treat us badly. If they continue to treat us badly even after setting our boundaries, then it's not about us. If they treat us better after we set our boundaries, then we've made a potential friend based not on us trying to appease them or do what we think they want to make them happy, but based on two people who are treating each other well because they like themselves.

This teaching made an impact on me, because it allows me to continue to treat people well for my own reasons, rather than trying to be a peace maker or trying to "get" people to like or appreciate me. I treat people well for me, because I like other people, because I like me, because it's who I am, and because it's good for me and then, consequently, others. All of us are are responsible for our own feelings and behaviors. And if someone treats me badly, and they don't like me, I understand now that it's not me they don't like, but their own cognitive dissonance, and stories they create in their head. I do it, too. It's human. It's not personal. And that makes people's difficult behavior a lot easier to deal with emotionally.

Not Made in China and Vegetarian Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I agonized a bit over whether or not to eat turkey. I don't choose to eat meat when it means that animal had to die to feed me.

However, when I'm served meat, I'll eat it. The meat has already been slaughtered. Refusing meat that has been offered to me in good faith doesn't save the animal or show my appreciation for the effort my host went through to feed me.

But Thanksgiving wasn't as straight forward. I had the choice not to eat the turkey, because it wasn't been served to me. We were the hosts. Yet, my choice not to eat it wouldn't save the turkey. In fact, much of the turkey meat will be thrown out because we had way too much. And I like the taste of turkey.

So I had turkey. And I enjoyed it. It wasn't an easy decision. But once I made the decision, I went with it and didn't look back. It was also a relief not to have to explain why I don't eat meat and when.

The next thing I struggle with is "Made in China". Most of the toys the kids want were made in china. (Except the #1 one thing on my son's list. It was made in Italy. Yay!) But when everything is made in China...and we're on a budget...it sure is hard to shop for presents without buying into China's cheap crap industry.

What can I do to keep from buying from China? Is buying from China as bad as its made out to be? I'm so confused! I want to do the "right" thing. The thing that harms the world the least.

The Burden of Guilt

I'm a guilt-ful person, and it drags me down. I read a quote today that put it into perspective for me:

Carrying guilt around in our minds is like hiking up a mountain and picking up every rock we stub our toe upon and throwing it in our backpack.

And that's exactly what I do. Throw rocks of guilt on my own back to carry around with me.

My coping mechanism is to not think about the things that make me regret. But, what I want to learn to do, is to look back at those things I did and not be attached to them. Not to have a visceral reaction; not have the instinct to immediately run away.


The blog I got this quote from suggests meditation. What do you think? Does meditation or prayer help one become accepting, and let go of guilt? Anything you have done in your life, or a perspective you've taken to put the rocks back down, instead of bearing their weight?

Guilt That We're Not Doing

Guilt. Oh, there's so much of it to go around - especially in religion. I ask, if we feel guilty about what we aren't doing, can we ever do enough not to feel guilty anymore?

If "not doing" has such a power over us that it makes us feel bad about ourselves, how much "doing" do we need to do to make up for that power? I say, no matter how much we do, if "not doing" has that much power over us, we will never be free.

This guilt of "not doing" can drive us to fill our days with as much as we can possibly cram in. The fear of guilt can make us crazy.

Instead of "doing" to get rid of guilt, we need to get rid of the power that "should" has over us.

In the words of Deepak Chopra, create intention, but hold no attachments to the results.

That may seem counter intuitive. I mean, if we "don't care" whether things get done or not, they won't ever get done, right?

However, it actually works the other way. The more we care about whether things get done, the harder it is to do them, and when they don't get done, we feel terrible. Then, we get used to feeling so terrible when things don't get done, that we get preemptive guilt before we even have a chance to do what we need to do. Then, we start to feel guilt as soon as we decide to do something, because we've been there so many times, it's a habit, and instead of only feeling guilt when we don't do something, we feel guilt until we get it done.

However, if we have the intention, yet don't get caught up in the emotions of disappointment, we have a much higher chance of doing what we really need to do. If we don't have an attachment to the results of an intention, we can make space for things to turn out differently than we expected, and maybe, just maybe, things will actually be better than we anticipated. When we are free of guilt, we are also free to let the world work with us to decide which things we really need, and which things are really good for the universe, and which things are actually selfish, destructive or meaningless.

That's not to say that intention without attachment will get everything that we need done, done. We can never do that. No matter how hard we try, we can never get everything done. But intention without attachment gives us the freedom to let go and move one when we make a mistake. It gives us the power to make change, and the power to love ourselves and keep going when things go in an unexpected direction. This point of view gives us energy to do more. Guilt makes us tired, and then we're even less likely to get done what really needs to be done.

Guilt was a major part of my life for so long. It's really hard to love oneself when we are full of guilt. It's also hard to love and be accepting of others when we are so hard on ourselves. I'm finally learning that. Intention without attachment is exactly what I needed to learn (and to continue learning). And that's what successful people do. I can see it now, all over the place, where I never saw it before, and always wondered, "How do they do it?"

Now I know.