Posted by stjames on May 21, 2003, at 21:46:26
In reply to Re: What is passive aggression?, posted by coral on May 19, 2003, at 6:55:21
> As I understand it, passive/aggressive behavior is overt agreement/covert refusal as a pattern.
Excellent discriuption ! It describes my Mom to a tee. My analyst pointed this out years ago. The key is that the P/A is in control, but covert.I demand poeple take responsibility for actions
and themselves, very anti-P/A. Poor mom !
One day I decided to gift mom with the tens of thousands of $$ they spent on my thearpy, and verbally grabbed her by the sholders and shook some sence into her. She refused to beleive she was in control of the family till I pointed out hundereds of times Mom and Dad disagreed on major stuff and we always did what mom wanted & that we got to this point by passive means.
Finally mom got it, that after being passivally
in control for 40 yrs of marrage, she could put down
the passive BS and just say "This is what we are going to do" and do it. Dad might blow hard, but he was well trained and always fell in line.I think that mom, deep down, knew she was the power person, and it seems to really helped to have someone acknowlage this point.
However, P/A is about anger so mom had to still
express that in a P/A manner. She always was forgetfull, but not about her stuff. Meals for my dad, over the years, have progressed to bird portions. Mom likes on cigs a coffee, show food was not a big issue.Now that mom is in her late 70's she is becomming
forgetful due to age, and not P/A. For me, having seen this behavior all my life, I have to try hard to not get mad at her as my gut reaction is she is turning her very annoying A/P on me. She forgot my birthday 2 years ago and I was quite mad for months, as I had seen this done to my dad many times. It took me some time to realize mom was just getting old, most likely I was denying this
point, too.Hmmm... I often wonder how it must be to have controled people all these years with forgetfulness, only to find she cannot control
forgetfullness any more & it gets turned on her.
poster:stjames
thread:227551
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030517/msgs/228232.html