AngerWise

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One style of expressing anger is to do whatever you can to hurt and undermine your enemy without outwardly doing anything aggressive. This is known as a ‘passive aggressive’ style. The modus operandi is to wage warfare but in a way that you can’t be accused or nailed down for your aggressive behavior.

Passive aggressive is often so subtle that we don’t even know we’re doing it; we don’t acknowledge to ourselves that we are being aggressive. We may have a self righteous feeling of “I’m not doing anything wrong here. This is normal and I’m just going about my own business.”

For example we may be fighting with our spouse or be embroiled with them in a power struggle. We do simple things to irritate them like leave the toilet seat up, neglect to do our dishes, or forget to call them to let them know we’ll be late. None of these are outwardly aggressive, but we know it will piss them off, which is exactly what we want. Yet we may or may not even be aware of our intentions ourselves.

Passive aggressive is particularly insidious because of this quiet and potentially blind quality. It’s harder to see in ourselves, and harder to point out to someone else, because it’s easy to deny any bad intention in our actions.

The way we look at people as we walk down the street, the way we don’t look at them, or how we carry our shoulder bag and accidentally bump it into a stranger because we don’t like them: these are all behaviors that express this form of subtle aggression.

Another way this commonly manifests is through our speech. We say things we know will put the other person off and upset them. We  know we’re going to get a negative response and yet we say it anyway because our subtle and perhaps unconscious goal is to cause harm.

This isn’t some ‘big baddie’ behavior. We all do this. So, how can we deal with passive aggressive behavior in ourselves or others? That’s a longer story, but a good first step is to recognize that under the aggressive behavior is vulnerability and fear. From there you can discover a clarity of mind about how to respond to the situation.

According to Buddhist and other spiritual teachings, basic human nature is fundamentally good. In Buddhism this is known as “basic goodness.” The idea is that at our most absolute core, rock bottom level, there is really no problem, and in fact we are brilliant, awake, and sane people…

To help us understand how our anger patterns develop we’re going to take a brief tour of developmental psychology. This is the first in a series of posts, and the posts are all linked, each one connecting to the following one etc.

Picking up where we left off, when a child is nurtured in a loving environment for the a sufficient time do consolidate their trust in their mother’s love, they are all that much more likely to grow into an adult …

Love is a powerful force, and its presence or lack thereof can dramatically alter an individual’s state of well-being. Psychology studies and other scientific research have shown that those raised with sufficient love have stronger immune systems, lead healthier emotional lives…

We left off last time having just experienced the traumatic feelings of our mother not always being there, which is very confusing for us. This is a shock for us, however as soon as our mother’s love returns, we usually feel safe and taken care of once again…

At this stage, the developmental story becomes more complex, and due to space limitations and in order to stay on our topic, we’ll have to leave many levels of detail behind. But the stage is now set for our exploration of how anger develops…

Another dynamic that happens when we are cut off from our mother’s love too soon is that we develop patterns of dissociation. The pain and confusion of being abandoned by our life source is more than our unformed self can process…

The story of early childhood wounding is a glimpse into a tragic and painful dimension of being human. Even though our nature is made of goodness and love, due to our ignorance of that very nature, we perpetuate suffering for …

As a youth, Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx, lived a life of anger, drugs, and alcohol. With the help of Buddhist meditation, he eventually channeled the energy of his anger and dissatisfaction into a desire to be of help.