Daily Om - Claiming Our Feelings

This is a nice, though slightly too simplistic, Daily Om article on how not to be passive-aggressive, which requires us to claim and be aware of our feelings. We need to be able to acknowledge and express our anger in healthy ways and repress it.

We talked about this in a therapy group I lead - most members feel that anger is rarely a healthy emotion. I offered the suggestion that anger, like all emotions, is neutral, but how we experience and use it determines whether it is creative or destructive.

Anger, experienced and used wisely, may be the most powerful tool for generating change. But not if we repress it and act it out in passive-aggressive ways.

Claiming Our Feelings

Passive Aggressive Behavior

The way to end passive aggressive behavior on your part or others’ is with complete honesty and truth in any situation.

If you’ve ever found yourself repressing your anger and behaving in other ways to get your point across, you may be someone who is adept at engaging in passive-aggressive behavior. Although passive-aggressive behavior is recognized as a psychological disorder, it also describes the behavior that many people use to cope with confrontational situations. Such behavior has the outward appearance of being peaceful, yet it is really an attempt to express oneself in seemingly passive ways—usually without accepting responsibility for doing so. For example, someone who doesn’t want to attend an event with a partner might engage in behavior that causes them to be late or miss the event without ever admitting to their partner that they never wanted to go to the function at all. Procrastination, inefficiency, stubbornness, and sullenness are some of the many ways that anger can be expressed indirectly.

It is important not to judge ourselves when we engage in passive-aggressive behavior. You may want to consider that you are not owning your feelings or your expression by indirectly expressing yourself. Perhaps you are judging your feelings and needs as wrong—which is why you are expressing yourself indirectly. You also may be worried that others will judge you for feeling the way that you do. Remember that anger and every other emotion are never good or bad. They can, however, become toxic of you don’t express them in healthy and proactive ways. When we express ourselves directly, we are more likely to be heard by the other person. It also becomes easier for us to ask for and get what we want.

Once we learn to be honest with ourselves about our feelings, we can begin to directly express ourselves to others. By learning to express ourselves directly, we prevent misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and resentment from cropping up in our relationships. We also learn to communicate with others in healthy and productive ways. It is never too late to start working on ourselves and our behaviors, just take it one day at a time.