Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder quotes

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER (PAPD)

People with PAPD are characterized by covert obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, and inefficiency.  Such behavior is a manifestation of passively expressed underlying aggression. 

PAPD patients characteristically procrastinate, resist demands for adequate performance, find excuses for delays, and find fault with those on whom they depend; yet they refuse to extricate themselves from the dependent relationships.  They usually lack assertiveness and are not direct about their own needs and wishes.  They fail to ask needed questions about what is expected of them and may become anxious when forced to succeed or when their usual defense of turning anger against themselves is removed.

In interpersonal relationships, these people attempt to manipulate themselves into a position of dependence, but others often experience this passive, self-detrimental behavior as punitive and munipulative.  People with this disorder expect others to do their errands and to carry out their routine responsibilities.  Friends and clinicians may become enmeshed in trying to assuage the patients' many claims of unjust treatment.  The close relationships of people with PAPD, however, are rarely tranquil or happy.  Because they are bound to their resentment more closely than to their satisfaction, they may never even formulate goals for finding enjoyment in life.  People with this disorder lack self-confidence and are typically pessimistic about the future.


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*FEAR OF INTIMACY - Guarded & often mistrusful, he is reluctant to show his emotional fragility.  He's often out of touch with his feelings,  reflexively denying feelings he thinks will "trap" or reveal him, like love.  He picks fights to create distance.

*FEAR OF COMPETITION - Feeling inadequate, he is unable to compete with other men in work and love.  He may operate either as a self-sabotaging wimp with a pattern of failure.

*OBSTRUCTIONISM - Just tell a p/a man what you want, no matter how small, and he may promise to get it for you.  But he won't say when, and he"ll do it deliberately slowly just to frustrate you.  Maybe he won't comply at all.  He blocks any real progress he sees to your getting your way.

*FOSTERING CHAOS - The p/a man prefers to leave the puzzle incomplete, the job undone.

*FEELING VICTIMIZED - The p/a man protests that others unfairly accuse him rather than owning up to his own misdeeds.  To remain above reporach, he sets himself up as the apparently hapless, innocent victim of your excessive demands and tirades.

*MAKING EXCUSES & LYING - The p/a man reaches as far as he can to fabricate excuses for not  fulfilling promises.  As a way of withholding information, affirmation or love - to have power over you - the p/a man may choose to make up a story rather than give you a straight answer.

*PROCRASTINATION - The p/a man has an odd sense of time - he believes that deadlines don't exist for him.

*CHRONIC LATENESS & FORGETFULNESS - One of the most infuriating & inconsiderate of all p/a traits is his inability to arrive on time.  By keeping you waiting, he sets the ground rules of the relationship.  And his selective forgetting - used only when he wants to avoid an obligation.

*AMBIGUITY - He is master of mixed messages and sitting on fences.  When he tells you something, you may still walk away wondering if he actually said yes or no.

*SULKING - Feeling put upon when he is unable to live up to his promises or obligations, the p/a man retreats from pressures around him and sulks, pouts and withdraws.


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INTERPERSONAL ASPECTS:

* Superficially submissive.
* Indirect control of others without taking responsibility for actions, or anger, denies/refuses open statements of resistance/maintains own "good intentions."
* Cannot say a direct "no," indirectly expressed resistance to demands of others for performance, thwarts/frustrates authority/spouse/partners/relatives.
* Intentional but unconscious passivity to hide aggression, denial of/confusion over own role in conflict, gives mixed signals ("go away and come close") hostile defiance alternating with contrition.
* Overcritical, "left-handed" compliments, subtle attacks, blames, insults, complains to others/"bitches," critical of boss/all authorities/those with power/control over him/her, carping/fault-finding as defense against intimacy/commitment, unnecessary and prolonged argumentativeness.
* Autocratic/tyrannical, demanding, manipulative, harassing, ruminates, troubled/conflictual relationships.

AFFECTS:

* Denial of most emotions (especially anger, hurt, resentment), hostile motives, deeply and persistently ambivalent, sullen, envious, resentful.


VOCATIONAL/ACADEMIC ASPECTS:

* Intentional inefficiency that covertly conveys hostility, veiled hostility, resents control/demands, fails to meet deadlines.
* Qualifies obedience with: tardiness, dawdling, sloppiness, stubbornness, sabatoge, "accidental" errors, procrastination, forgetfulness, incompleteness, witholding of critical information/responses/replies, leisurely work pace.
* Not lazy or dissatisfied with job, but spotty employment record, no promotions despite ability.