Treatments for Passive Aggressive Behavior

You can determine passive aggressive people because of their negative attitudes, their feelings of envy and resentment toward others, their cynical and skeptical outlooks, their argumentative natures, irresponsible behavior patterns and other related traits. They offer passive opposition to demands for acceptable functioning in communal, public and job-related circumstances. Learn a few ways to deal with these people.

Individual Counseling

• Because of its abstract nature, treatments of conditions like this take a long time. The first priority would be to help the patient assess his behavior. When he finally determines his problems, he will try to find a rationale behind it and aim to justify the earlier behavior, thereby consequently hinder his progress. So one mode of treatment would be to counsel him individually and make him realize how he is slowing his own success. Promotion of self-confidence in these people is the primary key in any counseling session. The patient should be given certain tools or methods with which he can identify the occurrence of his passive aggression. He should be provided an opportunity to come back for a tuning up session with the counselor in case of a relapse. The counselor has to make him realize that if he alters his behavior, he will lead a better life because he will be able to make better peace with people around them and do well at the workplace. The counselor has to, at one time, in the course of the first couple of months; point out the patient's cynicism toward life. Done too early during the counseling process, the patient might not come back for the rest of the sessions. Care should be taken such that the patient does not become increasingly irritated or anxious. This can happen easily during the time that the person is being forced to look into his negativity. With gradual counseling, passive aggressive individuals will learn from the peripheral benefits of a healthier and more productive life by relating better to others, and his earlier passive-aggression will disappear over time.

Group Therapy

• While individual counseling tries to make passive aggressive people more self-confident and helps them relate better to others, group therapy aids mainly in controlling hostility, management of which should be an important issue in any person with such a personality disorder. Group sessions often bring out a person's volatile side. This is when the group moderator can step in, point it out and urge other members of the group to voice opinions regarding the same. The ideas of others as well as the moderator's assistance in rehearsal and conduction of proper behavior within the group go a long way in curbing passive aggression traits in any person.

Medication

• Although there are no specific drugs to treat passive aggressive conditions, there are certain medicines that might aid in lessening certain indicator signs of the disorder. Antidepressants like fluoxetine and sertraline are advised sometimes to bring down irritability in people with such personality disorders.