PASSIVE VS AGGRESSIVE

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Dr Zannah Hackett, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

I recently came across an article about passive-aggressive behavior, and while I found the subject interesting, I was struck by how quickly human behavior can be reduced to a label.

Too often, theories about behavior begin with the assumption that people displaying similar behaviors must have arrived there through similar experiences, unresolved childhood issues, learned coping mechanisms, suppressed anger, or emotional dysfunction. These explanations may be relevant for some people, but are they sufficient to explain everyone?

I don’t believe they are.

Through my work with the ULT, I have learned to ask a different question: What if we stopped beginning with what we believe is “wrong” with someone and first sought to understand their true nature?

Within the ULT framework, passive and aggressive are not judgments. They are descriptive terms that help us explore how an individual’s natural polarity may show up in the physical world. Neither is inherently good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. The difficulty often begins when we expect one nature to think, respond, communicate, or react like another.

An individual with a naturally stronger aggressive orientation may be inclined to move quickly, confront circumstances directly, and address what is happening head-on. In a crisis, these qualities can be extraordinarily valuable. Without clarity and self-awareness, however, that same intensity may be expressed in ways that become volatile, confrontational, or destructive.

A more passive orientation may respond very differently. Rather than confronting circumstances immediately, the individual may withdraw, internalize, observe, or create distance. Under pressure and without clarity, those tendencies can also become counterproductive. Yet expecting that person to respond with the immediacy or force of someone with a more aggressive nature may only compound the problem.

This is why understanding matters.

We live in a world where words quickly become labels, labels become opinions, and opinions can eventually be mistaken for truth. But human beings are far more complex than the terminology we use to describe their behavior.

Clarity gives us another option. Instead of immediately asking, “What is wrong with this person?” we can begin asking, “What is natural to this person and what happens when that nature is operating under stress, pressure, misunderstanding, or misalignment?”

That distinction can change the conversation from judgment to understanding.

We are physical human beings having physical experiences in a physical world. The ULT provides a different lens through which to explore how physical nature shows up uniquely in the individual, including polarity and other characteristics that may influence how we navigate our environment, relationships, challenges, and choices.

If you would like to explore the true nature of who you are, including your individual polarity and the insights greater self-awareness may provide, connect with a certified ULT professional and begin discovering the real Y.O.U.

Nature doesn’t need our opinion to be what it is. Sometimes it simply needs our willingness to understand it.