Passive aggressiveness and the outer critic, what I now have learned.

Children are initially wired to respond angrily to parental abuse or neglect. Outside of the fight types, most traumatised children learn early that protesting parental unfairness is an unpardonable offense.  They are generally forced to repress their protests and complaints.  This then renders their anger silent and subliminal.  This anger however, does not disappear.  It percolates as an ever accumulating sea of resentment that can fuel the outer critic’s obsession for finding fault and seeing danger everywhere.

Viewing all relationships through the lens of parental abandonment, the outer critic never lets down its guard.  It continuously transfers unexpressed childhood anger onto others, and silently scapegoats them by blowing current disappointments out of proportion. Citing insignificant transgressions as justifications, the survivor flashes back into outer critic mode, and silently fumes and grumbles.

When silently blaming the wrong person becomes habitual, it manifests as passive aggressiveness.  Common examples of passive aggressiveness are distancing yourself in hurt withdrawal or pushing others away with backhanded compliments. Other examples include poor listening, hurtful teasing disguised as joking, and the withholding of positive feedback and appreciation.  Chronic lateness and poor follow through on commitments can also be unconscious, passive aggressive ways of expressing anger to others.

Pete Walker,  Shrinking the Outer Critic

Excerpt from Complex PTSD from Surviving to Thriving.

I found the above quote in my reading today.  I understood more about passive aggressiveness from it.  I also thought of how it might be to be raised by parents who didn’t handle issues of conflict, control, self expression and dominance well.  Something that I witnessed a lot in childhood was that if we were hurt and tried to tell Dad we were told we were not hurt.  Or Mum and Dad would fight and as Dad wouldn’t hear Mum or teased her for being mad she would not speak to him for at least a day;

Its easy to imagine in this situation that intimacy comes along with a lot of fear and terror, its difficult to trust that you will be responded to well.  If you are then shamed for ‘seeking attention’, left alone a lot its not going to be easy to have any attention directed at you, even positive attention.

I am grateful to a blogging friend for pointing out the issue of fear to me as it rose its head in the conflict of Thursday.  I found it very confusing to see that in some way I was thrilled by a birthday message and promotion for a blog while at the same time feeling uncomfortable.  The person being sensitive then took it all down and that upset me and I then posted another post which upset them in which I implied that in some way I had been under attack or misunderstood.  What I had wished was a person would recognise my discomfort as something that goes along with growth and movement out of an old pattern but they did not, they acted out of the goodness of their heart to ease my distress and discomfort.

I am so sorry now as I see it was my mixed up feelings about having attention showed to me and being promoted that ended up hurting them and then I tried to blame them in some way for paying attention to me in the first place.  OH God  what a mess 🙂

All I can do now is own my part in it.  I was very hurt when they lashed out and told me they had written a response along the lines of passive aggressive, jealous, unstable, Ick!!! and had posted it on their blog.  Now they were over reacting to my over reaction.

Anyway I have some peace now that I see the part I played in things.  I apologised and the friendship did not survive.  I was not fully conscious of what I was doing.    I still don’t ever want to get carried away with ego but as my therapist points out not all narcissism is unhealthy we need some positive narcissism and this is what is not very well developed in me.  Its something I need to work on.  I would like to say thank you to Silent Fall for trying to promote me.  I am so sorry my own difficulties from the past made things so confusing.