No, because why would someone want to control someone they would choose objects over? That's not passive aggressive, that's projection. They are projecting feelings into something that can't give them feelings back. It's a self defensive mechanism not an attack.
So, this makes me want to ask you: Is there precedent for pushing a positive interpretation of the behaviors associated with a disorder and suppressing any negative interpretations? Analogy: Imagine that mental health professionals are attached to the idea that physically abusive people mean well, and that the abuse comes because they are unable to control the movement of their arms and fists. Imagine that any discussion, with physical abusers, of considering others' needs, controlling one's feelings, etc., were forbidden, because they mean well! You'll make them feel bad! You have to respect their choices (to hit people) or they might have a breakdown! It's of course easier to make these sorts of claims for a disorder where nobody's swinging a fist. Could a single hightly prominent professional push such an interpretation of a disorder, suppressing other interpretations? To the extent that other professionals hesitate to communicate anything to the contrary, at least in public?
By choosing the objects over them, they are controlling them. While the children are in the home, they get the evidence day after day after day that the stuff is more important than their most basic needs. It's emotional abuse. By the time the children are out of the home, they've internalized the belief that they're less important than garbage. That's a pretty strong control, or at least a pretty strong impact. And it can be done with the hoarder posing, all the while, as the passive, kindly, to-be-pitied victim.
I understand the point you are trying to make there, but that only works when the person is already dependent on the 'hoarder.' Many hoarder cases I've found though, the person uses the items to fill a whole in their life from something or someone they have lost. So though there can be some circumstances where a person would fit into the category of what you are explaining, I see it more as the exception than the rule.
Actually, DSM IV and onwards is neck deep in controversy and criticism, I won't mention any names or specifics, but have a look at this small excerpt from Wiki page on DSM, and you can read more about most recent controversies with the fifth edition. Bottom line is, as useful as it is, DSM classification doesn't take place of phenomenological diagnoses, because they are much more robust and based in fact, ie. patient's own words and mental state examination, then DSM is. Still, DSM is a very useful tool to the professionals, and adjunct more than a reference. So in reality, nobody can suppress other medical professionals to state their opinions, but DSM as a reference tool for non-medical professionals, and especially administration, legal profession and insurance companies, can create some damage due to lack of understanding and blind adherence.
Well, on the hoarding shows, which admittedly aren't exactly a peer-reviewed statistical survey, it often appears that "the hoarding started" based on a traumatic event--where the traumatic event was someone throwing out hoarded stuff. Or "the hoarding started" after someone died--when the someone was the person who was keeping the hoarding under control. Or "the hoarding started" after the kids left to live with relatives--when they left because of the hoard. The hoarder needs to be innocent, and therefore they need something to blame the hoarding on. There are a whole lot of children who grow up in hoarded homes--a whole lot. And the attitude of unbroken sympathy to the hoarder often keeps those children from being helped. As long as you assume that the hoarder wants a safe clean home and just needs help in creating it, you'll keep trying and trying and trying, and accepting the hoarder's excuses, and meanwhile the child continues to grow up in filth, developing lifelong emotional and physical problems. We're not talking about merely messy homes here--we're talking about extreme fire hazard, broken plumbing and heat and appliances because the hoarder "can't" have repair people in, kids who haven't been able to take a normal bath or sleep in their own beds for year, kids who are fighting asthma in a dust-filled environment. And it's not rare to add rats, roaches, maggots, leaking roofs, pet and human feces, air quality that will slowly destroy the lungs. If you accept that the hoarder does not want the hoard to go away, any more than the average alcoholic wants the alcohol to go away, you can address the problem with clear eyes. (Edited to add: I'm just fine with agreeing to disagree--I'm not going to chase you with arguments forever. I just needed to make that point, that as long as the hoarder is a sympathetic character who must be treated with kid gloves, the kids and other victims of the hoard aren't going to get the help they need.)
My only experience isn't just watching television! For a Sociology degree I've had to take Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Childhood Psychology, and several other courses involving Sociology and other behavioral courses. Fact is, people who have psychological problems don't get that way by choice. Many people would like to think they are, and that they can just "snap out of it," but if it really was that easy, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Oh, the children of hoarders know they can't just snap out of it. They've spent their entire lives learning what hoarding disorder is. But that doesn't mean that it's right for the mental health profession to throw up its hands and leave the kids in filth. At the extreme end, if the hoarder can't improve or refuses treatment, then the kids should live with someone else. Yes, that may mean foster care. And there are plenty of adult children of hoarders who wish that they'd been placed in foster care in their childhoods.
Just out of curiosity—and don't answer if the question is out of line—but have you had experience dealing with hoarders yourself? You've obviously thought about this a lot, and know how bad this hoarding behaviour can be for people who need to either deal with or live with (omigod) the hoarder. It would be pure hell, I can imagine. Bad enough for spouses and/or adult children to cope with, but to be the child of a hoarder? You really wouldn't have any power, would you? And the danger would be you could grow up to become one yourself, because you think it's 'normal' to live in crowded squalor. Either that, or you'd be cautious about accumulating anything at all, that wasn't a basic necessity.
My mother was a mild hoarder--so mild that, really, the house probably didn't even qualify as hoarded. It was too dirty for me to consider having friends over--ever--but plumbing and electricity and appliances worked, it would have been possible to escape in case of a fire, the food was bug-free, there were no rats or mice, the roaches were defeated after eighteen months of repeated visits from a frustrated exterminator fighting unlimited roach hiding places, Mom didn't store stuff in my room and didn't object when I cleaned my room, it was possible to bathe, there were several square inches of kitchen counter on which to make a sandwich, we only had one cat and we did change its box and clean up its accidents, we threw out food packaging and other obvious garbage, and so on. I slept in a bed. I didn't smell when I went to school. Most children of hoarders would have considered it paradise. But hoarders have certain personality characteristics, whatever hoarding stage they're at, so I participate in a support group for adult children of hoarders, and therefore have a much better idea of what real full-on hoarding is like for a child. In adulthood many of them, yep, either struggle with keeping too much stuff, or struggle with a huge level of self-disgust if there's even a small flaw in their homes. And most of them are still desperately trying to rescue the parent from the hoard. Many of them grew up being blamed for the hoard that they weren't allowed to clean up ("Everybody's going to be sorry if this mess isn't cleaned up--DON'T TOUCH THAT!!!") or grew up with an inappropriate sense of responsibility for the parent, so as adults they still feel obligated to rescue the parent from the parent. And of course no one believes that anyone wants to live in hoarded conditions, so no matter how much the hoarding parent fights tooth and nail against cleanup, there's always a risk that the child will get blamed for elder abuse. Not allowed to force a cleanup, blamed for the failure to force a cleanup. Whee!
Geez... well I hope you have recovered from that experience. And you say it was mild. No wonder you feel strongly about this issue. Thanks for giving us your first-hand insight.
That's so sad My husband's mother's passive aggressive for sure. Mind you, since he got married and then the second brother also moved out to live with his girlfriend, the mother's taken a turn for the better. Apparently things are generally pleasant nowadays when my husband visits. My husband still gets told over the phone sometimes though that yet another fight has broken out in the house, or that somehow mother's in a bad mood and everyone's walking on eggshells. While he's troubled, he's always saying, "I'm so glad I'm not there anymore and I don't have to face it." My ex is also passive aggressive. Totally true about the avoidance of problems and taking on of any responsibilities (such as never dealing with any discussions or fights - he'd either go silent and walk away, or else come back with a snide off-topic remark or correcting technical word usage). And also about the whole, "I really care about what you need but somehow I just can't deliver!" A distinct example I remember was when I asked him to visit me (he was in Germany, I was in England) and he kept saying what a shame, he simply doesn't have the money. Then he goes and buys like 3 expensive books ) That sense of entitlement - he had that absolutely. When I first started dating my now-husband, my ex walked into my husband's room and requested would he please not have sex with me because I'm a Christian and he just couldn't bear to see my husband lead me into sin. For some reason I stayed "friends" with him for years afterwards, even after I got married. After he got a job, he would say hi on google chat, disappear without comment, and then when I asked him why he starts a conversation with me, he tells me I'm just not interesting and never have anything good to say Then I detail to him exactly how he's been like, the whole disappearing act, and I don't remember what he said, but it was certainly insulting and not taking any blame. I usually just conclude with, "Yeah well, we have no respect for each other anyway." To which he would go, "Hmmm. Yeah." Then silence He's finally out of my life for good.
That's a great article. I'm currently reading Communicating Effectively for Dummies and it mentions passive aggressive behavior. I wish I had learned about things like aggressive and assertive much sooner.
@Mckk : Gosh, how awful! You poor thing, I can imagine how one can get sucked into a relationship with such a person, but shame on him for being so horrible. He reminds me of my ex husband's (I've had a few! Just kidding, only two ) mother. She was a single mum since she had him (when she was 18). She comes from a very poor working class family and she had to work since she was 14. She left my ex's father soon after my ex was born, because his dad didn't measure up. This pushed that guy into alcoholism, and he never married again (he's a journalist and a photographer). So my ex's mum was always fiercely independent, but overattached to her son, so when he moved in with me, literally a week after we met (he was desperate to get away from her and I needed a flatmate) the chaos began. It basically went between hysteria and passive aggression, back and forth for seven years. I watched that poor guy, who couldn't help being a bit of an asshole himself, lose all his hair and develop a drinking problem through all that. What started as a 6ft4 Keanu Reeves with swimmer's body, became a shell of a man. Not that physique change bothered me at all, but he had other problems which led to 'unreconcilable differences'. When we broke up, we both moved to another continent just to be as far away from her as possible. It's hard, because nobody really wants to be like that, but this lack of insight really messes with them, and they can't change if they can't even see the problem.
I have a passive aggressive ex too, and I work with her. So every chance she gets she has a comment to make about me, and is always happy to have a good sarcastic quib if I say something she doesn't agree with. It's getting childish. And it's made all the worse by the fact that we broke up on good terms. To give one actual example, some friends including myself and this ex went for a meal, and I was in a conversation about Star Wars. And someone made a comment about ethic diversity in Star Wars. I said 'What? Like the one black guy in the entire series?' and so then my ex (who wasn't even in this conversation) actually googled how many there were in Star Wars on her phone, and then shouted at me I was wrong and named them. I mean, I asinine can you get? Those Blaming and Victimization behavior types really do remind me of this girl. Reading this has been incredibly useful giving her actions some context. Thank you @jazzabel
LOL..wut? The cheek! I know what my response would have been, and it wouldn't have been couched in flowery words. Something along the line of go **** yourself
@Lemex : The good thing is, she's mainly out of your life. It's what always cheers me up when I encounter someone like that from my past And knowledge of psychology helps, often the most hurtful people are hurting the most, deep inside, and even though it's not a reason to let them hurt you, it helps deal with it. It also helps to know what works and what doesn't, so you can use the techniques that will achieve some results, rather than waste energy needlessly. I'm pretty good with dealing with personality disorders and passive aggression of any kind, it was actually my area of expertise within psychiatry, and still they get to me in personal life. At work, you put your hat on and it forms a barrier all around you so you can deal with hurtful, aggressive, dangerous, depressing things every day, go home, have a shower and play with your kids, fix dinner, laugh with friends, and then get up in the morning and do it all over again. But in personal life, you don't have such a barrier. The worse off psychologically someone is, the more they'll transfer their own feelings onto you (countertransference), and if that's rage, anger, disgust, insecurity, resentment, impatience, then you can imagine how lonely they end up being.
I came across a site yesterday that had some awesome and funny examples of passive aggressive notes, this one made me cry with laughter
That's not passive aggressive at all, it's actually quite aggressive. Further note: Are we all just going to pretend this isn't the most meta passive aggressive attack? It's staggeringly obvious, or would be to anyone who understands the behavior.
It was funny, but I agree, not passive at all. Passive aggressive would be attacking someone indirectly, but still a bit obviously. Frankly discussing disagreements or complaints one has with/about another might be aggressive, it may or may not be legitimate, but it wouldn't be passive. It might be passive aggressive if the point was only to make someone look bad. But if the point was to reinforce one's position in the original disagreement, that's likely legitimate passion for one's position, not a passive aggressive opportunity to insult a person. If the issue were to be discussed without bringing up the old disagreement, some people might find that a more PC way to discuss the issue. But then, that could be seen as actually passive aggressive if the person with whom one had the original disagreement recognizes the discussion applies to them while they are not being directly called out. I'm a call out directly kind of gal. Not everyone likes it. Not sure choosing the passive aggressive route is any better in relative situations. Edited to add: Of course if I add anything about 'persecution complexes' where a person believes the issue is about attacking them when the actual issue is passion for one's views and beliefs, or I mention 'projection', this post is going to end up even deeper into true passive aggressive territory.
I've noticed you are very assertive. But of course there's no way that this thread could ever be directed at you. That would be a very passive aggressive thing to do.
It would also be the wrong way to handle a problem someone might have with another person on the forum. The best way to handle problems is in private or through a moderator. Flaming is flaming whether it is in a direct or passive aggressive manner.
