Dealing with people who are passive-aggressive can be exhausting and hurtful. 
Usually passive aggression comes from people who feel powerless and don’t want to feel their own feelings. They can also be blaming you for something that’s going on inside of them, again leaving them in a powerless position. Acting out of aggression comes from people feeling threatened and they are unable to sort out what they are feeling.
When we are not able to express our feelings such as anger, fear, resentment or sorrow in a healthy way, it may come out in a passive-aggressive way. People who have a hard time saying no because they feel guilty and constantly breaking promises, is another form of this behavior. Others could just make snide remarks so that they don’t have to feel their true feelings.
When we are around people playing out their patterns in this manner it’s better to not get drawn into any kind of a struggle for power. The more you try to obtain your viewpoint the nastier it could get. If you have someone in your life that is giving you backhanded zingers and claiming nothing is wrong you may need to seek a mentor that can help you with the situation.
Most of the time when people are doing their personal work, just simply bringing it to their attention will shift things for them. If this is a blind spot and it’s with someone not doing their personal development you may have to walk away from the relationship or except that you’re going to get zingers from them. In most cases when someone isn’t doing their personal work bringing up anything around their behavior will trigger them more and act out worse. The best thing you can do is to just let them know how their behavior makes you feel and do your work around your trigger.
If you are the one being passive aggressive, I suggest that you start to learn to be with all of your feelings. If fear comes up or anger or any other feeling that you’re having a hard time being with my suggestion is to sit and breathe into the belly and relax your body and just be with the feelings.
In all of my retreats you will learn about your behavior and how it is affecting you and others. Most of that are doing our personal work don’t want to project our junk onto others.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
