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Do you have someone in your life whose actions don't match their words?

You sense they're upset, but also that they're trying to conceal it from you.

Maybe they give you this silent treatment,

withhold intimacy, withhold praise. They're always procrastinating or running late or frequently critical.

When you ask about it, they act unaware that there's a problem. Huh?

Their behavior has a name.

It's called passive aggressive.

My first experience really understanding blatantly in front of my eyeballs,

passive aggressive behavior, was when I was a therapist in practice.

No, practicing to be a therapist, not a therapist already practicing.

I never know why they talk about practicing when you already have your license, but okay.

Because if you're still practicing, nobody should go to you.

But anyway, I had this couple in, and it was the first session, and I was a newbie.

I was sitting there, paying a lot of attention, doing my best, and she said, he's just driving me crazy with the stuff he does. And he there and said you know she's very demanding and very

perfectionistic and i can't do enough to please her so i'm sitting there thinking oh she must be a bitch

so i started asking her well what kinds of things are you asking him to do? And she goes, well, like the other day,

it's the weekend, we got this bush that's getting out of control. I asked him to just trim it,

just trim it back. And he says, and I did. And she still bitched. And I said, well, what did you have to bitch about? What was bitchworthy after he trimmed

the bush? And she said, he cut it down to the ground. I said, the ground? She goes, yes, there's about

a half an inch between the dirt and the top of the bush.

...