Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD)
Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD)
Individuals with PAPD view themselves as self-sufficient but feel vulnerable to control and interference from others. They believe that they are misunderstood and unappreciated, a view that is intensified by the negative responses they receive from others for their consistent negativity and defensiveness. They expect the worst in everything, even situations that are going well, and are inclined toward anger and irritability.
Individuals with PAPD are often disgruntled and declare that they are not treated as they should be. On the other hand, they are just as likely to express feeling unworthy of good fortune. They have a basic conflict concerning their self-worth; they change between self-loathing and entitlement or moral superiority. Either side of this change can be projected onto the environment. The crazy nature of this experience of self and others often leads to people beginning to avoid or limit contact with people with PAPD out of self-protection.
Individuals with PAPD see others as intrusive, demanding, interfering, controlling, and dominating. They believe that other people interfere with their freedom. They experience control by others as intolerable; they have to do things their own way. These individuals are determined that they will not be subject to the rules of others. They resent, oppose, and resist demands to meet expectations from others in a behavioral pattern seen in both work and social settings. Their main coping strategies are passive resistance, surface submissiveness, evasion, and circumventing of rules
• sullen contrariness with little provocation;
• restlessness, unstable and erratic feelings;
• inclination to be easily offended by trivial issues;
• low frustration tolerance and chronic impatience and irritability unless things go their way;
• vacillation from being distraught and despondent to being petty, spiteful, stubborn, and contentious;
• short-lived enthusiasm and cheer with ready reversion to being disgruntled, critical, and envious;
• begrudging the good fortune of others;
• quarrelsome reactions to indifference or minor slights from others;
• emotions close to the surface; they may burst into tears at a small upset;
• discharging anger or abuse at others with minimal provocation;
• impulsivity and explosive unpredictability -- making others uncomfortable; ability to be pleasantly social with expression of warm affection but then easily provoked into hurt obstinacy and cruel, nasty interaction