- Ambiguity or speaking cryptically: a means of creating a feeling of insecurity in others or of disguising one's own insecurities.
- Chronically being late and forgetting things: another way to exert control or to punish.
- Fear of competition
- Fear of dependency
- Fear of intimacy as a means to act out anger: The passive–aggressive often cannot trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone.
- Making chaotic situations
- Making excuses for non-performance in work teams
- Obstructionism
- Procrastination
- Sulking
- Victimization response: instead of recognizing one's own weaknesses, tendency to blame others for own failures.
- abbey
