Why Passive Aggression Is the #1 Driver of Burnout (And What to Do About It)
“When you start writing, you’re turning on a faucet. The water is brown and it’s full of whatever has just been in there and clogged up and waiting to come out, and then you just keep writing and writing until the water is clear and you can find your own voice.”
Yes. This is a quote about the writing process. But it’s also about anger.
Anger is as life-giving and necessary as water, but only when your anger runs clear is it time to share its message with your world.
You can work 40 hours a week and still feel burned out.
You can sleep eight hours, exercise regularly, have supportive relationships, and still feel like you're running on empty.
The reason isn't what you think.
Burnout researchers have identified six legitimate drivers: values misalignment, lack of reward, fairness issues, absence of community, lack of control, and workload. Those things matter. But here's what I've learned after working with hundreds of people: none of those six factors will burn you out if there's one thing happening underneath them all.
Anger that isn't being felt, moved, or expressed fully and healthily.
Specifically, the combination of:
(a) Anger that's repressed, suppressed, or expressed at someone else—pushed down unconsciously, consciously stuffed, or directed outward rather than processed through your own system.
PLUS
(b) Passive aggressive behaviors that let off just enough steam to keep the system from boiling over.
Because here's the trap: if you actually let the pressure fully release? Things might change. And that terrifies us. So instead, we use passive aggression—the small rebellions, the subtle jabs, the quiet refusals—to let off enough steam to keep the dam technically intact. Just enough pressure relief to prevent the flood.
This is the real culprit. Not the hours. Not the systems. Not even the circumstances.
Why? Because it takes enormous energy to pretend to like something you don't. Especially when you're pretending with yourself. And that energy demand only increases over time. What burns you out isn't actually the lack of values alignment or the number of hours. It's the energy required to tolerate how awful it actually feels while keeping it all contained.
The research backs this up. Physician and trauma researcher Gabor Maté documents extensively in When the Body Says No that suppressed emotions—particularly anger and grief—are stored in the body and because of the energy it takes to constantly repress, can emerge as physical illness, autoimmune disease, and chronic stress responses. When you're chronically pushing down anger and using passive aggression to let off just enough steam to prevent real change, your nervous system stays in a state of vigilance. Your body is literally braced against something. That's exhaustion at the cellular level.
Now: please be careful here. Not every sickness, illness, or malady comes from forgetting to scream into the void every quarter. Sometimes, bodies are bodies, germs are germs, life is life and we're in a tough physical place. However, the energy it takes to repress anger is substantial.
The burnout you're feeling might not be about doing too much. It might be about tolerating too much while letting off just enough steam to keep the dam technically intact.
The Hoover Dam: Why Passive Aggression Keeps You Trapped
Think about the Hoover Dam. It was built to hold back the mighty Colorado River—the river that carved the Grand Canyon. The dam is over 700 feet tall, nearly a quarter-mile long, and it requires sophisticated engineering to manage the pressure of all that water.
Most of us build our own versions of this dam. Usually without the sophisticated flow control.
We hold down anger. We swallow what we actually feel. We smile and pretend and people-please. And when the pressure gets too high, we let off steam in small, safe ways: being late, forgetting things, nitpicking, being sarcastic, closing doors a little harder than necessary, making passive-aggressive comments. Just enough release to keep the dam from cracking. Just enough to let us keep pretending everything's fine.
But here's what the dam never addresses: the water keeps building.
Because we're not actually releasing the pressure. We're just managing it. We're saying: I won't fully feel this, I won't fully express this, I won't let this change anything, but I will let off enough steam to keep going. And that requires enormous resources.
Think about what it takes physically to maintain a dam. Like the actual Hoover Dam, the defense mechanisms to "keep the peace" or "let them know how you feel without actually telling them" require physical resources and literal changes to your body's system. Repressed, suppressed, and unfelt anger leave you in 24/7 fight-or-flight, increasing cortisol, dumping glucose into your bloodstream, hardening arteries, slowing blood flow to the brain, rewiring your nervous system to throw more fuel into preparing to run than into silly things like digesting food or making thoughtful decisions. Your body will sacrifice most parts of itself—creativity, presence, sleep, immune function—to keep that dam technically intact.
Because what would happen if the dam broke? What would happen if you actually felt the full force of what's been building? Things might change. You might have to leave. You might have to set a boundary. You might have to say no. You might have to choose differently.
And we're terrified of that.
So we keep building the dam. We keep letting off just enough steam. And we keep burning out.
How This Works: The Pattern
Here's what happens. Something violates your values, crosses a boundary, or hurts you. Your brain registers it. Your body responds with anger—which is appropriate, useful information telling you something matters and something's wrong.
But then something happens next. Maybe you were taught as a child that anger wasn't safe. Maybe showing anger meant losing love, getting punished, or being told you were "too much." Maybe you learned that good people—especially if you're a woman—don't get angry; they get sad, or they get helpful, or they get quiet.
So instead of feeling the anger, moving it through your body, and using its clarity to take action, you do something else. You minimize it. You justify the other person's behavior. You make it your fault. You swallow it. You smile and move on.
Your nervous system registers: threat detected, but no safe release. So it stays activated. It stays vigilant. It waits for the next time something will happen.
And here's where passive aggression enters the picture. Because you're now holding this pressure—this anger you won't feel, this boundary you won't set, this truth you won't speak—your system needs release. But not the kind that would require actual change. So you let off steam in small ways: you're late, you "forget," you make a cutting comment, you do things slowly, you close the cabinet a little harder. These are the tiny rebellions that make you feel like you're expressing something without actually changing anything.
The problem? These small releases keep the pressure just manageable enough that you can continue. You can keep tolerating the thing you hate. You can keep pretending. You can keep swallowing. Because you're getting just enough release to avoid the flood that would force change.
But the dam is still holding back a mighty river. And maintaining it takes everything you've got.
And because anger is still there, unprocessed, you start doing things that protect you from feeling the full force of it: you become hypervigilant, you people-please, you avoid conflict, you ruminate, you shut down. You're burning energy constantly, in invisible ways, just managing the feeling you're not allowing yourself to have while also managing the behaviors that keep the pressure from building too much.
Do that for months or years, and you get burnout. Not because you work too much. Because you're exhausted from tolerating something you're too terrified to change.
Why This Matters Right Now
There's something important to understand about your nervous system. Psychologist and polyvagal theory researcher Stephen Porges explains that your nervous system has three states: social engagement (safe, connected, present), sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight), and dorsal vagal shutdown (freeze, dissociation, collapse).
When you're chronically suppressing anger, you're essentially telling your nervous system: I'm not safe to feel this. I need to manage it. Your system responds by staying in a low-level fight-or-flight state. Not the acute kind where you feel the adrenaline (that would be too much to ignore). The chronic kind. Where you're just perpetually ready. Tense. Waiting.
BUT IT FEELS TOTALLY NORMAL AND REGULATED because we have learned to survive in this state, to the point of not even noticing.
That's the trick that takes normal stress into chronic stress into full-blown blow burnout.
As a card-carrying intellectualizer, I wish this next part weren’t true: you can't think your way out of this.
You also can't meditate your way out, productivity-hack your way out, or time-manage your way out. Because the problem isn't your schedule or your circumstances. The problem is that you're carrying around a feeling you haven't let yourself have.
The good news: once you understand this is what's happening, you can do something about it. Quickly.
Passive-aggression is like a finger-in-the-dike-bandaid strategy that patch up the holes, let a little steam off, but otherwise prop up a broken system
The Signs: How Repressed Anger Shows Up
Repressed anger doesn't announce itself. It disguises itself. It looks like depression, anxiety, procrastination, perfectionism, people-pleasing, control, and burnout.
Here's how to recognize it. I've organized these into categories so you can see the patterns.
The Emotional & Cognitive Signs
When anger is stuck in your system, it affects how you think and feel—often in ways that seem unrelated to anger at all.
Mild to moderate depression or numbness. You're not sad exactly. You're flat. Nothing feels like it matters much. This flatness is often anger that's been pushed so far down it's sitting under a layer of resignation. Your system has given up on feeling the thing you won't let it feel.
Anxiety that shows up as background hum. Not panic attacks necessarily. Just a persistent sense that something's wrong, that you need to manage something, that you're not quite safe. This is your nervous system saying: I'm protecting you from feeling the anger by keeping you vigilant. It's exhausting.
Rumination and overthinking. You replay conversations endlessly. You can't stop thinking about what someone said or did. You construct elaborate scenarios. This is often your mind trying to solve the anger—to find a way to make sense of it so you don't have to feel it. The thinking is a management strategy.
Brain fog and memory problems. You forget important things. You misplace your keys. You walk into a room and can't remember why. You feel like you've lost IQ points. You haven't. Your brain is just allocating enormous resources to managing the feeling you're not allowing yourself to have. There's no bandwidth left for remembering things.
Feeling perpetually overwhelmed. Everything feels like too much. Not because you have too much to do necessarily, but because you're holding something underneath it all. You're not present with what's actually in front of you because part of your attention is always managing the anger.
Difficulty feeling determined or motivated. Anger unresisted, in Tibetan culture, is determination and clarity. When you block the anger, you block access to that clarity and drive. You feel stuck. Passive. Like things are happening to you rather than you moving through them.
The Relational Signs
Repressed anger changes how you show up in relationships. It makes you smaller, more accommodating, less honest. It makes you manage other people's experience instead of being present in your own.
People-pleasing and over-accommodating. You say yes when you mean no. You manage other people's feelings. You apologize for things that aren't your fault. You shrink to make space for them. This is often repressed anger saying: I'm not safe expressing what I actually want, so I'll just give you what you want. It keeps relationships surface-level and exhausting.
Conflict avoidance. You go quiet when something bothers you. You don't bring up issues. You let things build. You'd rather keep the peace than risk the conversation. This is anger saying: I'm not safe expressing this directly, so I'll pretend it doesn't matter. But it does matter. And your body knows it.
Resentment ("Isn't that nice for her," "I could never," "Must be nice"). This is repressed anger wearing a smile. You notice other people's wins and your immediate internal response is dismissive, envious, or critical. You're managing anger about your own situation by diminishing theirs.
Passive-aggressive behavior. You're late. You "forget" to do things. You do things slowly or incompletely. Your tone shifts subtly. You close doors a little harder than necessary. You nitpick. You make sarcastic comments. These are all tiny, safe ways of expressing anger without actually expressing it. Your system is leaking the thing you won't let it release.
Gossiping or venting that's really just processing anger sideways. You tell other people about what someone did, how unfair it was, what you think about them. This feels like venting—like you're getting it out. You're not. You're just rehearsing the anger without moving it. It keeps the wound fresh.
Needing to be "nice" or appear put-together. You monitor yourself constantly. You're concerned about how you come across. You edit yourself. You present a version of yourself that's acceptable, capable, not too much. This is anger management. You're containing yourself so nothing spills out.
Walking on eggshells or hyper-tending to other people's emotional state. You notice the mood in the room before you notice yourself. You adjust. You manage. You try to keep things smooth. This is your nervous system saying: If I can just control the environment, I don't have to feel what I'm feeling. It's exhausting and it never works.
The Physical Signs
Your body keeps score. Bessel van der Kolk's research on trauma shows that unprocessed emotions are literally stored in the body. Anger that's repressed doesn't disappear. It becomes physical tension, illness, and pain.
Persistent muscle tension, especially in the jaw, neck, and shoulders. Your body is braced. Literally. Muscles are contracted, holding the anger down. Over time, this becomes chronic tension headaches, TMJ problems, neck pain. Your body is trying to tell you something.
Teeth grinding or jaw clenching. Often happens at night. Your body is processing the anger you won't let yourself feel while you sleep.
Unexplained or worsening headaches. Tension headaches particularly. Your nervous system is in a state of constant mild activation.
Tingling in muscles or nerves. Your nervous system is overstimulated from chronic low-level vigilance.
Digestive issues. Your gut is sensitive to emotional states. Chronic anger suppression often shows up as digestive problems, IBS, or stomach tension.
Heart palpitations or irregular heartbeat. Your nervous system is dysregulated. Your heart is responding to the chronic state of vigilance.
Fatigue that doesn't improve with rest. This is the burnout. You're exhausted at a cellular level because your body is constantly braced.
Autoimmune issues or increased susceptibility to illness. Chronic stress from suppressed emotions tanks your immune system. Maté's research is clear on this: suppressed anger correlates with increased rates of autoimmune disease, cancer, and other serious illness.
The Behavioral Signs
How you move through the world changes when you're managing repressed anger.
Being late, frequently. This is a classic sign. You're unconsciously managing anger by not honoring other people's time. It's a tiny rebellion.
Not keeping commitments or following through inconsistently. You commit to things you don't actually want to do, then you find ways to avoid them. You're managing anger by not doing the thing.
Not doing basic maintenance (not taking out trash, not responding to emails, not dealing with admin). These are things you have control over, but you're not doing them. This is anger management—you're exerting control by not doing the things you're supposed to do.
Playing dumb or acting helpless. "I don't know how to do that," "I didn't understand," "I forgot." This is a way of getting out of things while appearing innocent. It's repressed anger expressing itself through feigned incompetence.
Isolation or withdrawing from people you care about. You pull back. You're less available. You're protecting yourself from having to manage your emotions around them. This often looks like depression but it's actually anger management.
Rushing your kids, being short with them, or insisting on rigid behavior rules. You're managing your own dysregulated nervous system by controlling theirs. You need them to be smaller, quieter, less of what they actually are. This is anger leaking out at the people who are most vulnerable to it.
Sudden bursts of anger that seem disproportionate. You snap. You lose it over something small. This is the dam breaking because the pressure got too high. The small thing wasn't the problem. It was the last thing on top of months of repressed anger.
The Thinking & Belief Signs
How you think about yourself and your situation changes when you're chronically suppressing anger.
Feeling like a victim. "How could they do this to me?" on repeat. "I have no choice." "I'm trapped." These are stories your system tells itself to justify why you're not expressing the anger. You're reframing the situation so you're not responsible for what you're feeling.
Feeling forced or obligated. "I have to," "I can't say no," "I don't have a choice." Your system is telling you that expressing your anger would be dangerous. So you're trapped.
Abusive self-talk or an inner critic that's relentless. You're angry at yourself. Furious, actually. And because it's not safe to be angry at other people, you direct it inward. You become your own abuser.
Shame postures or feeling small. Chin tucked, downward gaze, hunched shoulders, rounded back. Your body is literally making itself smaller. This is a protective posture against the anger you're afraid of.
Perfectionism or over-functioning. You do everything perfectly. You go above and beyond. You're helpful and capable and never ask for anything. This is anger management. If you're perfect, maybe you'll finally feel safe. (Spoiler: you won't.)
Spiritual bypassing. You use meditation, gratitude, religion, or any higher power framework to "stay regulated" and "be grateful" and "let things go." You're using spirituality as a management strategy for anger instead of actually feeling it. This is common in people with strong spiritual practices who are simultaneously burned out.
Over-certainty about what other people need. "They're just stressed," "They didn't mean it," "They're going through a lot." You're justifying and explaining away the anger by focusing on their circumstances instead of your own experience.
Why You're Doing This (And It's Not Your Fault)
Here's what's important to understand: you're not doing this because you're broken or because something's wrong with you. You're doing this because of how your nervous system was wired early on.
If your anger wasn't welcomed as a child—if it was punished, shamed, dismissed, or met with anger from a caregiver—your system learned: anger is not safe. Your nervous system learned to suppress it, repress it, manage it, or express it at people who were safer targets.
If you're a woman, you likely learned particularly clearly that anger is not acceptable. You learned that sadness is okay, helpfulness is okay, anxiety is okay—but anger makes you "too much," "difficult," "not nice." So you learned to feel everything else instead.
Your parents likely did the same thing. And their parents before them. This is a pattern passed down through generations of people managing emotions instead of feeling them.
This isn't a character flaw. It's neurobiology. It's early learning. It's a pattern your nervous system adopted to keep you safe in the environment you grew up in.
The good news: patterns can change. Your nervous system can learn something different. But it requires actually feeling the thing you've been avoiding.
What Happens When You Let Anger Move
Here's what's interesting about anger: when you actually let it move through your body—when you stop managing it and start feeling it—something shifts almost immediately.
Clarity enters the room.
Not rage. Not aggression. Not explosive anger that hurts people. Just clarity. The clarity that anger brings when it's unresisted and allowed to move through you.
In Tibetan culture, anger unresisted is called determination. It's not rage. It's not aggression. It's just what happens when you stop resisting the information anger is trying to give you. It's clarity about what matters. It tells you what you care about enough to do something about. Once you feel that information, you know what you need to do next—not what other people should do, but what you need to do. How to move. How to hold yourself. What your next step is.
Here's something else important: fire is required for certain kinds of growth. Redwood pinecones don't open on their own. They require heat—intense, intentional heat—to melt the resin that binds them closed. That's not damage. That's design.
Native tribes understood this. They used controlled fire to clear the forest floor—not to destroy, but to create conditions for healthier growth, easier movement, space for new species to thrive. Forests naturally cycle through burning to keep themselves healthy. Without those cycles, they become overgrown, fragile, suffocated.
You're the same. Moving anger is like an everything shower—but really hot. It clears you. Lightens you. Washes away what's been building. Self-care that actually clears the deadwood instead of just making you smell nice for a while.
Your anger isn't something that breaks you. It's something that clears space. That opens what's been sealed shut. That creates conditions for new growth. Like a forest fire that allows seeds to germinate and new trees to grow.
The problem isn't the fire. The problem is pretending you don't need it, that you can’t survive it, let alone thrive with it.
What Does Moving Anger Actually Look Like?
Moving anger looks physical, loud, uncomposed—the opposite of the "good girl," the safe person. It's visceral, feral, ugly, and beautiful.
IYt's physical because remember -- you can't think your way out of it. you can think your way to false regulation, but real regulation requires a physical expression that matches the internal emotional experience. And that's usually pretty... big.
Here's what it can look like:
A baseball bat and a mattress in the basement with a timer
Slamming a heavy cushion or pillow onto the floor 20 times
Screaming bloody murder into a pillow
Ugly crying, raging, alone in the car
Recording a voice note about all the ways you're hurting—no filter, snotty tears and F-bombs and screams included
Jumping up and down and throwing air punches until you're tired
Getting out of your head with no judgment, swinging your arms or kicking your legs or writhing on the ground
If you tend toward repression: coming back to the feeling over and over, for as long as you can, until the water runs clear and your body has settled
The only rule: Never anger at someone else. This is you, by yourself, or with a consenting partner who witnesses and can step back if needed.
You'll know you're letting it move when you feel clarity afterward—clarity about what you need to do next.
How Do You Know If You Did It Right?
You'll feel clarity about what you need to do next. Not judgment about what someone else should do differently. Not a list of how they wronged you. Not a plan for how to punish them or make them understand. Just: Here's what I need to do. Here's how I move.
If you're not feeling that—if the same anger and the same stories keep circling, if you're still stuck in the loop of rumination or resentment—that's important information. It usually means there are other feelings underneath the anger that also need to move.
Grief. Hopelessness. Sadness. Fear. Embarrassment. Shame.
Anger often sits on top of these deeper feelings like a lid. You can move the anger, but if you don't let the feelings underneath come through, the anger just builds back up. The stuckness itself is the sign: there's something else under here that needs to be felt.
This is why people who have one genuine session of moving anger often say something like: I can breathe again. I can think. I know what I need to do. They don't mean the anger is gone. They mean they're clear. They have access to their own thinking again. And they know their next move—not because someone told them what to do, but because they finally heard what they actually need.
The Experiment: Finding the Violation
Here's what I want you to do this week.
Notice when you catch yourself doing one of the signs above. Notice when you're people-pleasing, or ruminating, or feeling resentful, or being passive-aggressive, or withdrawing, or managing someone else's emotion. Just notice it. Don't judge it. Don't try to fix it.
Then ask yourself one question:
What do I care about so much that something's being violated right now?
Not: What's wrong with me? Not: Why am I like this? Not: How do I stop doing this?
Just: What do I care about? What matters? What's the violation?
Maybe you notice you're people-pleasing—you said yes to something you didn't want to do. Ask: What do I care about so much that not being able to say no feels like a violation? Maybe it's autonomy. Maybe it's honesty. Maybe it's having time for yourself. Name it.
Maybe you notice you're ruminating about something someone said. Ask: What do I care about so much that their words felt like a violation? Maybe it's respect. Maybe it's being heard. Maybe it's fairness. Name it.
Maybe you notice you're resentful of someone else's win. Ask: What do I care about so much that their success feels threatening to me? Maybe it's your own potential. Maybe it's recognition. Maybe it's the feeling that good things are possible. Name it.
This isn't about solving anything or taking action. It's about letting yourself feel the information that anger is trying to give you. It's about reconnecting with what matters.
Once you can name what's violated, something shifts. You move from I'm broken to Oh. Something I care about is being hurt. That's clarity. That's where movement happens.
What Comes Next
If you recognize yourself in these patterns, here's what matters to know:
1. You're not alone. This is remarkably common, especially among high-achievers, perfectionists, people-pleasers, and anyone who was taught that certain feelings weren't safe.
2. It's not permanent. Your nervous system can learn something different. But it requires actually feeling the thing you've been avoiding—not thinking about it, not talking about it, but actually letting it move through your body.
3. It doesn't require years of therapy to shift. Sometimes one genuine session of moving anger is the nudge people need to see the pattern clearly, feel the relief that comes with actually feeling something, and start making different choices.
The reason I created the Next Right Step session—a single, focused 60-minute session—is because I kept seeing the same pattern: people would come to me stuck, overwhelmed, unable to move forward. Within 45 minutes of looking at where they're burning energy managing anger, something would click. They'd see it. They'd feel it. And suddenly they could move.
If you're curious whether this is what's happening for you, that's the place to start. One session. One conversation. One moment of clarity about what's actually driving the exhaustion.
Because here's what I know: the burnout you're feeling probably isn't about doing too much.
It's about swallowing too much.
And you don't have to keep doing that.
Sources & Further Reading
On Suppressed Emotions & Physical Health:
Maté, Gabor. When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection. Wiley, 2003. (Available here) — A comprehensive exploration of how suppressed emotions, particularly anger and grief, correlate with autoimmune disease, chronic illness, and stress-related health problems.
On Burnout Drivers:
Maslach, Christina, Schaufeli, Wilmar B., & Leiter, Michael P. "Job Burnout." Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 52, 2001, pp. 397-422. (Research available) — The foundational research defining burnout as exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy, with identification of organizational factors including values misalignment, lack of reward, fairness issues, absence of community, and lack of control.
Leiter, Michael P., & Maslach, Christina. "Latent Burnout Profiles." Burnout Research, vol. 3, 2016, pp. 89-100. (Research available) — Research identifying five distinct burnout profiles and how cynicism may be more critical to burnout than exhaustion alone.
On Nervous System Regulation & Polyvagal Theory:
Porges, Stephen W. The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. W.W. Norton & Company, 2021. (Available here) — Explains how the nervous system responds to perceived threat and safety, and how chronic activation depletes the system.
On Trauma & Stored Emotion:
Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014. (Available here) — Extensive research on how trauma and unprocessed emotions are literally stored in the body and how the body responds to emotional regulation.
Taris, Toon W., et al. "Are There Causal Relationships Between the Dimensions of the Maslach Burnout Inventory?" Work & Stress, vol. 19, no. 3, 2005, pp. 194-212. (Research available) — Longitudinal research showing how depersonalization (cynicism) feeds back into emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment.
On Burnout's Physical Impact:
Salvagioni, Denise A. B., et al. "Physical, Psychological and Occupational Consequences of Job Burnout: A Systematic Review of Prospective Studies." PLOS ONE, 2017. (Research available) — Systematic review documenting connections between burnout and physical illness, autoimmune disease, and chronic health conditions.
This post is about recognizing patterns, not diagnosing a disorder. If you're experiencing physical symptoms, autoimmune issues, or significant mental health concerns, please speak with a medical provider.
