There’s a pattern I’ve noticed more and more lately, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
When people are hurt, some of them don’t process that pain privately or directly. They don’t sit with it. They don’t face the person involved. Instead, they turn outward, to an audience. They post.
They perform. They curate a version of themselves they want others to react to.
Not to heal, but to feel something other than what they’re actually carrying. This isn’t accidental. It’s become a substitute for emotional courage.
When Visibility Replaces Conversation
Direct conversation requires vulnerability. It requires the risk of being misunderstood, rejected, or held accountable. That’s hard. Especially when emotions are messy or unresolved.
Posting is easier. You can say everything without saying anything. You can provoke without confronting. You can control the narrative without answering questions. Social media gives people a stage where feelings can be implied instead of expressed, and where reactions replace resolution.
So instead of saying:
“This hurt me.”
They show:
“Look how unbothered I am.”
Instead of saying:
“I don’t know how to sit with this.”
They post:
“I’m thriving.”
Power Without Vulnerability
There’s a quiet truth underneath most performative posting after emotional fallout: Reactions feel like power.
If someone reacts, positively or negatively, it confirms relevance. It proves impact. It reassures the poster that they still matter, still influence, still occupy space in someone else’s mind.
That momentary sense of control can feel better than clarity. But it’s borrowed power. And it doesn’t last.
Attention Is Not the Same as Healing
Healing doesn’t need witnesses. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t require validation.
It doesn’t need to be loud to be real.
Healing looks like restraint. Reflection. Boundaries. Silence where noise would be easier. Performance, on the other hand, needs engagement. It needs eyes. It needs confirmation.
That’s the difference. Not everything that looks confident is resolved. Not everything that’s loud is strong.
The Cost of Passive Aggression
Indirect expression doesn’t just avoid conflict, it prolongs it.
When people communicate through implication instead of honesty, nothing actually gets resolved. Pain gets recycled. Confusion spreads. Closure never arrives.
And the person on the receiving end is left trying to decode meaning from behavior that was never meant to be clear, only felt.
That kind of ambiguity is exhausting.
The Quiet Power Move
Here’s the part most people don’t expect: The strongest response to passive aggression isn’t reaction. It’s restraint.
It’s choosing not to play a role in someone else’s performance. It’s refusing to be an audience to behavior that avoids truth. It’s stepping off the stage entirely.
Because when someone needs visibility to work through pain, the healthiest thing you can do is stop watching. Healing doesn’t chase reactions. It doesn’t need to prove anything. And it doesn’t perform.
It simply moves forward, quietly, honestly, and intact.
Troy P Zehnder 