Someone's marriage counsellor suggested that a person not disclosing to their partner when they're upset with the partner is passive-aggressive.
No.
It's passive-aggressive only if it has the intention of changing the other person.
If it has the intention of avoiding discord, because it achieves nothing, it's simply passive.
Disclosing upset as a way of getting other people to change is manipulative (i.e. an indirect method of trying to bring about change).
It also fails to recognise that the upset is coming from inside the upset individual not from the external situation.
The other person's behaviour may need to change, not because it upsets others, but because it is immoral or dysfunctional practically. The immorality or dysfunction may be correlated with upset, but many people are regularly upset at things that are perfectly immoral or functional, because they have psychological hang-ups. Likewise, not all immorality or dysfunction generates upset.
If you act based on upset, you'll change what should not be changed and fail to change what should.
If change is required, it will still be required later on that day, next week, or next month.
Change should be initiated after calm consideration, once the emotion has subsided.
Change in others should be prompted only very sparingly. Most people have only very limited ability for change, and only very limited capacity for change. There is a lot they simply cannot change, and, the things they can, well they can change only one at a time, usually.
So, when you're upset, should you show it? No.
If you need the other person to do something differently, find a grown-up way, and do it on the basis of reason, not being Mr or Ms Whiny Pouty-Face. You hurt my feelings is not very grown-up, in the board meeting, at the diplomatic negotiating table, or in a relationship.