When one experiences the despair, confusion and challenge of workplace bullying, we will behave in a number of ways – some of them are conscious and some of them are unconscious.  Peace comes from the ability to feel a sense of perceived control over one’s circumstances and existence.  Just know it is our ability to make conscious choices that can allow you feeling more in control, and thus find the peace you are seeking.

To protect oneself during a workplace bullying situation, people tend to act in these ways:

• Change – having the awareness and strength and resources to attempt a change in how the bully behaves (intervention) or how you react/respond.
• Leave – Proactively deciding to separate yourself physically, emotionally and mentally from the bully.
• Accept – Accepting the bully as a person with limitations in the way you need to interact, and realize you’ve let go of the need to try and change their behavior.  You’ve also let go of behaviors you do to try and change the bully’s behavior i.e. “If I sat here”, “if I came early”, “If I….”
• Cope – You’ve decided you cannot leave, so you make a conscious decision to minimize your interactions with the bully and to develop your strength for when you do have to interact.
• Escape – Finding something that takes you away from dealing with the issue at hand, that gives you the illusion of ‘I need to be here rather than facing the workplace bullying situation upfront’.

Here’s how escaping works.  See if any of these are happening to you:

1. Denying:  The best thing you can do is to admit what you are experiencing.  You cannot cure what you cannot admit.  Naming it “bullying” gets you back in the game.
2. Delusion:  The next best thing you can do is to admit the bully will not change; so put a stop to the delusion that if you “tried harder” things will turn around.
3. Ignoring:  You “feel” things are not going well and you may not be sure of what to do, so you “get busy” doing other things, or you “zone out” or withdraw from the situation and pretty soon life itself.
4. Excuses:  “I know the situation at work isn’t gong well, but Phil’s retiring in 4 years, but…”  We delay protecting ourselves and taking action, because that appears to take more effort.

Why Do People Escape?

• It’s difficult to see someone in a poor light; we tend and hope for people to change so we can avoid the possible conflict and uncomfortableness of setting boundaries.
• Without a plan of assurance and peace (which you will not get with the bully), it seems easier in the short run to keep “putting things off”.

What To Do:

1. It’s Not What You Think, It’s What You Admit/Know: Our mind, the ability to admit where we are at, and our current reality is 100% in our control.  Betraying what our mind, body and spirit are saying to us is a sure self-esteem destroyer.
2. Values Win Over Needs Every Time: Make a list of your values and rate how you are living them on a scale of 1 – 5.  What could make something a 5?  When we fail to live to our values, this is a true destroyer of self-esteem and a sense of control.  You will gain strength here by making a few changes in a positive direction in order to help you handle your workplace bullying situation.
3. Go Through Things, Not Around Them: Keep seeking, asking and building yourself and your self esteem.  It is a daily reconciliation.  What do you need to face? decide? do? let go of?
4. And finally, a prayer that has traveled the world over:

“God, grant me the serenity to

Accept the things I cannot change

Change the things I can, and the

Wisdom to know the difference”.

Let’s take one step closer to be as conscious as we can to accept, change and grow in wisdom … and with this decision you’ve been given 100% control.

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9 responses to “Handling Workplace Bullying and Stress: What Will You Do?”

1. Deeply Concerned says:

   February 5, 2010 at 5:22 pm

   My partner (the love of my life) is leaving me due to her inability to cope with bullying from her boss. Her “boss” is actually the owner of the company & my partner is the project manager/director. She has put in several resignation letters (without telling him the actual cause = the bullying), and he’s always talked her back with promises that never were fulfilled. The last time was in May of 2008, when he told her he would cut her hours in September (when her 13 year old daughter returned to school), and keep her on the same salary (one, by the way, had been cut nearly in half 2 years prior due to so called lack of funds). Well, when September rolled around, she found herself working even more hours. Today she is working from 8:00am till 10:15pm or later, and takes home work that keeps her up till after midnight. She is also working from 6-10 hours on Saturdays. Sadly, she has convinced herself that it was her choice to do all of the extra work, because if she didn’t her boss would have to hire extra help and couldn’t he afford that. Four to five times a year she goes on business trips with him (usually to Asia) and she always returns with a physical ailment that requires immediate treatment. She is the brains behind her the success of her boss’s business. She researches and write’s all of the book’s he takes full claim for & even writes all of his interviews for the press. Even the ideas for the books have been hers. Meanwhile, he is utterly ungrateful to her for her undying loyalty to him and his company (which she’s been working at for nearly 10 years). If he were grateful, he wouldn’t habitually call meetings — twice daily with the entire company to put down, call her an idiot, incompetent, disloyal, and the most degrading things he can think of. She has come to me in tears countless times, has experienced severe anxiety and depression, sleeplessness, and I’m fearing a nervous breakdown and PTSD are soon to come. She has lost 2 close friends within the past year because she doesn’t make time for them. Now, she is leaving the love of her life (me) because of all of this craziness. I feel very sorry for her little girl who spends her after school time cooped up in her mother’s office, doesn’t eat dinner till between 10:45pm & 12:00am (depending on when work ends). Her daughter has expressed wishing to live with her father, and this has only added to my partner’s fear & guilt about being a failure. She is leaving me because, in her words, she experiences worry, fear and grief about spending so little time with me. She feels like a total failure. Despite me assuring her that I have never been upset with her, only deeply concerned about her health and well-being, as well as her relationship with her daughter, as a result of her having little to no time for her. It’s so sad how workplace bullying can destroy a person, their mental, emotional, and physical health, as well as their most valued relationships with those they love the most. It’s also incredibly excruciating and frustrating knowing that there is nothing I can do to help her, so long as she is in complete denial that she is, in fact, a victim of bullying in the workplace.

2. WP Themes says:

   January 31, 2010 at 2:11 pm

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3. Donna says:

   January 24, 2010 at 12:39 pm

   I have been the target for a bullying boss now for about three years. It has been a rough and trying road to travel. I am currently working on my bachelor’s degree to allow me an avenue to obtain a position at a different place of employment that will afford me wages at the rate I am accustomed to. I have been with this employer for 30 years. This bullying boss perceives me as a threat and he is very charismatic. I tried going to HR and basically they told me he was not going anywhere and that if the relationship did not improve – “did I have a plan B?” Well – that told me a lot and thus the journey to get my degree so I can get out of there.

   They do not see him the way he treats his own staff because he is so conniving and is a great actor. All of the staff in his dept are downtrodden and don’t know how much longer they can cope with his behavior. When the job front improves – I am certain there will be an exodus of emoployees because of this man.

4. Theresa says:

   January 22, 2010 at 3:04 pm

   For the last year and a half, I have been the recipient of workplace bullying from my boss. It is true what Valerie says about them being disrespectful and only concerned about themselves. Even though I provided our HR department with specific examples, the only advice they gave me was to sit down with my boss and explain how I felt. When I did that, on numerous occasions, I was not heard and the behaviour did not change. It is sad that people who are supposed to be experts on handling personnel issues don’t know how to address the problem of a workplace bully. Now that I am being laid off, I want to be sure that this never happens to me again!

5. Belinda says:

   January 22, 2010 at 1:37 am

   First of all bullying is an intolerable behaviour and should never be condoned if possible.
   My experiences with bullies has been common, and from what I know they are a part of the natural fabric of our lives and are unescapable. They themselves are products of dysfunction and for whatever reason navigate their lives this way. They are everywhere more obvious in career driven workplaces where power and control dominate. However, what we can do is ensure that we are OK whist involved and refuse to remain if the situation is unable to be changed.
   My previous job involved working for a committee of management who changed the rules as pleased, scapegoated employees (me) and generally made lives hell. The standards and expectations they imposed were inequitable with some people escaping “the rules” and others targeted, me being one of the targeted. As a collective they’d often play good cop bad cop completely confusing and bamboozling vulnerable employees who were genuinely trying to do the “right thing” often times playing elaborate games even within their own circles with different alliances in operation within those circles.
   For me personally this kind of behaviour eventually took a huge toll on my health and turned me into an insomniac unable to sleep due to stress and fear. I was literally becoming sicker as the months wore on.
   The short end of this story was after so much intolerable behaviour and countless efforts on my part, attempting to resolve and transparently express my concerns of this behaviour (advocating) I decided to resign on the spot, leaving the organisation in the mess and mayhem that they had perpetuated continually. As soon as I did this, I attended counselling to process what had happened, my sleeping came back and on top of it all, I landed an extremely good job in spite of the fear and threats that this management group had made to me at the point of resignation. Some things are not worth subjecting yourself through, not for all the money in the world. THe situation taught me a lot about myself and what I won’t put up with in the future. I now reckonize this behaviour very well and have developed tools to be able to manage it. Lucky for me I have a supportive manager and am able manage my concerns up the line. In hindsight I would have left my previous job much earlier than when I did….you live and learn. Good luck

   Belinda

6. Dawn Dunbar says:

   January 18, 2010 at 12:09 am

   A difficult situation that I witnessed was in a small office when several employees purposely ignored one employee. They banded together to validate each other (much like our own lynching groups of the old west), which is a powerful mechanism to further demonize and relegate the poor employee to the scapegoat category. This situation created character assasination at its worse, even spreading into a small community. I agree with Bob Joslin that jealousy and greed were at the bottom of it. The employee was kind and they attacked, stating the employee was “too nice” and therefore, “needy.” sad

7. carol says:

   January 16, 2010 at 1:06 pm

   I am from Albany,Ny. I have been working in the same job for 17 years. I have been there alot longer than the rest of the other workers. My problem is that where i work ,its a laundramat with 2 people on different shifts. I work 7Am -4:30 pm tues-thurs and sun 7am-2:00pm.there are 2 nightime workers who think they should push me into their night shift especially one is the worst.the sunday night relief she has only been there 3 years,can you believe the audacity of this person?

8. Bob Joslin says:

   January 15, 2010 at 9:33 am

   Some bullies won’t quit. They think their better than you and they don’t like you. Their very jealous and greedy. They will back stab with stuff that isn’t true and the boss believes them.

9. Nick Perrin says:

   January 14, 2010 at 9:33 am

   Val, the four escape mechanisms you described I believe to be very real and all fall into the ‘passive’ mode.
   Some of the ‘aggressive’ attempts at escape that I
   I have witnessed are outward anger,aggression, accusation and expressed blame.

   Again thanks for the content and consistency of your messages.

   Nick