Growing After the Bullying Experience

The Greek philosopher, Epictetus, said, "Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them." No matter what it is that happens to an individual, how they perceive it is so critically important. The misconduct of the workplace bully causes reactions that are usually emotional. Such misconduct creates bad moods in the Targets.

There is a school of thought that says that our thoughts, rather than the actual events themselves are what create the moods we experience when something uninvited, unpleasant and unwelcome is inflicted upon, such as, workplace bullying. According to this school, emotions have two distinct components.

1. Arousal - what's in mind here are the physical sensations that are experienced, such as, a churning feeling in your gut, profuse sweating, dizziness, butterflies, nervousness, feelings of apprehension, etc.

2. A label - the mind must know what to call the 'thing' that is happening.

According to this particular way of thinking, it is believed that we get ourselves upset because of how we think about these painful events. This is eminently understandable when the anti-social evil of workplace bullying is under consideration. The Target is quick to think that s/he is the cause of this behaviour; that s/he brought this on themselves; that they are the only people in the world who have experienced this treatment; that there is nothing they can do about it but to tolerate it and hope it goes away quickly. Their mental processes lead them along this road. The ability to distort the meanings of the facts related to workplace bullying, and to do so in our minds, is an activity that comes naturally to us. It is this ability that determines how we will respond emotionally to what is being done to us.

These distortions weave a protective net around ourselves that twists and colours how we feel, according to what we think, and how we process mentally, what it is that is going on. These are silly, yet profoundly dangerous, mind-games that the bully plays on us. They wreck havoc in our heads, and it is as if, as one TV interviewee put it recently, 'my head was like a washing machine,' going round and round, yet never coming to any satisfactory conclusions. One common phrase that is used to describe this phenomenon is: "It's doing my head in!"

Returning to the point about labels that I mentioned earlier, if they are of the self-defeating variety, then they are like prison walls from which you want desperately to escape. They have built this isolating prison out of the materials the bully gave them. And the mind games that the Target cooperates with provide the upkeep for this scary prison.

By responding to this in the right way can prove to be a growing point in your life.  To find out more about this phenomenon of workplace bullying, click the link.