Start here - You are not alone

You are not alone. Many people get bullied at work. At this blog I intend to offer support to others who are experiencing bullying at work. I intend to glean support from others in return. Strength in numbers and in knowledge. The first piece of knowledge I offer is that none of us are alone.


My situation is that the bully is my manager. Her bully is her manager. This means that I have no-one to go to about her bullying behaviours who would be sympathetic to my plight or see anything wrong in what she does to me and to others. You may have heard of the term 'institutionalised racism ? Regrettably, we have 'institutionalised bullying' in our workplace.


A note about the words we use

I am conscious of the language I am using here; maybe that's because my field of expertise is the English language. Maybe it's because I am a witch and recognise the power words hold. Maybe it's because I am into BDSM and again language and terminology are important in that aspect of my life as well.

The person bullying me is not 'my bully', she is 'a bully'. Even this suggests a title, therefore I am going to diminish this bully's power by referring to her as 'puh'. I could refer to her by a rude word or phrase, but in doing so would be giving her My Power. So 'puh' is the person bullying me at work.

I will not be capitalising the words I use to refer to those who bully, so please don't waste time correcting my punctuation. Again, this is about denying the bullies power over us. (It's a convention used in some forms of BDSM; although the meaning / purpose for using this here is not the same it's a ploy I feel is appropriate).


I mention the 'Others' because when you are being bullied you feel isolated. Isolating people is a ploy the person bullying me uses a lot.

Fortunately 'puh' is not very clever, even though she is very sly. Many bullies rely on / depend on secrecy to maintain their power. The efforts 'puh' makes to isolate her victims are not a secret any longer where I work. Her victims talk to each other.

Unfortunately, because bullying is an accepted management strategy where we work, it is difficult for any of us to feel able to do more than acknowledge that we are not alone.


It occurs to me that one thing we could do is set up an out of work 'victim support' group. Bad word though. Labelling ourselves 'victims' would give our bully additional power over us. It would change our mindset. Words have power, remember.


The way you use words can alter the power imbalance tool which bullies use. I'm starting now, though, to get onto the nitty gritty this site is about, so I will close this particular entry for now.


Remember :

You are not alone. You are not in isolation. Strength can be found in numbers. We outnumber the bullies and We will prevail.