18
Suit Up for Battle: Bullying Wears Many Faces
It was death by a thousand paper cuts.
Targets of workplace bullying often talk about how the emotional toll actually propels them back in time, reverting them to their childhoods and, along with it, childlike responses to stress.
“I felt like I was always trying to prove myself,” Shawna told me about her longtime career as an educator at a prestigious university. “Almost like I was a kid. Then the paranoia sets in, and you start applying meaning to things that don’t even exist.”
Like me, Shawna describes her career—and her life—in two distinct parts, BB and AB: before bullying and after bullying. Before, she was a gregarious, multisport athlete, the older in a family of two girls.
“I was a hustler,” ...
Get Walk Away to Win: A Playbook to Combat Workplace Bullying now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
