Today's the day! The first presentation for the Re-Define Virtual Summit kicks off in 2 hours, and I am SO excited!

Today we're going to learn about:

• Workplace bullying 101
• What we’re struggling with when it comes to workplace abuse
• Inner tools to survive workplace bullying and mobbing
• Legislating against workplace bullying
• Stress: what it is and how to manage it
• What does recovery look like? Rebuilding trust

It's all going to be so good!

Get your free ticket and join us for Day 1!

I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about it by now, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet: The Re-Define Virtual Summit kicks off on Saturday! It’s your last chance to jump in and make sure you don’t miss any of the presentations!

This totally free event features 11 amazing speakers who are ready to teach you how to navigate and heal from abuse at work so you can live the life you deserve — on your terms. Who doesn’t want that?

You’re going to hear from some amazing experts like career coach Julie Boyer (who had targets COMPLETELY energized at the 2019 Summit).

Each presentation will be available to you live, but you can also get lifetime access (along with access to an exclusive Facebook community to keep the conversation and support going) by grabbing the VIP All-Access Pass or Power Pack (full of bonuses that will help you get into action mode).

If you have any questions at all about the summit or the VIP All-Access Pass or Power Pack,...

Have you ever attended an online event where the advice was so general that it was only helpful to those who are new to the topic? (And "helpful" might be putting it strongly.) 

I’ve seen my fair share of these, and each one left me frustrated and feeling like I’d wasted my time. 

You need more than general advice if you want to recover from abuse at work. Which is exactly why I made a free event JUST for targets like you.

I know as targets we struggle with things like:

• Understanding why the abuse happened
• Knowing what the normal parts of the abnormal situation are
• Wondering what we’ll do if we experience similar issues
• Feeling better
• Living our best lives

Even others who experience trauma don't process the same issues unique to abuse at work. And that's why this free event is just for you.

Over two days, you'll hear from 11 speakers about everything from coping tools to recovery.

And you can get your free ticket!

The summit is completely free to...

You struggle to get out of bed in the morning. You go through the motions just to make it through the day. 

You wonder, “Does it get better?”

You used to have hope for work and life in general, but you now wonder how you’ll get back to the old you who used to laugh and feel excited. Now you feel stuck in bitterness, anger, numbness, or depression — losing faith in employers and the system that protects them.

I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.

I see so many targets in the same place. I festered in a state of bitterness wondering when I’d stop ruminating. It would begin as soon as I woke up. Day after day.

That is, until I learned the 3 mistakes I was making that kept me stuck.

1. Believing I was the problem

When we want the organization we work for to do well — and we’re taught to self-reflect and respect authority — internalizing blame and shame becomes too easy to do. But bullies push their own insecurities and...

While it may feel impossible to get back up emotionally and mentally, you deserve your attention in rising again and giving life a big HECK yes. Here’s how you can get there:

Know you’re not the problem

I want you for a minute to replay a toxic scenario at work in your head like a film reel. Watch the tactics the bully uses: what the bully says, how the bully says it, and how it makes you feel.

Now replay the scenario with how you wanted the bully to communicate instead and how you wanted to feel. Were better approaches options? Were better outcomes possible?

You see, once we realize what healthy leadership looks like, we realize the toxic behaviors have nothing to do with us and everything to do with the insecurity and need for power and control from the bully (and the employer enabling this behavior).

Learn skills to put yourself first

Once we’ve been abused at work, we realize just how much our needs matter. We realize that it matters less that others approve of...

When I worked at a large university years ago, I found myself in the crosshairs of the abuser playbook. A higher-up slowly removed a website project from me (the entire reason I took the job) with no communication of poor performance. She tried moving my work onto a grad student, creating a committee to guide my work, and badmouthing me at meetings — all after months of praising my work. When I reported the problem to the head dean, he swept the problem under the rug, insisting that “it would work itself out.” (Huh?)

So the abuser retaliated. She gave me a written warning for not following a procedure — one that didn’t exist.

Not knowing where to turn to make the abuse stop, I went to HR to share my story. But the HR rep only asked how SHE (the bully) must’ve felt that I reported her for mistreatment. 

It was then that I realized the whole work culture was toxic.

For weeks, I felt anxious going into work wondering what the next abuse tactic...

Once we learn that the nightmare at work is called “workplace abuse” or “workplace bullying,” we often feel relieved it’s a thing (and not us). 

But then what? How do we navigate the landmines so the problem — and our health — doesn’t get worse? And once we’re out of the toxic mess, how do we heal? How do we trust again, feel ourselves again, and laugh again so we can live the lives we deserve?

After my own journey and research, I’ve realized how much I love helping targets of abuse at work take their lives back.

And this time, I have 10 experts with me. I'm so excited to bring this free 2-day event to you.

You can learn absolutely everything you’d ever want to know about the Re-Define Virtual Summit on the Re-Define website, but as a quick overview:

• The summit will run from Saturday, April 17-Sunday, April 18.
• Each day will be packed with amazing speakers who are ready to help you focus on yourself during and...

The Workplace Psychological Safety Act is about granting our fundamental human right to dignity at work. Workplace abuse (or workplace bullying) often involves a person in power, such as a manager or supervisor, taking advantage of a less powerful employee. 

What workplace abuse is

Abuse of power is too often a symptom of implicit bias — a problem discrimination law stopped helping since the 1980s when courts moved from focusing on impact to intent. Intent is a high threshold that makes the law mostly ineffective at addressing bias and disrupting hierarchies at work that create haves and have-nots when those in power “other” people. More than 50 years after Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, white men still occupy the vast majority of power positions in the U.S. workforce.

Abuse may take the form of public ridicule, disrespect, overwork, and overcontrol, including put-downs, screaming, excessive criticism, destructive gossip, false accusations,...

The late Congressman John Lewis talked about the importance of saying and doing something when you see something that's not right — getting into good trouble. “I fought too long and too hard against discrimination based on race and color not to fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” he said. “He (President Obama) is sending a powerful message that discrimination in any form has no place in a democratic society. It also gives hope to the 9 million LBGT Americans and their loved ones who have had to bear the pain and sorrow of rejection, loss, and shame with limited means to make their voices heard.”

In 2007, a healthcare organization hired me as a military medical insurance analyst, a position I would stay in for 12 years. (I had the same position for 20 years in a different healthcare organization.) For those 12 years, I received excellent job evaluations year after year from my previous...

By Sarah Charley

When faced with extraordinary evidence pointing towards an uncomfortable truth, my former employer responded very strangely.

“I had no idea how persistent his abuse was to have dampened your spirits so much,” the general manager replied to an email about my supervisor’s behavior. “I've spoken with [the senior staff] and they all agree with your assessment of [the supervisor’s] behavior towards you. I feel embarrassingly oblivious about this, but more importantly like we (as a whole, as your friends) didn't do enough to stop it from happening.”

At the time of this exchange, I was 23 and pursuing my dream of being a guide and outdoor educator at a rafting company on the American River in California. My supervisor, however, had turned this dream into a traumatic and disorienting nightmare. In his own words:

“[…] For a period of 4 months in 2012, I used Sarah Charley for sex, and treated her terribly […] [This is]...