Abuse causes pain, and targets look to both positive and negative vices to offset it:
Negative vices
Positive vices
Human connection, exercise in moderation, spirituality, and focusing on activities that bring us joy and take us out of laser-focusing on the abuse can all help offset the pain and lead to recovery. Once the initial shock and stress wear off, targets tend to look more to positive vices to aid in healing.
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Unions can play a significant role in advocating for workers through collective bargaining agreements.
Yet with a focus on collective action rather than individual action and potentially fragile relationships with employers based on years of negotiating, targets can't always look to their unions for support. What's more: abusers may also be members of the same union, and there are varying degrees of effectiveness across unions — factors that often leave targets with as much faith in their unions as HR.
Ultimately, employers can move their businesses outside the U.S., leaving unions with less leverage than targets hope for.
Take Your Dignity Back
If you feel like you’re stuck in a big rut that’s destroying your life, learn how to reverse the damage.
Right now, you wish you could just tell your bully at work to knock it off, report the problem to management, and show the bully how childish he or she’s behaving. At...
Bullying leads to stress, and stress leads to health problems. Health problems can then eventually lead to poor work performance. At that point, targets can either:
Types of sick leave targets chose
Targets often choose between the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), disability, and workers compensation (WC).
With currently less than one-fifth of all U.S. states have paid FMLA or paid sick leave,...
By Craig Brown
Being between jobs is a tough situation, especially if you're having trouble making ends meet. However, there are lots of ways to cover that employment gap that involve having fun and preparing you for the next step in your career. Here are a few ideas that can help you do that very thing.
First Things First
Before you start tossing around applications, do a little soul searching. Think about why you’re in the situation you’re in. Is your career path stunted or a bad fit? Did you leave a rough situation, such as a toxic atmosphere? Or have you just not found out yet what you really want to do?
Take some time to sort things out. You might need to talk with a career counselor, invest in your education, or take steps to heal before you’re ready to give your all to a new role. In that case, it’s especially important to choose something that not only keeps bread on the table, but also allows you to gather the tools you need for...
Mediation and other forms of conflict resolution require symmetry of power in which empathy and rational discussion take place.
With abuse, however, there's generally a drastic asymmetry of power, with manipulation and lack of empathy at the core of the desire for power and control.
Mediation doesn't work with abuse at work, just like it doesn't work with domestic abuse. Arbitration is even worse, a common requirement in employment contracts that rids you of your ability to sue no matter what happens at work.
Targets generally report no positive outcomes with mediation. Rarely are there consequences for abusers. In fact, employers give consequences to targets instead, perceiving them as not inline with company goals and team-focused.
In most cases, company power is stacked against targets who speak up.
Take Your Dignity Back
If you feel like you’re stuck in a big rut that’s destroying your life, learn how to reverse the damage.
Right...
When HR departments give training on core values or discrimination, a logical response from employees is to believe their employers care about their well-being.
But not so fast.
When employees take complaints to HR departments, employers often individualize the problem to avoid liability, touting beliefs in employee well-being but take opposite action.
Let's take this disconnect one step further. Author Andrew Faas interviewed 138 leaders about bullying and found that most leaders are unaware of what workplace bullying even is. For those who are aware, most don’t view it as violence or a business risk (even though most said they’d been targets after seeing a definition of it).
Sadly, these findings mean that most cultures are toxic. Faas found that:
It’s no surprise that bosses are more likely to bully at work than coworkers or subordinates. But what may be surprising is that bosses alone aren’t most likely to abuse. It's a phenomenon we call mobbing, an abuse tactic involving a lone abuser enlisting others' help.
Others comply for a few possible reasons:
It’s abuse of power that leads targets to isolation, and fear prevents the reverse from happening. Though collective action is one of the most effective ways to combat abuse at work, subordinates rarely join together to go against a boss out of fear of losing their jobs or becoming targets themselves.
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Targets of second-time abuse (or more) more quickly recognize the signs of it, a benefit that can help them more quickly escape the toxic situation. Once they see what's happening, they can detach and put the wheels in motion to build a safety net and remove themselves from the toxic environment.
But the quick recognition can also often mean re-trauma, the triggering of going back to an emotionally painful place — sometimes more severe than the first. Initial abuse generally takes place with family (parents and siblings), at a previous job (likely bosses), or at school (likely classmates).
Issues around authoritarian parenting are common initial sources of abuse. Targets don't feel seen or heard or that their feelings matter, and these feelings crop up again with abuse at work.
Take Your Dignity Back
If you feel like you’re stuck in a big rut that’s destroying your life, learn how to reverse the damage.
Right now, you wish you could just tell...
Often jealous of their high-performing targets, abusers gaslight them, aka treat them like they're crazy. Targets feel traumatized when their expectations of fairness are met with complete unfairness and smearing of their character. Then others come to believe the target is the problem, compounding the harm, through these methods:
When targets aren’t believed
Studies show it’s honesty and integrity that often put a bullseye on a targets’ backs. Yet in this victim-shaming culture, especially when stories are...
Researcher Loraleigh Keashly coined the term “emotional abuse at work, which leads to stress and at times trauma, which in turn lead to a host of health issues.
Targets can reverse emotional abuse through social support, especially validation, and remove themselves from the damaging effects of isolation. If a target hasn't experienced abuse before, it may take longer to recognize the signs of confusion, fear, and stress, prolonging the time it takes to begin to heal.
Targets can find support through spouses, other family, friends, websites, social media, professionals, and sometimes coworkers — even though this issue can often show targets who their true supporters are, dominate their thoughts, and misunderstood by therapists.
The best medicine: face-to-face human connection.
Take Your Dignity Back
If you feel like you’re stuck in a big rut that’s destroying your life, learn how to reverse the damage.
Right now, you wish you...
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