Abuse of any kind involves boundary crossing. Abusers can selfishly take without asking, including your kindness, patience, and need for respect.

But targets aren't helpless. In her Psychology Today article "If you set a boundary, expect to deal with anger," Susan Biali M.D. says that "in most cases when our boundaries are crossed, we’ve allowed it. As a child, we may have learned to allow it because we were helpless and depended on the big boundary-crossers for survival. But as an adult, unless a situation is extreme, we usually participate in the violation of our own boundaries by failing to properly defend them."

So what do we do when we were raised as children to accept boundary crossing, maybe from a parent or sibling? How to we begin to defend our boundaries? Says Biali:

I remember a few years ago, when someone wanted me to make a major change in my plans in order to accommodate their plans. My plans had been in place for months, they had just...

When we’re abused at work, our perception of the world can feel like we’re looking into a tunnel with limited ways out. But painful, crushing experiences CAN lead to a new you according to #1 New York Times bestselling author T.D. Jakes.

It’s about trusting in the universe to lead you to healing after you feel like crushed grapes. Feeling crushed is part of a transformative process. If we’re protected from our pain, we may miss out on our purpose, Jakes says. It’s a lesson that Jen Sincero also teaches in her bestseller You Are A Badass: look for the lesson to help you grow and realize why you’ve been put on this planet.

We become our best selves when we’ve endured things we thought were going to kill us…. We get stuck because we are so adaptable to our environment that we start accepting normatives out of things not meant to be normal in our lives.

There’s a pathology of pain that people get into where if...

A great leader creates a positive work culture with empathy, humility, teamwork, and the idea that empowering employees not only shows them respect but also encourages productivity. It’s building people versus power-tripping people, looking out for the organization and the team versus one’s ego.

When a manager isn’t a leader, the entitled power-tripping can play out in such ways as:

• Micromanagement
• Pulling rank
• Ignoring issues that matter to employees
• Positioning themselves above grunt work
• Denying employees opportunities without explanation

When the boss isn’t the power-tripper
When the power-tripper is a co-worker, often he or she will just take the power. I call this move the “power grab,” and I’ve witnessed it so many times both on the job and in my volunteer work. Someone on your level (or in the case of volunteer work, any level) simply starts acting like he or she can boss you around. It’s a gross move that sets up a hierarchy...