Lori Adams-Brown on Incivility at Work: 30% Face Workplace Bullies - How to Stop the Cycle and Thrive

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Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams-Brown, and this is a podcast for those who are different. And want to make a difference. All right, listen up, because this can change your life. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or just not yourself lately, I need you to hear this.

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Welcome back, difference makers, to A World of Difference podcast. We are solidly into season 11 difference makers, and we want to be different. We want to make a difference. Our differences matter. You matter.

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And today we're tackling something so many of you have asked about. It's how to handle a workplace bully and take back your peace and your voice. If you have ever felt silenced or diminished or just plain exhausted by a toxic co worker or boss, this episode is for you. Maybe you know somebody who's experiencing this or has experienced this in the past. We are going to talk about today.

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Strategies, research, data. We are going to talk about this because you deserve to heal. You deserve to know how to regain yourself after what you've been through. And there's a lot of conversation going on around that right now because we're seeing bullies show up in places that we didn't think we were going to see on live tv. So we're going to break it down with the research, expert insights, and my own experiences of navigating these tough situations.

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Let's go.

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All right, let's start with the facts. Workplace bullying is a real problem, a pervasive problem. It's more common than we think. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute Nearly 30% of employees have experienced bullying at work and 43% of us have witnessed it, which is also a very traumatic situation just to even watch somebody else be bullied. If that's happened to you in front of you, it's really difficult to be a part of because our nervous systems perceive that threat, whether we're the ones being bullied or whether we're observing it.

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It's a whole lot worse to be bullied, by the way, but it's also very devastating when you watch it happen. This means almost all of us have seen workplace bullying play out at some level in our workplaces. So here's the real kicker though. Bullying isn't always loud and obvious. Some people don't realize that it's not about just some angry tyrant running around looking like he's about to punch somebody in the face.

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It can be very different. It can involve a lot of coercive control. Sometimes it's those subtle digs, the exclusion, putting somebody in an office down the hall with no windows in the basement. It's the gaslighting making you think you're absolutely crazy because every time you say something, they tell you it's wrong, that that's not what you think, that's not what you feel. And suddenly you start to feel like you're the crazy one.

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It's even those emails that kind of make you doubt your own sanity. Did I read this right? Is this for real? Is this person for real? And so the consequences, well, they're actually very huge.

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Research shows that workplace bullying leads to increased anxiety, depression and even ptsd. And complex PTSD known as cptsd. If it's an ongoing situation, it not only affects just your job, but it affects your whole life if you've been there. You know, the lack of sleep, the anxiety you experience on Sunday before going into the office on Monday. Listen, I know this firsthand because years ago I worked in an environment where the leader used intimidation, manipulation to maintain control over so many of us.

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And it was a power by fear environment. Our nervous systems were reacting with trauma responses. There was a lot of fawning going on, kissing the ring, pledging loyalty, obeying in advance, all that kind of stuff. It left me absolutely drained, questioning my own abilities and even wondering if I should leave a job I had once loved. Does this sound familiar?

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Well, if it does, and you've been there or you're currently there, you are not alone. And I want you to know that this is a space for you. One of the most frustrating things about workplace bullies is that they often go after people who are the most competent, kind, and high achieving. Does that sort of sound like an oval Office situation? We saw recently, People first, leaders with a lot of influence, they are, unfortunately, can be targets of bullies.

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It's as if this is a conquest for them, someone they want to conquer. There's this myth that everybody that gets targeted by a bully, by these predators and become this prey for them or are somehow weak. But bullies seem to really like a challenge as well. So they often will often be going after that person in the workplace that they feel somehow threatened by because they're so influential in ways that they can't be or aren't. It's the very presence that threatens them.

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Just the fact that they exist in the same workplace threatens them. So Gary Namie is the co founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, and he says bullies target the best and the brightest because they see them as a threat, not because they are weak. So if you're being bullied, it's not because you're not good enough. It's because you're exceptional. And that's exactly why you need to take back your peace and your power and your voice.

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And let's talk about how. So, first of all, it's important to recognize bullying for what it is. There's just a huge power in naming it. I remember when I was first able to name it, and it made me realize, oh, my gosh, that's what I'm dealing with. You're not overreacting, you're not hysterical, you're not being gossipy, you're not trying to take someone down.

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You really are just being targeted by a bully in your workplace. And gaslighting is a classic bullying tactic. And if you've been doubting yourself, it's time to stop. I want you to document everything. Somebody gave me that advice.

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It was very good advice when I was going through it. It was very helpful because I needed that documentation later. And it's helped me to remember what I was going through as I've been, you know, able to heal and work through a lot of that in therapy over the last several years. Document everything. Keep the emails, take notes on conversations, and if possible, get witnesses because you need evidence.

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All right, here's the other thing I want you to do. I want you to set boundaries like a boss. Bullies thrive on pushing boundaries, so let's make them crystal clear. Mel Robbins, if you've listened to her, she has a podcast that's pretty popular. She has A book that's just come out with the let them theory.

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She's a great voice on self empowerment. She brings a lot of experts onto her podcast. And she says boundaries aren't for them, they're for you. So that means you decide what you will and what you won't tolerate. You're in the driver's seat on that.

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You decide what is okay for you and what isn't. Before you go in to that workplace and be in a situation where you're around this person again. If they interrupt you in meetings, calmly but firmly say, I'm going to finish my point. If you remember when Kamala Harris was running as a vice president, next with Biden in the Kamala Harris Biden ticket, there's a famous moment in her debate with Mike Pence where she says, I'm talking. And even Maya Rudolph on snl, when she did Kamala as a sketch on snl, she did the whole I'm talking.

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So she knew exactly how to make her boundaries known. So just firmly and calmly say, I'm going to finish my point. If they undermine you, you can name it and you can say, I noticed that you took credit for my idea. Let's clarify that. It's uncomfortable, but it's very powerful.

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And it's okay to practice that in front of the mirror. It's okay to practice that with a friend. Video yourself however you need to do that. But get those boundaries clear, because bullies will push those on a regular basis for sport. The next thing I want you to do is to build a village of support.

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Build your support system. This was really crucial for me and my healing and the aftermath. But even as the situation was going on, when I finally started to disclose to people, it was incredibly helpful. You don't have to fight this alone. In fact, please don't, because it's very difficult to do that.

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You need to find allies. You need to find trusted colleagues, mentors, or HR professionals that can back you up. And if HR is complicit or ineffective, which, you know, let's be honest, sometimes happens in some organizations, then find an outside coach or mentor to help you strategize. The more you surround yourself with support, the less isolated you're gonna feel. So I want you to take back your voice, and that involves taking back your power.

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Some people act like power is a dirty word that we shouldn't talk about or that it's something that feels against our religion, that somehow power is bad. But I really love Dr. Diane Lamberg's book Redeeming power. It's been super helpful for me. She was on the podcast.

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I recently got to meet her. She's the absolute queen on this. So please read that book. I highly recommend it. Power itself is neutral, but how we use it matters.

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And even a little newborn baby. She talks about this in the book, in the first chapter, or maybe it's the introduction. Has power over her parents when she cries to wake them up in the middle of the night. And this isn't bad, this is good. She's using her power and her voice for good.

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And we've all been given a voice. That's part of being human, is to have a voice. And even with technologies that people who are don't have this exact ability, they can use words through different technologies to communicate to us. Even people on the autism spectrum, when we find out what they have to say. If they're nonverbal, their voice is powerful.

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It's part of their power. And this is so good so that we can communicate. But bullies love to steal our voices. They love to make us question how we talk when we talk, to tone, police us, all of those kinds of things. So taking your voice back involves taking your power back.

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And that might be legal if necessary. So let's be real, in some situations they might require legal intervention. According to Dr. Leah P. Hollis, who's the author of Bully in the Ivory Tower, bullying often escalates when there are no consequences.

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So if you've documented everything and HR is unresponsive, you can consult an employment lawyer. Thank God for them. I know several that I met in the aftermath of my situation just casually. And I have so much respect for employment liars. They really are helping people to feel safe at work and set consequences for accountability for those bullies because without them, they will be repeat offenders in almost every situation.

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So boundaries, consequences are absolutely necessary to stop them and to stop them from hurting others. And as we know, and I've mentioned, this isn't just affecting your work, it's affecting your life, your sleep, your well being. Cortisol is running through your system. It's not good for you. There are people walking through this who can barely get out of bed.

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And I had moments like that in the aftermath. So sometimes just knowing your rights changes everything. Look up your country, where you live, the state where you're in, and find out what your rights are. They should be posted in your workplace if you're in the United States. But some places don't, even in California, which is not okay and very against the law.

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So healing and moving forward, let's not skip this part. This is very, very important because you can't control what happened to you. But I want you in the driver's se what it means to heal and that you deserve all the healing from this because you can't help that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you can be in the driver's seat of taking charge of pursuing healing for yourself because you absolutely deserve to heal and move forward. The goal here isn't just to survive workplace bullying.

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It's to reclaim your peace, your confidence and your joy. You absolutely deserve all of that. That means taking care of your mental health. Therapy is a crucial part of healing. You wouldn't be able to control if somebody stepped on your foot at work and broke your toe.

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But hopefully you will get medical attention and you will pursue healing for yourself and you will help that toe get better so you can walk again and be okay and not hurt. So part of that means taking care of yourself and your mental health as well as your physical health, because all of those get affected with workplace bullying. Therapy is a very crucial part of healing. I highly recommend it. It's been super helpful for me.

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That's been real key to me being able to move on and still working through some things. But because it takes time, injuries of this nature take a really long time, just like it would if you were in a body cast and you needed to learn to walk again. All of those things take time and you get specialists in the types of therapies that you need. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, whatever you would need after a physical accident like that, then taking care of your neurological system and your mental health, your brain, and all of that affects your whole body. So evidence based therapies that are really helpful.

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Of course, a lot of us have heard of cognitive behavioral therapy, cbt. It helps really reframe those negative thought patterns that can come into us from gaslighting and all the crazy making parts of it from bullies who have broken us down on the inside and helps us to rebuild our confidence by, I call it kind of reverse gaslighting. I had a therapist do this with me. Absolutely helped in so many ways. There's also emdr, that stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

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And it's basically using bilateral movements, whether it's tapping with butterfly on left and right shoulders, using these little buzzies that you hold. There's various ways, but EMDR has been super helpful for me. For a mobbing meeting that I had with two of the most senior or powerful men in the workplace, where I was at a founder and leader of the organization and then sort of the second guy in charge situation and that mobbing meeting really, man, it messed me up for a while in the moment and then in the aftermath. So EMDR was really helpful for me to process that and put myself in my mind back in that place. And the EMDR really helps process these traumatic memories in a way that helps you not feel retriggered when you talk about them.

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And they don't seem to reside in your body in the same way, because trauma rewires our brain. And so what bullies are doing is they are affecting our brain and our whole neurological system and damaging it. And so unfortunately, they're not helping us fix it. In almost every case, we're the ones who have to pay to go to therapy and get that fixed. But yeah, in some cases, you know, maybe you have a situation where that therapy is being paid for for, you know, various reasons in various workplaces.

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Like if you were in a car accident, surely the other person's insurance ends up paying for that. But in some cases people are just having to pay for it themselves, which has, you know, been my case in the case of many. But if you have those resources, and in some cases there can be funds available for people to get therapy in certain workplaces. So I encourage you to find whatever it takes to get that healing for yourself. And EMDR has been helpful to many people who have PTSD like symptoms.

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I was diagnosed with CPTSD in the aftermath of my workplace situation because it was an ongoing complex nature with multiple situations and multiple meetings over a long period of time. And so EMDR can be helpful for like a particular meeting, but it also can help all the other things that get connected to that with the other memories as well. So it's really useful for processing traumatic work experiences, especially if bullying has led to those PTSD like symptoms. And CPTSD somatic therapy addresses how bullying related stress is stored in the body. It really does get stored in your body, like the neurological system is our entire body.

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And so somatic therapy has been game changer for me. Absolutely. My life changed in the moment I started doing this kind of therapy. It addresses how bullying related stress is stored in a body and it helps with the emotional release part of that. The body indeed keeps the score.

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I read that book in the process and really got involved in a therapy that's a somatic therapy called dbt, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which involves a lot of mindfulness and making a list of things that make your body feel good and feel safe. Because the lack of psychological safety means that if we ground ourselves and we find ourselves in the here and now, our body doesn't think it's in the past and that we try to remind our body that we're here and this is now and we're safe and it's okay because the body thinks it's in the past. And so that's why the somatic therapy is so, so, so important in this kind of trauma. Mindfulness based stress reduction MBSR has been helpful to some people. It reduces workplace anxiety and help you stay grounded when facing difficult people.

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A lot of grounding techniques are out there that I've found in different therapies. But you could also just research some of that for yourself. Literally just putting your toes in the dirt or in the sand, in my case at the beach. I love that it really does ground me. But just being aware of your senses and what are you seeing and smelling and tasting and just reminding yourself when you eat to just notice the taste of what you're eating, all that mindfulness can really help you feel that you're in the here and now.

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And that's kind of the work of all this, is to remind your body that you're safe and it's not in that moment anymore. Coaching and support groups can be really helpful. They were really helpful to me. I was in a cohort for about, I don't know, six to nine months. I'm forgetting how long it was with people who had experienced workplace abuse.

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It ended in a retreat in the rainforest of Puerto Rico. It was amazing. That support group. We would read articles by different people expressing some of the research around this, the science of it, and sort of helping us unpack it. And then we would interact with each other throughout the week with those articles and then meet together online weekly and discuss the articles together.

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The leader of my particular cohort taught us a lot about our neurological system and the parasympathetic nervous system and learned so many things and it just, it solidified for me. Like, wow, I really am not crazy. Like, my body is really doing these things that it's never, ever, ever done. And it was the result of this workplace bullying that I experienced. And so that support group, very helpful and just the friendships that I made there.

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So just very helpful to have those conversations with each other. Highly encourage coaching and support groups in that way. By connecting with others who have experienced workplace bullying can really validate your experiences and really Provide some practical strategies. It just helps you be known and to know that you're not crazy. So whatever helps you process and move forward, please, please do it.

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And if leaving the job is your best option, that is not a failure. That is choosing you. And you are at the center of your career. And there are so many other options of places to work. And it may not feel like that right now because you may feel stuck, but staying in that place, you're going to become more like that culture that's allowing that toxic bully to keep going.

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You're likely to experience a lot of health effects. And I know that I didn't know it at the time, but every day I went back into that place, every week, I was putting my health at risk more and more and more. And so I wish I'd gotten out sooner. So it's okay if you don't see any progress being made and you need to just leave that job. Please do that.

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Please choose yourself. I want you to remember this. Your voice matters. Your work matters. And no bully gets to take that away from you.

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You deserve to heal. You deserve to do good work in this world. And you deserve for your voice to be freely shared and heard by others and believed that this is real and that you've gone through this. That's it for today's episode, but I want to hear from you. So have you dealt with a workplace bully?

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We're doing this episode because I know several of you listening have reached out about that. You've met me in person at different conferences and shared your stor with me. If there are more of you who want to share about your experience, please reach out. I'd love to know how you handled it, how you're handling it, how it's going. You can DM me on Instagram or drop a comment on our A World of Difference podcast website.

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You can also find me on Substack, where I'm talking a lot about workplace bullying there. I did a work Substack Live recently about the experience of being in a workplace bullying situation and the parallels I saw with what happened in the Oval Office. And so if you want to just find me on Substack or Blue Sky, I'm not in a lot of the places where I used to be no more on Twitter, ever since Elon really used that platform to help get Trump elected, I'm not over there anymore, but I'm in some other spaces, so you can find me there. And if this episode helped you, I'd love for you to share it with somebody. Who needs to hear it that may be walking through this right now or.

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Has in the past. Find that friend and share it with them and then share stories with each other so that you can be a part of helping each other heal and walk through this and let's keep lifting each other up everywhere around the world. Wherever you are. Keep being different difference makers. I'm sending you so much love today and healing and just to know that your voice matters and you're gonna get through this.

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Bye. Hey friend, let's talk. If you've been feeling stuck, uninspired or just plain over it in your career. This is your wake up call. It's time to stop waiting for that.

00:22:54
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Get it, maybe you're one of those. People and maybe you do. But if you're like most of the rest of us, you get a job. Based on people you know. And statistically speaking that's true, as well as in my own lived experience and career journey.

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So networking is really a huge part. Of it, but a lot of us don't know how. And so a spreadsheet where you can track that, break it down, figure out what to talk about. I have some sample interview questions or you can do informational interviews. There's so much there in the Pivot package that is part of my own journey that helped me when I did a career Pivot several years ago.

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So let's get after it. Go to loriadamsbrown.com careerpivot and sign up for Mastering the Career Pivot today. Because your next chapter, it's not going to write itself. Before we go, I just want to take a moment to thank you. Yes, you.

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The fact that you're here, tuning in, leaning into these conversations, and doing the hard and beautiful work of making a difference in this world, it means everything to me in this episode. If it spoke to you, if it. Brought you healing, hope, or even just a new perspective, I'd love for you to help us spread the word. Subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review, and share this episode with someone you think might need to hear it. Your support helps this community grow and also helps us to keep having these important conversations.

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You are such a vital part of this journey and every time you listen, every time you share, you remind me of why we do this. Because you are out there making a difference in your own beautiful, messy and imperfect way. And that that matters more than you know. So thank you for being here, thank you for showing up, and thank you for making the world a little brighter, a little kinder, and a little more whole. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep making a difference.

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You are loved.