The (almost) everything you want to know about bullying collection
Narcissism hacks to navigate bullying
This post contains a collection of everything I’ve ever written on bullying to date. I will continue to add to this collection as more content emerges.
This collection of bullying articles contains four sections:
Section 1: Factors that contribute to bullying and what to do about it
Section 2: Women on women bullying series
Section 3: What NOT to do when navigating bullying
Section 4: The aftermath
Before I take you to the catalog of bullying, I wanted to briefly share my thoughts on a question that a colleague posed on LinkedIN.
I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, have either been bullied, witnessed bullying behaviour or bullied others (likely unintentionally). If you’ve never experienced bullying as a target or a witness, you’ve either lived in a cave, are oblivious to hostility or might need to begin a process to objectively examine the quality of your relationships. Those who have experienced bullying might have asked the question:
How do bullies live with themselves, let alone sleep at night?
I believe bullies are fine with themselves and their conduct, at least on the surface.
Leveraging constant victim mentality makes it easy to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing and assume that they are defending and protecting themselves rather than actively harming their target. Their perception of reality is VASTLY different to that of their victim. They can do no wrong while their target suffers at the hands of the bully's wrongdoing.
I suspect these bullies experience poor quality sleep because they are consumed by anticipating the next moves of their enemy, their victim, planning their next moves while dwelling in paranoia about their self-image and reputation.
Let's be clear - bullies, like anyone embodying malignant narcissistic traits, care about their reputation and preserving their ideal self-image. Anyone who dares oppose that person's self-perception becomes a target when the target's actions are viewed as betrayal.
It's really only the sadistic narcissists who deliberately hunt down and continuously attack their target as entertainment who might get the best quality sleep. Having empathy and remorse after realising that perhaps you've been the bully all along could get in the way of a good night's sleep. It will also give you an opportunity to make amends that will eventually help you find peace and restful sleep.
People who:
feel betrayed by others easily
are quick to blame others for their own feelings
assume ill intent
feel suspicious all the time about those who are highly competent and even friendly and,
are great at forming alliances by only sharing their stories of being victimized
are prone to becoming a bully, not the target.
I don't think they sleep well at all. It would be difficult feeling at peace with such deep insecurity and sense of inadequacy churning away in their mind.
The bully might live in the fantasy of their ideal self-image but their sleep will suffer.
Now onto the Hacking Narcissism Bullying Collection (after the jump)!
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Section 1: Factors that contribute to bullying and what to do about it
This partially paywalled piece describes bullying and the enabling conditions of bullying and the bully’s relationship with authority that can predict how they will behave in a group situation. This piece addresses the question “Can a bully wield power alone?” and is the foundation of all the other bullying content. This piece also lends insight as to why bullying prevention initiatives and zero tolerance policies fail miserably and why I have little faith in leadership when they are easily groomed and recruited as a bully’s ally against a target.
Knowledge Vampirism involves the extraction of knowledge, unpublished work and practice wisdom and claiming ownership as the original author and creator of the stolen work. This is one of the strategies bullies use in academia (and other industries) against their targets. It’s subtle until you realise it’s happening to you or someone you know. I also include steps to prevent being knowledge vamped.
Bullying is a form of revenge. Some people find this idea contentious when they believe all bullies are psychopaths who target someone they see as weak. My research and practice says otherwise. I delved into the drivers of revenge, psychological warfare waged against the target, psychosocial impact of a bully’s revenge tactics, guidance to the target on navigating the turmoil and extracting themselves from the bully’s web.
Defining the problem and its contributing factors is as important as providing practical steps to address the problem. This piece provides strategies for working together as a group to combat the wannabe authority on the team.
I also discuss how indulging in victimhood can turn that person into a bully who never sees themselves as a bully, along with their worshippers, because they’re always the victim. I describe how acknowledging one’s experience of being victimized can be used as fodder for rebuilding strength and resilience rather than trying to win the Victim Olympics we’ve witnessed to date.
I also described features of the most malignant bully archetype around that is a melange of the keyboard warrior and social justice warrior - The Social Injustice Warrior. This piece also describes communal narcissism traits and how experiencing loss is a precursor to becoming a Social Injustice Warrior.
I provided an analysis and framework to describe how some people find themselves targeted by bullies more than once. The objective is to help people gain insight about their relational habits by identifying their vulnerabilities to being groomed and exploited during the BEGINNING phase of any new relationship. If this sounds like you, you might want to upgrade your subscription so you can access the full piece.
I discussed the importance of assessing a new work culture instead of diving in (despite advice on proving yourself when you’re a new starter).
Section 2: Women on Women Bullying
The next three links focus on woman on woman aggression and bullying at work and in professional or social networks.
This article sought to answer the question “Why women bully women in the workplace?” This a foundation piece to the rest of the women on women bullying content. The linked articles in the text have thoughtful contributions from our amazing
community.
This piece received immense support and unsurprising backlash, including denial that women bully women by women. I needed to address the question of why women would deny the reality that women can and do bully other women. This piece also helps to identify bad actors who pose as benevolent women uplifting women.
I also wanted to examine the upstream factors to aggression and bullying that occur between women in a social network, including why a woman would unknowingly (or intentionally) exploit another woman through Knowledge Vampirism, a knowledge extraction approach that many people use. This piece sought to provide a heads up to all women about our envy-driven narcissistic tendencies when we see a woman as a competitor. The final section of this piece is behind a paywall.
This is a follow up on the Social Injustice Warrior article and how to avoid giving one access to your carefully curated network. While this isn’t exclusive to women, this is a common occurrence among women.
Section 3: What NOT to do when navigating bullying
It’s great to provide content and strategies to address bullying and it’s as important to inform about what NOT to do, or to no longer do about it. Harm minimisation is central to my own practice by anticipating and preparing those who have been targeted to respond to the the unintended consequences of making changes as well as the predicted backlash.
One of the risk factors that has stood out to me throughout my conflict and relationship support work is how targets hold unrealistic hope that the right people will be able to intervene and stop the bullying. If you read the first linked piece, you will see why holding such hope is naive and prolongs a state of denial that ultimately hurts the target. I’m not saying that in 100% of the cases restorative intervention isn’t possible. Of course it is though it requires documentation, evidence, resources and funds to mobilise authorities that can hold the bully and the workplace context/enabling community to account. These next pieces describe the pitfalls of believing that talking, calling out bad behaviour and saviorism will inevitably backfire (unless you have a high position of leadership and power that invite compliance).
This first piece is controversial to those who want to strictly follow the mantra “if you see something, say something” or that you should ALWAYS be an upstander. These are great ideals to hold onto in a world where justice is swift and guaranteed. If you’re living in a different reality, it’s good to exercise caution in your emotional and verbal response to witnessing bullying.
Another naive thing to do is warn friends and acquaintances about a bully when they’ve already formed a relationship with the bully. You can’t stop the train that’s already in motion and you can’t save your friend who has been groomed to see only the fabulous things about this person who caused you strife.
Once your friend has been recruited by the bully to be their ally, they are under an impenetrable spell. They will feel compelled to show greater loyalty to the bully even if they know about the bullying for a number of reasons outlined in this piece.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even the most intelligent, sceptical and critically thinking person can be emotionally manipulated to join Team Bully. This piece describes the conditions to becoming a Flying Monkey and this one here discusses how to immunize yourself against becoming a Flying Monkey. These pieces are behind a paywall.
Confronting the bully directly in hope of facilitating behaviour change, after they’ve already shown you their true colours can and will backfire. I describe the behaviours to expect from someone who is accountability averse and will start their revenge to regain narrative control and power.
Section 4: The Aftermath
Once a person has successfully exited a bullying situation or workplace, they tend to discover that the recovery process is just as difficult if not more so than being bullied. Bullying can shatter someone’s confidence, identity, self worth and trust in others. Recovery requires reckoning with what occurred and the impact, mourning the loss of self, and reconstruction of identity and self-trust. That’s just the healing part. The rest of the process involves managing the discovery of betrayal by trusted associates, ongoing surveillance by the bully’s Flying Monkeys and reputation damage. What you won’t find here is a HOW TO HEAL guide because it’s not simple, fast or linear. What you will find are specific strategies for increasing distance physically, socially and emotionally from the bully and everyone who continues to enable them.
This piece focuses on the immediate aftermath of leaving a toxic relationship, which certainly applies to a bullying situation. There is also a what not to do section to avoid remaining stuck in their web of drama.
Closure is a great concept that can be hard to achieve for a number of reasons described in this piece. You can identify the thinking, feeling or behaviour that’s keeping your from accessing closure.
How to know you’ve exited the toxic cycle for good.
I left the most uncomfortable piece to the last. This is for any of you who discovered that you are/were the perpetrator of bullying behaviour (or any wrongdoing) and need some guidance to navigate the impact of moral violation and remorse before you attempt to resolve the issue with the wronged party.
Thank you for making it all the way to the end. Please save this wherever you store helpful content so you can access all the bullying content from one place. I will continue to update this page with links to new bullying content.
Please tell me if you see a gap in content on bullying that you’d like me to write about by commenting below.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing and supporting my work,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.
I’m dedicated to helping people understand all the ways narcissistic traits infiltrate and taint our interpersonal, professional, organisational and political relationships, and provide strategies for narcissism hackers to fight back and find peace.
Here’s how you can help.
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I had to save this article because there's SO MUCH to dive into.
I've been having intrusive thoughts about some women who bullied me a few years ago and have been so angry that I can't get over it. This was a friend group, not a workplace situation. I want to move on an wish them well but I find myself wishing them not-well.
I will be diving into your final article and will let you know if it helps. I really appreciate this.
Damn Nathalie - this kinda causes distress because I fit a lot of the criteria for being at risk of becoming a bully. I don’t trust easily and I find myself constantly looking for what the hustle might be. I got a little anxiety going all of a sudden!
Also, I’ve read numerous studies that claim that bullies receive a dopamine reward that’s almost analogous to cocaine when they’re especially successful at cruelty. What’s your take on that? Valid / not valid?