A Long Recovery from Bullying (Part 2- Graduation and Beyond)

Graduation was bittersweet. Although I was happy to graduate high school, I was sad because I would miss my classmates and teachers from Roseburg High. I felt that it ended too soon.

My first five years post-graduation was full of ups and downs. I struggled with bouts of depression and didn’t know why. I was on the rollercoaster again and desperately wanted to get off but didn’t know how. Having babies and being a post-partum new mother only doubled the depression that was already there.

I lived, and I worked. I was a mother of two small children but only going through the motions and surviving- existing. It felt as if I was living on autopilot. But then, something amazing happened!

In 1995, I came across a magazine article while on my lunch break at work. The article was about a kid severely bullied at school. Like me, his bullies had tormented him so horrifically that he thought about suicide and eventually transferred to another school. Also, like me, his life changed for the better. He, too, had made a complete turnaround and finally gotten the chance to experience the friends, fun, and excitement that high school was supposed to be.

Reading this article was a turning point for me, and finding it was one of the best things that happened. This piece in the magazine answered so many questions and confirmed that none of the abuse I’d suffered at my classmates’ hands was my fault. The article was also validation that there was never anything wrong with me. It only cemented the truth I’d always known deep down inside- I wasn’t to blame for their abuse.

They were the perpetrators.

They had the issues.

I was being held responsible for problems that were theirs, not mine.

With this confirmation came my empowerment!

During those years, many people, including a few well-meaning family members, had often told me that the bullying I suffered was all in my imagination or wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. Many more had said to me that I brought it all on myself. Deep down, I knew better.

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In my heart, I had known the truth years before I found this article and held on to it. Maybe this personal knowledge was why I resisted my bullies and fought back, even if it meant getting hurt. And perhaps it was why I suffered so many physical assaults. Nevertheless, I needed confirmation- a second opinion of sorts, and the article was exactly what I needed.

At that moment, everything fit together like a perfect puzzle! I cannot express the relief I felt. It was as if the article had lifted an enormous weight off my shoulders. My heart began to soar!

For the first time, I was able to see the bullying for what it was- abuse!

I began to thirst for even more knowledge of bullying and the human predator/prey dynamic. From then on, I read everything I could get my hands on- magazine articles, essays, books, online articles, everything that pertained to bullying and peer abuse.

There were so many unanswered questions:

“What was it about me that made me a target?”

“How had my bullies been allowed to get away with their brutality?”

“What was it about my bullies that made them so charming and good to everyone else?”

The word Answer on a puzzle piece to symbolize the quest for understanding in answering questions and concerns

“What were the ingredients to their charm and allure?”

“Where had their intense hate, mean-spiritedness, and sadistic natures come from? What had precipitated it?”

“Had they too been abused, or were they just spoiled, coddled narcissists infected with schadenfreude?”

So many questions haunted me and increased my curiosity. So, I continued digging for information, like a police detective eager to solve a case.

During the late nineties, I came across Tim Field’s BullyOnline.org and hungrily read every one of his articles. The website was massive, and it took a while to read. I went through it with a fine-toothed comb. If I had questions, I emailed Tim, and he would always reply in a timely and courteous manner.

Sadly, Mr. Field is no longer with us. He passed away from cancer years ago.

It’s been 25 years since I found the article that changed my life, and I cannot tell you how many sources of information I’ve poured through. I can’t measure the truckloads of knowledge attained and how much just the knowing has empowered me.

Between experience and two and a half decades of reading, research, and study, I’ve gained insights that have empowered me even more. That article back in 1995 set me on a path to greater knowledge and a passion for helping other bullying targets through writing and advocacy.

I’ve found what I love to do, and it is so rewarding!

I thank God for placing that article in front of me that day at work. Otherwise, I might still be wandering in the dark and trying to find my way.

That magazine article truly changed my outlook on the bullying I suffered. I no longer see it as something that ruined my life. No.

I see the bullying as an event that gave me a fiery passion for speaking out about my own experiences and sharing the knowledge I’ve gained to help people who endure bullying today. It showed me my life’s work and, through that, gave me eventual confidence and happiness.

I do not need to hate my bullies, nor to take revenge. Turning abuse around to the benefit of others is how I turn victimization into power! And that, my friends, is the best revenge a person can ever take!

If you’re a target of bullying, know this:

What’s happening to you is wrong and it isn’t your fault. You never asked to be brutalized, you do matter, and you are enough!

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Learned Helplessness Explained from Personal Experience

A Very Bad Place

That god-awful place I was in years ago is a place I never want to return to. There was a time I’d given up- a time I felt that I had no control over my own life. Instead of running my life, I let my life run me. Even worse, as much as I wanted to fix it, I didn’t know how.

All I knew was that my life was a constant battle- a war I never volunteered to fight in but one I felt I’d been involuntarily drafted into- with no furlough, no R&R, and one that seemed to be never-ending. I was as a ship without a rudder.

Bad things kept happening back-to-back and I didn’t know what was broken. Therefore, there was no way of knowing how to fix it.

It looked as if everyone else was happily enjoying life- getting what they wanted (or more appropriately, what I wanted)- everyone except me, and I was sick of always being an exception.

I had been programmed to believe, though subconsciously, that love, success, anything good and meaningful, was for anyone who wasn’t me. I felt that God loathed me and wanted to punish me by blocking me from any kind of happiness, satisfaction, and contentment, while making sure I’d see everyone else reaching successes and enjoying their lives.

And I hated them all for it. Even worse, I hated God for seemingly blessing them and cursing me- for allowing me to suffer and seemingly leaving me to fend for myself, then cutting off ways for me to do it. I felt that it just wasn’t fair. I stopped talking to God. I wanted nothing to do with Him. I either wanted to ignore Him flat out or curse Him in my heart. I was angry- no. I was outraged!

Depression Concept with Word Cloud and a Humanbeing with broken Brain and Heavy Rain

I was in such a bad place and life sucked- royally!

It was as if He were forcing me to suffer and, at the same time, rubbing everyone else’s successes and blessings in my face. It was the feeling of being starved and denied essential nourishment while being tied to a chair and forced to watch everyone in the room eat heartily and enjoy a huge feast.

That was torture!

It’s Only the Result of Learned Helplessness.

But you see? This is what learned helplessness does. It programs you to believe that you’re at the mercy of Fate! You ask yourself, “what’s the point?” After so many disappointments and heartaches, you come to feel that there’s nothing you can do to change your situation- that you’re just “stuck with it,” and “that’s just the way it is.”

Learned helplessness forces you to believe that you have power over nothing! You’re just a leaf being blown about by the wind- a car without a steering wheel. It is as if your life has been set to autopilot and there’s no way you can navigate its direction.

You come to believe that you should just roll over, resign yourself, and accept your fate and station in life- just go with the flow and let yourself be blown wherever the wind decides to take you.

At the time, therapy helped a little, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t enough. It only allowed me to keep existing instead of living. All the therapists wanted to do was shove anti-depressants down my throat, which, in most cases, left me feeling like a zombie- like I was just there, and that’s it. They were only treating the symptoms and not the root cause.

The Turning Point

My saving grace was when God showed me what I needed to do. And what pulled me out of this dark pit was when I began reading personal development and putting everything I learned into practice. I was hungry for any knowledge I could use to make a better life for myself. I ordered and devoured book after book, and I continued to practice the new habits I’d learned everyday until it became like second nature, and I no longer had to think about it.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. It took a few years but I was amazed at the results and the good blessings that begin to flow into my life almost immediately!

I now realize that all along, I’d always had the power to change things, only I’d never known I had it.

And power you don’t know you have is power you don’t have because it’s power you can’t use. You cannot use anything you don’t know you have.

A Positive Outcome

In general, I’m a happy person today. I’m confident and comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am and what I want out of life, and I go after it with excitement and fervor. Yes! Now, I get excited about my life and about the future!

This is not to say that I don’t have days when I’m not at my best because I do. Things will still go wrong as they most certainly will for anyone of us. I just have a much better way of looking at it and it doesn’t feel nearly as bad as it used to. I may not have total control of my life, only God has that. But I have control over much more than I did years ago.

Any time I even suspect that I’m slipping back into the “old mindset,” I quickly begin counting my blessings and reminding myself that there are many people who have it much worse than I ever had it and before I know it, I’m back to where I need to be.

But most importantly, I’m making my peace with God and there’s nothing better than that!

So, I want you to know that, if you’re in the same bad place, you don’t have to continue living there. You have more power than you realize, you just don’t know it’s there. You do not have to accept everything that you’re not happy with and that brings you pain.

You do have the power to change it. I’ll show you how in the next post!

Triumphing Over Workplace Bullying and Mobbing- How I Did It (Part 5)

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(Continued from Part 4…)

Six months after Darnell and I walked away from the workplace cesspool, that was Shady Grove Living Center, the fit finally hit the shan. I was outside walking my dog when a neighbor, who still worked at the nursing home, stopped me to relay some exciting news.

Beau, Harry, and Cammie, better known as “The Thieving Three,” had all been fired from the facility earlier that day- only an hour or two earlier, in fact. The news had traveled that fast!
She told me that the owners of the facility had suddenly shown up and had the three of them escorted off the property. An Acting Administrator took Beau’s place. A temporary Bookkeeper/Payroll Clerk and Head of Maintenance took the positions of Cammie and Harry.

Over the next few weeks, several others were fired as well. The DON (Director of Nursing) was let go after stealing narcotics to feed her addiction to pain pills, as were a few other nurses. The owners also terminated the dietary manager and several CNAs- who had all been loyal flying monkeys to The Thieving Three.

So many got the ax and within such a short amount of time. The owners cleaned that place out. After it was all said and done, I could probably count on one hand the people spared.

It was the buzz around town for well over a month. After they were terminated, Harry and Cammie were so scared and humiliated that they threw everything into two U-hauls and skipped town. Surprisingly, Shady Grove never pressed charges and I was told that it was because the nursing home was afraid that pressing charges might tarnish it’s reputation.

Harry and Cammie moved somewhere around middle, TN, somewhere close to the Tennessee River. Cammie ended up working for the County Medical Center there, in the same position she had at Shady Grove. Later, she committed the same crimes there; only the Medical Center didn’t let it slide as Shady Grove had.

They pressed charges and Cammie was found guilty. The judge sentenced her to three years in state prison but she only served two.

I’ll never forget the tyrannical reign of The Thieving Three over the employees of Shady Grove, and neither will I forget their downfall. This is why I firmly believe that most bullies usually get their just desserts in the end, just as these bullies did.

Sometimes, you must let your bullies do what they do until they get too cocky, too careless, and end up falling on their own swords.