To Be Target or Not To Be ..

"Psychological abuse, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, physical abuse, homophobia, and discrimination are prevalent problems in the attack of one who is an adult bully.  Unfortunately, our legal system accommodates bullies and the bullies benefit from the humiliation of the targets.  Some of the myths about why targets get bullies include:

• Targets deserve or assist a bully's aggression.
• Targets are weak.  In reality, it is the bully that is weak.  In our society, we associate strength with the "Machiavellian" behavior of aggression to be the most competitive.
• Targets are too sensitive, unstable, and unhealthy whiners who have a problem with authority.
• Targets are only in it for the money (from a lawsuit, for example).
• Targets have a past, have erred, and the world should be aware of their flaws.

Targets are chosen as a result of a combination of circumstances (right person, wrong place) and personality traits.  Targets tend to be individuals who bring themselves alot of attention for being good at what they do or for having a personality that draws attention.  Targets unknowingly bring on the ire of bullies who fear their own inadequacies will be discovered or that attention will be taken away from them.  Generally, targeted individuals are very intelligent, determined, creative, and industrious.  At work, they go the extra mile, learn jobs quickly, come to understandings with other professionals rapidly and are trustworthy.  Being trustworthy is especially enticing to a bully when choosing a target.  Bullies do not know anything about being trustworthy and generally lack a true sense of integrity.

When a target begins to take the attention, show signs of success and progression, pushes towards strong ideals and assets, earns the respect and protection of professional peers, the bully suddenly feels threatened and wait, like all predators, for the ideal  moment to strike.  When the ideal moments comes, even if the moment is as small as an error on the part of the target, the bully will use it to full advantage to begin negative and debasing actions and words against the target, as well as attempting to round up allies.  The bully chooses the moment and from then on the target will be faced with hostile remarks and actions.  The bully has been able to create the environment of fear and hostility and most witnesses to this behavior will simply look the other way or excuse the bully's behavior in some way, as is usual in the cycle of violence.  The following usually begins to happen:

• The target will deal with the bully's antics until mental and/or physical health is affected by the bully's aggression and isolation from her peers.
• The target will suffer from all of the above but will begin to take action.  The action may be going to law enforcement, taking legal and legislative action, and other creative means that the target can find to gain acknowledgement and support.

Other answers to "why don't you stand up for yourself?" include:

• A climate of dysfunction and fear makes people frightened to assert their rights.
• The target feels bewildered and often cannot believe what is happening; the target feels responsible in some way.
• Bullying is not against the law and the laws that do exist are difficult to apply to bullying.
• By this time, the target is suffering a sever psychiatric injury, is traumatized, and unable to articulate the circumstances, while the bully remains glib and plausible.
•  Trauma and fear combine to prevent the bully from being able to find the right words to identify, unmask, and call to account the bully's behavior.
• The bully relies on compulsive lying, Jekyll and Hyde nature, deception, deviousness, evasiveness and charm, and uses denial, counter-attack, projection, feigning victim-hood to evade accountability.  Charm has a motive -- deception.
• Many people are ignorant of or unenlightened about the nature of bullying.
• Bullies are encouraged and rewarded.
• The target naively believes that the system is there to protect her and will work for her (it isn't and it doesn't).
• The target felt and continues to feel guilty about what happened, having been encouraged by the bully to believe target was responsible.
• The target may have been encouraged to withdraw from legal action by the bully feigning victim-hood, playing on the target's forgiving chord and manipulating other people's sympathies.

Although many individuals in the United States ( I am one of them) are making efforts to address the need for better laws to deal with bullies, an intricate part of the mesh of our current society is the belief that aggression and competition lead to better results in profitability.  The truth is that bullying costs professions, individuals, and workplaces a tremendous amount of money. Once the bully realizes that the target is going to take action, the bully moves into a different objective; the elimination of the target.  This is done with continued violence against the target as a means of the malicious distortions of truth by the bully.  If the target does not succumb to the threats of the bully, ultimately the target will endure the hostility to the determent of health and with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

PTSD is a wide and varied normal response to stressful situations that occurs to many individuals all over the world and for different reasons.  Although some common events trigger PTSD (such as a violent death of one's child), many times individuals experience PTDS based on isolated events of significance only to them, based on their life history, geographical location, politics, and other reasons.  Targets are know to experience some degree of PTSD with effects ranging from mild to very traumatic and debilitating, ending in death due to some physiological manifestations of stress, or suicide.  In brief, people suffering from PTSD as a result of bullying report:

• fatigues with symptoms of, or similar to, chronic fatigue syndrome.
• Anger, over injustice.
• An overwhelming desire for acknowledgement, understanding, recognition, and validation of their experience.
• A simultaneous and paradoxical unwillingness to talk about the bullying or abuse.
• A lack of desire for revenge,but a strong motivation for justice.
• A constant feeling that one has to justify everything one says and does.
• A constant need to prove oneself, even when surrounded by good, positive people.
• An unusually strong sense of vulnerability.
• Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, and a sense of being unwanted, unlikable, and unlovable.
• A feeling of being small, insignificant, and invisible.
• An overwhelming sense of betrayal, and a consequent inability and unwillingness to trust anyone, even those that are close.

To be targeted by a bully is to suffer intense periods of isolation and illness. For survivors, it also means breaking away from the guilt of what has been unjustly done and moving on to a better place of strength, self-respect, and self-love.  We have a long way to go toward better politics, affordable and local opportunities for healing our trauma and supportive environments for individuals who want to end abusive behavior in the workplace.  However, I hope and pray that individuals will begin an open discussion on how bullying has affected them and begin to envision better ways to end violence in our local communities and over the world wide web in ways that can lead to defined laws and statutes and harsher consequences for those who wish to continue to hurt others.  I will continue with this mission because ..

I ride the dark horse ..

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