Hello Anita,

Very sorry for the delayed response. Last week was again pretty painful with a bunch more of memories rushing back to me. And this time I think I’ve got a hunch of their motive for inflicting pain on me. I think that they hated me for calling them out for their wrong-doings towards me and hated me for my values and convinced themselves that I was a self-righteous, judgemental person who deserved to be bullied.

“my perspective almost disappeared and the perspective that she confidently and angrily presented to me- took hold.” – I’m happy to finally find someone who understands what I felt exactly. The anger they displayed with extreme confidence, without an ounce of guilt on their face, was what made me question the reality and end-up in a spiral of self-doubt. Because, normally(or atleast in my case), the one who has done wrong to someone else, would be humble and show some signs of guilt; confidently expressed anger is an emotion expressed by the one who was hurt, not the one who inflicted the hurt.

I’m very sorry that you were bullied by your mother(someone who was supposed to protect you). Hope you are healed now and in a better place. I have an emotionally abusive parent who failed me too, and he played a role in one of my workplace-bullying incidents. One night, as we were leaving the office, my teammates were bullying me as usual, but this time in front of my manager. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore and left their side. They later started badmouthing me to our manager, thinking that I’d already left. They didn’t know that I was nearby listening to them. Each and every word of theirs’ against me pierced sharply through my heart and I felt extremely hurt. They kept badmouthing me for a while and I kept controlling myself from crying, but soon enough, my Dad came to pick me up and called out my name(my Dad’s workplace was nearby and he used to pick me up after work). The moment I saw his face, I burst out in tears and my teammates saw me. I cried for a while sitting beside him and then Bully B(my then Team Lead who also played a huge role in bullying me, who later left the company after a few months), came to me to apologize to me(on being forced by my manager). I was too hurt to even look at her, and told my Dad to send her away as I didn’t want to talk to her at that moment. But my Dad tried forcing me to accept her apology, and I insisted on not wanting to talk to her. I then told him that I wanted to leave, but he kept insisting that we stay for a while more and could leave only if I told him what happened(still wonder why he was so adamant on not leaving). I gave up on leaving(my first mistake) and explained him the whole situation while crying in between. After a while, I saw him exchanging glances with bully Y. At this point, I was super pissed that my Dad was in cahoots with them. I felt betrayed by him and angrily walked away towards our vehicle, and waited for him to come. My Dad then started speaking to my teammates(I couldn’t hear what they were talking because I was standing far away). After a while, Bully B came to me and said with a smirk, “Your Dad is also on our side”, and walked away. I felt extremely hurt and betrayed, that MY Dad, who was supposed to protect me and take my side no matter what, sided with my bullies. This was the first betrayal I ever experienced from my Dad and felt heart-broken(there were many more later and I finally realized that my Dad is emotionally abusive). Wanting to have a serious talk with my Dad, and knowing that he wouldn’t take my feelings seriously, I kept the keys of our vehicle with me. My Dad then came back to the vehicle and the rest of my teammates stood stealthily behind me, which my Dad already saw, but didn’t tell me. I tried to initiate a conversation with him and asked him, “You are MY Dad, you are supposed to be on my side. Are you on my side or their side?”. To which he didn’t answer, as I already expected, and started trying to evade the conversation, invalidating my feelings. I then said that the vehicle keys were with me and that I’d not give them back to him until he answered me. He again started mocking me and demanded for the keys, trying to evade the conversation. This time, my teammates who were hiding behind me, listening to everything, also joined in on laughing at me. Bully Y had this smirk on his face which indicated that he was looking down on me. They walked away, and I was left in extreme emotional pain and disbelief. I then threw away the keys I was holding in my hand, out of intense emotional pain and anger, that my Dad had betrayed me, and walked away and got on a cab. I then started getting calls from my Dad, which I ignored. Immediately after, Bully B called me and started lecturing me on how “wrong” and “disrespectful” I was, for throwing away the keys and walking away on my own. She then told me how my Dad was planning on calling the police because he was worried for my “safety”. I was scared that the matter would get out of hands if my Dad involved the police, so I answered the next call from him, asked him to apologize to me and got off the cab to go with him. I asked him about what he said about me to my teammates, and he replied that he didn’t say anything(a lie which was confirmed the next day), which I believed naively.

The next day, Bully B decided to record me secretly about what happened after I left the previous day and started interrogating me for the details. She wanted to use this recording as a cop out in front of my manager, for what they all did to me the previous night. They wanted to justify their actions by making me look as the bad guy for throwing away my Dad’s keys and walking away on my own. That isolated incident would “prove” that I’m “that kind of person”. I immediately saw that she was trying to record and I decided to fish for the truth too. I don’t remember the whole conversation properly, but this is how it went(her tone was quite condensing and judgemental throughout the conversation) –

Me: What did my Dad say?
Her(unwillingly shared): He said that you are a “difficult” child at home too and that they too have a hard time dealing with you. He said that your mother is “vexed” with you.(she also told other things he said about me, but I dont remember much details).

(I was utterly shocked and felt betrayed that my Dad actually said all these false things about me to my CO-WORKERS and MANAGER, and then lied to me that he didn’t say anything!)

Her: See, I was right about you. Whatever I said yesterday about you is all true, your own Dad had justified that. I was not wrong in saying those things about you.
Me: Then why did you apologize? You apologized to me, that means you feel guilty for what you said.
Her: I apologized only because I felt “pity” towards you, because you were crying. Our Manager asked me to do so.(I couldn’t believe that she was thinking that she was somehow superior to me and that her “apology” was an act of “charity” towards me)
Me: You did it because you felt guilty. If not you wouldn’t have come to me later saying,” Your Dad is also on our side”.(This is how I think even now, I think my Dad’s words about me made her feel justified for treating me that way, and she dusted off her guilt. I request your thoughts on this, Anita)

Me: What happened after I left in the cab?

(Turns out that my Dad played the victim in front of them and seeked help from them to find the keys, though I threw them right beside the vehicle; thereby making me out to be the bad guy)

Her : Colleague X helped your Dad to find the keys. Your Dad was very “worried” about you when you left without saying. You were also very wrong for throwing away your Dad’s keys. You are “disrespectful”, “ill-mannered” and “difficult”. You shouldn’t treat elders that way. Colleague Y is “disgusted” by your behaviour.
Me(very triggered by now about Bully Y’s opinion of me) : Who is he to judge me without knowing anything about my relationship with my Dad? He should look at himself before pointing fingers at me. I clearly remember the smirk he gave when I was crying. I’ll never forget that!

At this point, I was very triggered by the fact that they were taking things out of context and looking at my reaction towards my Dad as an isolated event, rather than as my reaction towards his betrayal. I was angered by the fact that Bully Y felt entitled to judge me and look down on me without seeing the whole truth and solely based on HIS idea of what was right manners and what was wrong manners. I felt extremely hurt that they were twisting the whole incident in a way which portrayed me as the “bad guy” and the rest of them as the “good ones”, when in reality “I” was the victim. I also felt that my perspective was unheard and suppressed. No one wanted to understand how strong the feelings of betrayal were for a daughter, who was back-stabbed by her own Dad. I was again labelled “that kind of girl” by Bully Y. Interestingly, another Bully C, often threw profanities at his mother, but Bully Y was never “disgusted” by his behaviour, neither did he look down upon him. I still never understood these double-standards.

Bully B was one of the main bullies, who inflicted too much pain on me. As long as I remember, I was always depressed during the time she was still working there. Yet, according to bully X’s words, my abuse was not “as bad as” what he went through at the hands of another colleague.

Hello Anita,

I’m very sorry for the delayed response. I had been having quite a few flashbacks to the incidents which happened back then and was too disoriented to reply back. My low self-esteem and insecurities existed since my childhood, due to being bullied and made an outcast at a young age at school (I’m completely over these incidents btw). But, these issues became severe and new issues were created, when I was subjected to workplace-bullying. Until before joining my job, though I had my insecurities and low self-esteem, I was pretty confident in that I was a decent human being and I never had any doubts about my character and values. But, the bullies made me question my own sanity and my own character. One question which was always in my head – “Am I the bad person here?”.
I think the reason these incidents from 7 years ago are resurfacing again, is because I never got any proper closure. Everybody was pointing fingers at me, so I never had anyone who listened to or understood my side of the story. Also the confidence displayed by my bullies, about being justified in hurting me, about being so sure and convinced that I was the bad person and deserved it, was what made me question my own reality and become smaller in front of them, to the point that I slowly started disappearing even in my own conscious. My perspective disappeared and their perspective took over my conscious. They had a statement which they repeated often, almost like a signature after bullying me, “Does it hurt? That’s how I felt back then”. That confident gaze of theirs, the tone in which they spoke, everything stuck inside my head and my critical brain played it in an unending loop, and now, that’s happening again.
There was another bully Y, who was set out to demonify me in front of everyone I was close to, or getting close to. He wanted to prove to everyone that I was “That kind of person”, though I still don’t know what “kind of person” he wanted to prove me as. He manipulated and created situations where I felt cornered and pressurized to reveal my intentions about people and things. I remember one incident when he demonized me in front of others. There was a colleague(who was not a part of my team) who became my acquaintance through some small talk about breakups( at this point I had broken up with my then bf). She offered me to tag along with her and her friends to speak and vent about our exes, for which I was reluctant to go initially, but my Manager convinced me to go and become more “social”. Bully Y saw that and wanted to prove to her about my “true nature” so he came up with a scheme. I had a good talk with her and her friends and later in the day, all the bullies started questioning me about what we talked about our bfs. I told them that it was just a usual talk where everyone shared their sad experiences. They asked me what I talked about and I said that I didn’t talk much about myself, as the other ladies had much more serious and painful issues with their bfs. The bullies then started twisting my words trying to frame me as someone who felt superior to other ladies because I didn’t have serious problems with my ex-bf(which was entirely the opposite of what I felt about the other ladies btw).
I sensed something wrong and pinged my other female teammate A(the one who recorded me) and asked her if the others are plotting something, and if I needed to be careful about what to say, to which she said no. Though she was also in it together with them, which she later confessed about. I started feeling cornered and anxious again and started loosing my cool and rationality. Now this is where they start manipulating the whole situation and matters start getting worse. They start pressuring me to talk about the other ladies’ stories, and I start feeling that chill down my spine thinking, “It has started again.. they are ganging up on me again.. they are upto something.. I feel cornered and am loosing my rationality.. I am all alone in this again”. I first refuse to talk about any of them and say, “If you are so curious about them, go ask them yourself”. The mini-bullies back-off and I feel relieved for a second. But, the main bully now stands up signalling to someone(I later realize that this person was the lady who invited me to have a chat with her and her friends) and says, “Why are you being so stubborn? It’s not like they can hear us”. Now, I didn’t know that the Lady was sitting right next to my cubicle, and the main bully’s pressure got the best out of me. I shared snippets of their stories with the bullies. I know I was in the wrong for sharing their stories, and I should’ve stood my ground, but I was manipulated and pressured by my bullies into sharing with them. At this point, someone else from my team(I think it was my manager, my memory is not clear about this) asks me what I feel about my ex after listening to their stories and I say, “I now think that my ex was an angel”. I didn’t say this with any negative intention towards the other ladies, I just shared what I felt about my ex, and that too upon being questioned. That Lady has been listening to the whole conversation all the while, and is now angered by my statement about my ex(understandable from her perspective). The main bully gleefully gets up and says, “So your alliance has fallen apart so fast?”. From this point, I became the bad one who felt “superior” to others and gossiped about other colleagues, and my bullies became the “good guys” who revealed about my “true-nature” to others.
I apologize to that Lady immediately and try to explain her that it was never my intention to feel superior to her or to offend her, and she refuses to take my apology. The next day, I take her aside and explain the whole situation about how bully Y plotted all this due some grudges against me and apologize to her again, and this time, she does accept it. Later she goes to bully Y and tells him everything which I told her earlier. Turns out she was also in cahoots with him from the starting. She and the other bullies then come to me and throw their signature dialogue, “Does it hurt?”, smiling gleefully at my tears.
Bully X also played a huge part in eroding my self-esteem as most of the times he was the one who always said, “Does it hurt? That’s how I felt back then”, with a confident, justified gaze and tone. They all loved using false-equivalnces in order to justify their actions towards me, and I was left all confused, hurt and blaming myself for every incident. Bully X’s image of being “the guy who is always right” added to my confusion. If he’s right, then I must be wrong, isn’t it? Also, Whenever they made me out to be the bad guy, I tried defending myself saying, “I am not that kind of person”. To which they always replied, “So are you saying that “I” am that kind of person?”, with the same confidence in their gaze and tone. I now think that they were projecting onto me because they didn’t like admitting that they were the ones in the wrong here.

Hello Anita,

Thanks a lot for your input. I am having even more painful memories rushing back to me, so please excuse me if this is all over the place. I was a non-conformist in the sense that I didn’t conform to the existing cultural standards of my country(I’m from a conservative country) and the established status-quo of being a “team-player” in the company. Being a “team-player” in my company meant – apologizing to the whole team even for things which were not completely my fault just to satisify everyone’s ego, taking sides and recording people if asked to. I had no idea about this “team” culture as it was my first job, and the whole thing didn’t make any sense morally to me. I was pressured to apologize and take the blame for things which weren’t completely my fault. The biggest problem was, though I apologized several times to them, they still held deep-seated grudges and emotionally abused me every chance they got. They expected sincerity from me, and though I was as sincere towards them as possible, they never once treated me with basic respect or sincerity. They first made me trust them but back-stabbed me time and again. When I called them out on their behaviour, they didn’t like it. One of the bullies, before leaving the team confessed that she deliberately hurt me because she felt that my initial apology towards the team was “insincere”. All this hurt me deeply and pushed me into a spiral of depression and eradicated my self-esteem slowly.

I was also forced to share my personal details like info about my family and my then boyfriend, and constantly forced to share my opinions on controversial topics, which made me feel extremely uncomfortable. When I tried to set boundaries and refused to speak about a certain controversial topic or share my personal info, they used to get extremely offended and even start mocking me for wanting to keep my personal info private. This behaviour of theirs forced me to always just give up in the end and share my personal info or my opinions on controversial topics with them, in the hopes that they might stop harassing me, but their harassment just got worse. Whenever I shared my personal info upon being asked, they used to probe even deeper into it, forcing me to give even more info and then make comments about my personal life. Whenever I shared my opinions on being forced to do so(which were different than theirs because they always supported the status quo and I was most of the times against it), they often used to give glances towards each other in a way ridiculing me, or downright make mean, hurtful comments and try to tear down my values and opinions. They were also pretty hypocritic with the way they held me to unreasonable standards and nitpick on everything I said or did, but patted each others’ back when they made the same mistakes I made. For ex: They didn’t like the way I spoke to my family or friends(yes they used to over-hear my phone conversations with them and I normally spoke bluntly with my family or friends), but used to be very lenient towards someone else from their group who used curse words at their parents.

I was growing exhausted by all this and started standing up for myself, and when I reached my limits, I lashed back too. Their constant mocking of me made me misunderstand some of their words and actions towards me too, and one time I lashed back with small insults towards them because their mocking was getting unbearable and I partly misunderstood some of their words. They didn’t like it and my lashing back was seen as “disrespectful”. I immedaitely apologized that I was wrong for lashing out and that the misunderstanding was on my side(though it was on both the sides), but they were unwilling to hear me out and made me out to be the bad guy. I felt like my perspective would never be heard and doesn’t matter, but still, I apologized several times.

One of the bullies(more like an enabler who emotionally abused me by being in the sidelines) had the “good guy” image and he was very convinced and confident that I was the one in the wrong and refused to listen to anything I said. When I asked him why they treated me this way, his response was, “If we treat everyone well and not you, then you must be in the wrong”, implying that I was in the wrong and deserved to be bullied. Though, in a later incident, when I’ve had enough, with them name-calling me as “retarded” and called him out, he did kind of apologize, but still refused to acknowledge that I was being bullied and believed that I “made” them act that way.

All this made me enter into this never ending guilt-trap of constantly feeling that I did something wrong and always wondering what I did wrong. I lost my self-esteem, was burdened with intense guilt, always walked on egg shells around them and felt that I deserved to be treated the way they treated me because they made me convinced that I was in the wrong. Because I was all alone throughout the whole situation, and it was a one against a group situation, I also have this fear that if something ever happens in the future, my perspective will never be heard by anyone and no one would be on my side. So, please tell me, was I not bullied? Did I deserve to be treated this way even if I made some unintentional mistakes but immediately apologized for them? Do I deserve to live constantly feeling guilty and not knowing why? Don’t I deserve to lead a happy and confident life?