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?