How I Conquered My Adult Bully Like A Grown Woman
To think I came this close to letting her scare me.
GaudiLab / Shutterstock Life is pretty good. It’s funny to think that two years ago today I had a conversation that almost scared me right out of my industry.
In March 2014, I received a request for a phone chat from someone I perceived to be in a position of power in my field. I accepted the request, and over the course of an hour, that person systematically took me apart.
By the time we hung up I was convinced that my work was terrible, I was unqualified, no one respected me, and I was something of a joke in my industry. I felt “cast out of the kingdom," as it were — ashamed, inadequate, and like the worst fears that plagued me since starting my own site and entering this field were actually true.
I didn’t want anyone outside of my inner circle to ever know what had happened. So, why am I telling you about it now? Because two years later I’m badass-ing all over the place, and I’ve realized the whole thing was nonsense.
It took me a long time, but eventually, I understood exactly how to deal with bullies, especially adult bullying! I had walked right into the trap of a bully, but you don't need to.
Here are 10 tips for surviving a bully when you're a grown-up, so you can skip right to the part where you keep on being a strong person without ever believing any of their ridiculousness.
1. Take stock of the facts.
A) You need to own your s***.
It’s irresponsible to go through life assuming everyone who tells you something you don’t want to hear is wrong. I know I’ve grown a lot from being called out or called in when I’ve done things that weren’t right, and I shudder to think what kind of person I would be if I had met those call-outs with a “la la la I can’t hear you!”
Difficult though it may be, it’s important to look at situations objectively and see things you may have done wrong. In this case, my bully referenced an incident that had occurred with my Sex Geekdom Portland group months earlier. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say in the midst of a lot of drama and in-fighting, I made a call that hurt someone.
For whatever reason, the bully decided that incident would be the starting point of our discussion, even though I'd already had a coffee date with the person I had hurt. That was dealt with, and the situation never had anything to do with the bully, so its presence in the conversation was strange.
That said, I had indeed done something that hurt someone and so there was a grain of truth in the whole thing for me to acknowledge.
B) You need to be able to see what's real and what's not.
The incident in Portland was officially the only thing about that phone call that was rooted in truth. However, because I failed to take stock of the facts, I believed everything else my bully said was true as well.
I believed them when they said that I was regarded by large portions of our industry as a “mean girl” and a “b****” and was being talked badly about. Once I was on board that train, it was really easy to keep believing them when they went on to explain to me that I was a “blogger, not an educator,” and spoke to me at length about what that meant regarding my understanding of the industry and the odds that I would ever be taken seriously.
By the end, I believed I was not only largely disliked, but that my attempts to present myself as an educator were causing people I admired, respected, and regarded as colleagues, role models, and mentors to laugh at me. I believed I was a joke.
If I had taken any time to objectively look at the facts, I would have realized there is absolutely no evidence that any of that was true — frankly, there is a truckload of evidence to the contrary — but I let my emotional mind run the show and sent my reasonable mind and wise mind off on a long vacation together.
Get very clear on what are and are not facts when it comes to how to deal with bullies. To make this easier, don’t talk to your bully on the phone. With no witnesses or paper trail, they feel free to say whatever absurd stuff they want. Ask to discuss matters over email, or at the very least to have a conversation in the presence of others.
Keep everyone honest. Deal with facts. Own what’s yours, and discard the rest. That leaves bullies very little to work with.
2. Be familiar with your "buttons" and be honest about whether they were just pushed.
When I step back and look at the conversation between my bully and me, I can’t help but be impressed. The word “diabolical” comes to mind.
Two of my biggest buttons are the fear that I’ll upset people and raging imposter syndrome. This person went right for them and hit them both hard, and it was like the conversational equivalent of Stephen King’s It.
It’s really no wonder I fell for it all so easily. They simply told me what I’d been afraid of hearing since I stepped into this industry: “No one wants you here. You aren’t qualified."
That was something the horrible voice in the back of my head had been saying all along. Hearing my bully say it simply served as proof that I needed to give up on myself. Don’t do that!
Really look at what is being said to you and at what you know your triggers are. People are cruel and will go for your weaknesses. If you can see what’s happening and recognize it for what it is you can avoid falling for it.
3. Know that one person claiming to be the voice of many is suspect.
One of my biggest regrets about this whole thing is that I lost some relationships I really treasured because I believed the whole “lots of people don’t like you” thing, along with the bully’s specific implications as to who those people were.
What it took me a long time to realize was that it was only the bully saying that. No one else ever spoke out against me or confronted me on anything. I took my bully at their word that (and I can still hear them saying it) “You may not see it but emails and private messages happen.”
What kills me about having fallen for this tactic is that I had ended an emotionally abusive relationship a few months before this happened and feel like I should have recognized it — my former partner had done the same thing.
If anyone tries to change your behavior by speaking on behalf of a group of people — “Everyone’s mad!” “No one likes you!" — slap a big old “Citation Needed” on that sucker and give some serious side-eye to the person talking. Why is no one else speaking up? Why can’t the bully just express their own opinion? Why do they need to tell you that “everyone” feels this way?
Here’s why: it makes it sound like they are helping you out. Then they get to be mean and act like you somehow owe them. It’s manipulative and cruel. Don’t fall for it and certainly don’t let it cost you relationships.
4. Get the bully out of your (virtual) life.
Due to the wonders of social media, we’re all in each other’s lives constantly — which can be nice for staying connected to your long-distance support system, but horrible for when you have to watch friends and colleagues engage with someone who was cruel to you, as was the case with my bully.
Seriously, twice a year my feed turned into an orgy of bully love. So I put an end to that for the sake of my own sanity, and so I could keep liking my friends (who, for the most part, had no idea any of this had happened).
I unfriended, unfollowed, and, in extreme cases, blocked my bully on social media. It’s lovely. I've created an online world in which the bully doesn’t exist. I highly recommend this to keep yourself focused and your bully out of your line of vision.
Remember, your computer is pretty much a doorway into your home. No one is entitled to enter it without your permission, even via your Facebook feed.
5. Have a support system.
Round up your dream team and keep them close at hand. Also, be aware that someone who mistreats you has probably mistreated others. There’s strength in numbers. You need other people to help you through this — voices to drown out the bully’s.
If you are anything like me, the bully's voice is going to play on repeat in your head for a while, and negative voices feel so much louder than positive ones. So, enlist people to help you.
6. Recognize shame and (try to) meet it with rational thought.
I didn’t tell anyone outside of my inner circle what happened for a really long time. I just kind of quietly slunk away. Why? I was ashamed.
I came to understand this a bit deeper last week while listening to Brene Brown. When discussing the difference between humiliation and shame, Brown explains that humiliation happens when we know we don’t deserve what has, in this case, been said.
With humiliation, we are usually able to tell others — to vent, rant, and get it out. Shame, on the other hand, happens when we think we deserve what has happened, or in this case, that what was said was true. We don’t want to tell anyone because, well, someone said I suck and I believe I suck, so there’s not much of a conversation to have.
I really believed that I was the worst, and thought that if I told people what the bully had said they would stop and think “You know what, now that I think about it, JoEllen does kind of suck." It took me a long time to recognize the shame for what it was.
For so long I dressed it up as not wanting to get people involved in “petty high school nonsense” (a sentiment I stand by), but I recently realized that since no one knew what happened, no one could support me and that lack of support was leading to me resent people, which wasn’t fair … but I didn’t want them to find out what had happened. You can see where this is going.
Recognize shame when it crops up and try to combat it with logical thought.
7. Understand that sometimes it is personal (and actually, that may be preferable).
We love to tell people “it’s nothing personal!” when someone hurts them in a professional context, but the moment when the weight of this whole situation lifted for me took place about a year ago (AKA, a year after the horrible phone call) when it got back to me that the bully had made comments implying my work was ethically questionable.
How? I have no idea. They hadn’t asked me any questions about it or looked into my work in any way. This was simply trash talk dressed up as concern.
At that moment it hit me: none of this had anything to do with my work! This person simply didn’t like me and decided to use the power they had to do something about that.
I don’t know why, and really it doesn’t matter — I know I’m not everyone’s cup of lube. What matters is that something I had been seeing as a (possibly true) critique of my entire professional life was little more than a personal grudge based on (from what I can tell) nothing.
In one day I went from being unable to think about the situation without crying to actually laughing about the absurdity of it. It was personal, they just don’t like me — and that’s fine!
A bully may try to tear you down and make you doubt yourself and what you do by pointing out your alleged flaws and failings. Before buying into what they say, ask yourself, “Is it possible that they just don’t like me? And do I care about that at all?”
8. Remember who you are — a soundtrack may help.
There were times when this whole thing would really get me down. When I would watch my friends and colleagues engaging in my bully’s event and posting happily about how wonderful it was, I felt like I was not only any longer part of that world but like my friends and colleagues must agree with the bully and see what that person saw in me.
When that happened I would take a moment and remind myself of just who I am. I have survived burying a parent, ending a marriage, and rebuilding my entire life. I moved across the country. And when no one else had done the work to create the data on sex and depression that I wanted, I did it my damn self.
My work helps people. My voice matters. And my hair is awesome. I’m kind of a badass. And you are too. Make your own list — an inventory of badssery if you will — right now so that if you find yourself facing down a bully or any other source of self-doubt you can use it to remember who you are.
I’m not saying it’s always easy. Sometimes when you’re dealing with stuff like this it can feel like your detractor is drowning out everything else. That’s when I use music. Really loud music. I advise keeping a playlist on hand.
9. Have some empathy.
I can hear you groaning from here. I’m not saying you have to be nice. I’m not saying you have to see their side. I’m not even saying you have to forgive. I’m just saying try to employ some empathy for the person who has bullied you. If nothing else, it will help you see that their bullying most likely had nothing to do with you.
In my case, I came to realize that the things my bully said to me were very likely indicative of their own insecurities. Our backgrounds in the field are quite similar. It’s possible we share the same fears and insecurities, making me an easy target for the bully’s ire.
This isn’t uncommon. Often we get caught in the crossfire of someone else’s insecurities, anger, or fear. While that doesn’t make it fair or right, knowing it might give you a better understanding of “why” and let you walk away from a little lighter, without that voice that wants to tell you that you deserved it.
I know you may still want to tell them to suck it, but take a moment to have some empathy. You’ll be surprised at how much better it can make you feel.
10. Keep doing what you do.
In the words of my grandmother, “The best revenge is living well!” A fabulous way to do that is to just keep going. Do your work. Do it well. Learn. Then learn some more.
Learn enough that you’re the person people come to when they want to talk about your favorite topic. Align yourself with people who make your work better, and maybe give you a boost of much-needed confidence, so you can learn and grow and have someone who supports you there to tell you if you’re screwing up.
Just keep going. Bullies want to fill you with doubt. Don’t fall for it. Block out that doubt with a wall of knowledge, good work, and fabulousness.
Keep on going. Be the rock star that you are. Then — when you’ve proven your bully wrong, silenced the voices that told you they were right, and kicked all sorts of ass — then you get to tell them to suck it.
Being the target of an adult bully sucks, no question about it, but there are things you can do to come out of your run-in with one feeling strong, empowered, and ready to take on the world. If that’s not comforting enough, I’ll share some more words of wisdom from my grandmother: “What you put out into the world comes back to you times 10."
Nothing happens in a vacuum, people see how bullies act and eventually figure out exactly who and what they are. Keep being your awesome self and don’t let them beat you, because, if your bully is anything like mine, one day you’ll get to stand back and watch them reap what they’ve sown — and it will be immensely, if a bit sadly, satisfying.
JoEllen Notte is a writer, speaker, and researcher. Since 2012 she has been writing about sex, mental health, vibrators, and how none of us are broken on her award-winning site, The Redhead Bedhead.