Answered questions(9)
When does teasing become harassment?
I have a Psychology seminar teacher that is really picking on me. I think she is bullying me and no one else in the class is brave enough to stand up against her on my behalf, so they all sort of laugh or just stay silent when she teases and picks on me. I don’t know what I ever did to her, but I swear if I give the exact same answer as any other student in the class, mine will get ripped apart while anyone else’s will get reasonable consideration. She has criticized my outfits, such as when I came to class in a sweat suit and she pondered out loud to the class whether or not we might want to agree on some minimum standards of dress, and so when I tried to dress really respectfully the next class she kept calling me Barbra Bush and making jokes about my membership in the young republicans club. She jokes as if we are all having fun together as a class, but I am not and she doesn’t direct her jokes at anyone but me. It is hard to put into words exactly what she does, and I think she is smart enough to know what lines she can and cannot cross – so there is very little that I think I can do to make a formal protest against her. I have spoken with other students in my class and they agree that she is very unfair to me. I have tried speaking to her about the way she treats me but she just blew me off as if what I was saying was totally ridiculous, and I think that speaking to her actually made things worse. What can I do to get her to back off? I have her for the rest of the year and I need this course? Thankfully the exam was multiple choice, or I am sure she would have taken me down on marks as well.
Read answer →Recovery from the Trauma of Bullying
Dear Mr. Johnson: I was bullied for over 3+ years after we got a new supervisor. After the supervisor was hired, 5 employees before me quit because they knew what was coming. I tried my best to stop this. I went higher up and attended a Grievance Meeting, which was no help, and at the end of the meeting, I was accused of false incidents. I finally filed with the EEOC/ERD. I had to get an attorney. This woke up upper management. Eventually, upper management stuck together, and I was terminated. The company I worked for had their own attorney who then tried to stop me from getting unemployment (2 hearings). I am considered protected class, which my supervisor knew and the supervisor before her (who was very nice). They even made accommodations without my consent, which would have made my protected class symptoms worse. They never included me in these accommodations and called themselves "The Team". I am glad to be out but the stress of this all has changed me. I stopped the EEOC/ERD case because it was actually making me worse (having to continually go over the past). I lost a great job that I loved and had for almost 24 years. Of course, there is no bullying law, and there was probably nothing to come of the EEOC/ERD case. After I told my attorney and the EEOC/ERD investigator I quit, the investigator still wants me to answer 12 questions to close this up (the ERD end of the case). I will be glad for this to be over after I finish the questions. I still try to fight for the Healthy Workplace Bill becoming a law. I am getting help from Job Service through Vocational Rehab. It is hard for me to think about working again - I am 55 and just want to stop. I have worked since I was 16. Unfortunately, I was told I do not qualify for disability. I did win the unemployment hearing. This whole thing has sucked everything from me. We have no insurance, less money, were able to get heat assistance, and I had to cash in my 401K. I am trying so hard to downsize. Do not buy clothes unless from a thrift shop, use coupons. I have to pay cash to see my Psychiatrist and pay cash for medications. It will take a while for me to get myself back to my old self. I snap at my husband. I feel crabby often. I sleep poorly. I am seeing a counselor (you pay what you can afford). At this age in my life, I cannot believe what this bullying did to me. One thing I wondered, isn't bullying like harassment? If you say "bully" it doesn't go too far. I did feel some peace when I quit the EEOC/ERD case, but still do not feel complete. Feel like I am in a box and cannot get out yet. I was always well liked and funny at work - now co-workers ignore me. It is so upsetting. My counselor said I am like a sponge and take on too many feelings of others too. I have too much empathy (which I believe is good). I love to see others happy, just too bad there are those out there who love to see people unhappy and enjoy watching them suffer. My counselor now is a Nun and she is doing a pretty good job. Do you have any other suggestions? I am worried about my marriage because I take it out on my husband. Sometimes I do not like him for not understanding me more. He is strong-minded and like a duck, where the problems roll off of him. Thanks for reading this.
Read answer →A Scary Neighbor
My next door neighbor is a bully. He moved in with his wife and kids about a year ago and since he has been there I have never really felt at peace in my own home. He calls me insulting names, he has trained his dogs to bark and lunge at me and my wife. He leers at my wife and will sit in his yard and stare at her when she is working in the garden. He ties his dogs up some nights right at the fence that is under our bedroom window just so they will bark all night and annoy us. He has made not so veiled threats against what he would do to people who give him problems. He will take his guns out and clean them while staring at us across the fence. If we leave our curtains open he will use binoculars and watch us inside our house. I could go on and on. I am not a big or a violent man. I am in my 50s and he is quite a large and aggressive man in his early 30s. I have no doubt who would prevail in any sort of fight – and I think he would really enjoy beating me if he could. I really think he is a sociopath. I would like to have him arrested because I think the sum total of what he is doing is definitely some sort of illegal harassment but he is smart enough I guess to never do any one thing that is overtly illegal or something I can prove he did (Our cat went missing and I know he did something to them but I can’t prove it). I am at the end of my rope. I do not want to have to sell because the market is very bad and we would lose a ton of money. But other than selling out I am not sure what to do? Is there anything I can do to get this guy to leave us alone?
Read answer →Bullies Kids Parents Protect
My neighbors children are bullies. They tease my two children and have even threatened to beat them up. I have tried talking to their parents but they are not willing to see the problem for what it is and things have escalated to the point where we do not have a friendly relationship any longer. I have no real leverage to get them to change their ways and they are not interested to make their children stop the verbal abuse. I have told them if their kids ever touch my kids I will call the police but what can I do about them yelling names through the fence? It is very distressing for my children to not feel safe and comfortable in their own back yard. I feel like a failure that I cannot protect them from this in their own home but I am not sure what to do? Any ideas you have would be very welcome!
Read answer →Sweet Daughter Always Bullied
My daughter has a problem with other kids picking on her. She is very sensitive and cries easily. She just always seems to be the kid in the class that gets bullied and picked on. We have moved three times in the past 6 years so it’s always new kids and a new class but the same old problems. She is in a small and pretty well controlled private middle school right now but next year she’ll be joining the local high school, which has almost 3000 students and has a rough element to it. I am very worried about how she will handle this transition. I wish the world were a nicer place but for now I want to change what I can change, and that is maybe my daughter’s behavior. She is a late bloomer and she is not interested in clothes or boys and this makes it hard for her to relate with the other girls, who all seem to be boy crazy and obsessed with their looks. How can I ‘toughen her up’ so she won’t have such problems getting picked on without harming her self esteem or messing with her sweet natured personality?
Read answer →Bullied at Work
I work as a waiter and I have a problem with one of the cooks who works the pass. He is constantly bullying me and harassing me verbally. He will also make sure to send out my food behind other tables so that I have problems with the diners and make less tips/look bad to management. I have talked to the chef about the problems I am experiencing but he did not take them seriously. In this place, the chef’s word is pretty much the end of the story so taking it to the GM makes little sense and might backfire on me. My coworkers agree with me that he is abusive but no one wants to stand up to this guy either. I make good money at this job and don’t want to leave, but he is making my life very difficult. I am Asian and he seems to hate me because of this for some reason. I have a friend who told me he would scare the guy off for me. This seems very childish to me but I am not sure what else to do. Is a workplace bully likely to back off if he gets warned off by a bunch of scary and tough guys or am I just going to make things worse?
Read answer →Verbal Abuse on the Job
I am a small practice legal secretary for a firm of three lawyers. The job pays reasonably well and I am not in a position where I can quit my job, as equivalent employment in my area would be very difficult to find. I have been working here now for about 3 months. 2 of the lawyers are fine, but the senior partner is an abusive bully, to me and even to the other lawyers in the firm. He will give me an assignment to complete and then he will invariably end up screaming at me for my having failed to include some information that he didn’t ask for and that I couldn’t have know he wanted. He really makes me feel stupid sometimes and I have to remind myself that I didn’t do anything wrong and that I can’t read his mind if he won’t tell me what he wants. He generally likes to wait until there is at least someone else within earshot before yelling too, so he’s got an audience and so other people think I am incompetent, which I am not. He also loves to wait until almost the end of the day, often as he is leaving before giving me some task he knows will take hours to complete so that I have to stay late. I could go on, but basically the guy is a complete jerk and if I had any legitimate alternatives I wouldn’t stay another day. I am often in tears by the time I get home at night and I am often still seething over the day at work as I lie in bed at night. As it is though, I think I need to try to make this work for a while, but what can I do to make him back off a bit? Is it a good idea for me to confront him on his bullying or will this just make things worse? Is what he is doing against the law? At this point I would love it if he got what’s coming to him for the way he treats everyone.
Read answer →Bullying in the Family
My sister’s son verbally bullies my oldest son (7) whenever we get together for family gatherings. He will even tease and taunt him very cruelly at the dinner table in front of all the adults so I know it must be much worse when they go off to play without the adults watching. My sister does nothing when she witnesses the bullying and it puts me in an awkward spot. For a lot of reasons, her parenting skills are a very sensitive subject within the family and I cannot bring her son’s treatment of my son up with her without it becoming a shouting match. For the same reasons, my parents and siblings aren’t eager to confront her about the behavior either. If I discipline her son for what he does, things are even worse. I am at sort of a loss about what to do. They boys see each other a lot at family gatherings and I hate to put him in the position where I know he is going to get bullied, and he gets very upset about it as well. On the other hand, the bullying is never physical and I don’t think he is any danger and I don’t want to deny him and my other kids relationships with the rest of the family. We’ve always been a close family and done things like weekly summer Sunday BBQs at my parents and other things in the winter. How damaging is it for my son to be in a spot where he is getting bullied in the family and he knows that his parents can’t or won’t put a stop to it? Is it going to have lasting damage? He still wants to go to his grandparents even though he knows that Owen will be there, so maybe I am overreacting…? I feel like I have to choose between either giving him the gift of a loving extended family or keeping him safe from bullying.
Read answer →My Daughter Is a Teen Bully – How Do I Make Her Stop?
I believe my 15 year old daughter is a bully to other kids in her school. Last year her homeroom teacher asked me to talk to her about the way she made some of the other less popular kids the constant butt of her jokes and gossiping and stuff. The teacher told me that there hadn’t been a single major incident and that while my daughter was popular and doing well in school, that she worried she might get into trouble as she progressed through high school if she didn’t change her ways. Her father left the family when she was 9. He seemed to encourage her aggression as a skill she’d need in life to get ahead and so he’d only laugh off or even approve of the aggressive behaviors (like hitting a playmate) that she would act out as a child. Now this seems to be the way she is and I can’t seem to make her change, no matter what I try to do. Talking to her seemed to have no real effect. She says that she’s not doing anything wrong and that those ‘losers’ at school who complain about what she does should worry more about losing a few pounds or getting a friend than complaining to the teacher about her (that’s how she talks about her classmates). I am trying to hammer home the golden rule, but when I see her on facebook at night I really worry that she isn’t behaving as she ought to. I love my daughter, but sometimes I cringe at the way she treats me and even her friends. I forced her (by withholding her allowance) to volunteer with me at the soup kitchen associated with our as a way to teach her some compassion for others, but the way she turned her nose up at the homeless people was so embarrassing to me and degrading to them, that I never made her go back. So, what can I do? The school isn’t doing anything and she doesn’t listen to what I have to say. How can I teach her to treat others a little better and to stop her bullying?
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