I’m not sure if I’ve written about bullying in these past 88 days. I know that in the past couple of years I’ve come to recognize my susceptibility to bullying. I tend to be someone who avoids confrontation, which is a clear weakness for a bully to exploit. There is no question that bullying is also my hot button, and when I’m bullied, it really messes with me. Following up from my last blog, I realized this week that I’ve been trying to stay on the good side of a bully. It’s really not worth it. In fact, it’s never worth it. While sometimes the means justifies the ends, it is a really slippery slope to allow oneself to be bullied in the name of a larger prize. For one thing, it enables to bully. That, in and of itself, makes the bully feel like they can get away with bullying whenever and with whomever they want.
In my last job, I let bully’s get away with their actions as well, for similar reasons. In the end, I realize it took a significant toll on me. It will take me some time to recover. Sometimes the bullying is obvious, other times its hidden. Either way, it’s still bullying. When I look back at my career, I’ve generally responded pretty well to bullying, but not always.
When I was a teenager, a neighbor kid used to bully me. One day, I fought back. I actually got in a couple of fights during my teen years. I’m sure that I surprised the kids who were bullying me, because I was both a nerd and an introvert. I’ve always said that I don’t like fighting, but that I can fight if I need to. One of the things I often talk about with my fellow geriatrics professionals is that we’re all pretty similar. We don’t like confrontation, we don’t like fighting. This makes us susceptible to bullying. As I’m typically hard on myself, I have to realize that nobody is perfect, and that there are many times over my career that I’ve actually pushed back on bullying.
It seems that there’s a common thread in yesterday and today’s blogs. That thread is being who I am, and not letting anyone else define me. Similarly, it’s important to remember that others need to be who they are. That’s not something that’s ever been too difficult for me, both in my work and family life. Just so long as that doesn’t impinge on my right to be who I am.
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