Question:  Can you or someone else, formulate a response to the following question.  I’m working on myself, but I’m still having trouble with relationships in the world.  My family is great, but I have been extremely hurt by other people’s bullying and judgements.  Seems I don’t know how to protect myself and stand up for my needs.  Even good people abuse and bully me.

I’m grieving from a lifetime of trusted people viciously betraying me, and since this is a pattern, I need to find out what to do. Since I get along great with my parents, family and husband, I simply can’t figure out what’s going on out there in my other relationships.

I can’t tell you how much your response means to me. Is there a step or path that I can take to shift this?

Answer:  By E. T. Costello, head of the Practitioner Program for The Healing Codes.

I believe awareness is key. Your awareness.

I have rules of life I call ‘Organizing Principles.’ I encourage you to make up your own. Here are a few, not necessarily original with me.

1.  All living beings behave (think, feel, speak and act) from their level of awareness. It can be no other way.
2.  Lower awareness people and animals have more stress, perceive more threats than higher awareness people and animals.  They behave more primitively.
3.  Victimhood is a learned trait from childhood when we needed other people to meet our needs.
4.  Victimhood initially induces people to go into the ‘Rescuer’ mode.
5.  Victimhood attracts ‘Victimizers’ like prey attracts predators.
6.  People are inherently good and want to do the ‘right thing.’
7.  A lot of people don’t have experience with the ‘right thing’ so they act from a lower level of awareness.
8.  Balancing one’s self-interest with others’ self-interest is a very high value. Threatened people have no knowledge of this concept.
9.  Bullies are afraid and they operate on the premise that the bullied won’t notice their fear.
10.  and on and on.

Imagine the space around you is you just like your body is you and your clothing is you.  Your awareness of you space will make it more yours, and less theirs. Kind of like private property. You will want to work to make your space yours. It is your territory. Your energy of ownership will defend it.

Children who didn’t have the opportunity to fight with siblings or neighborhood friends or sports competitors don’t have much experience with fighting for themselves. Martial arts studios abound just to give people more self-confidence, not to turn children, women and men into warriors. I wouldn’t encourage you to punch someone in the face but knowing you do that can make an energetic difference in the way you carry yourself.

If you are a ‘goody-two-shoes’, tougher, meaner people think they see prey. If you are dealing with a pack of predators, you need to think in terms of singling them out. The pack leader can be a thug who gets his/her power from the slower witted pack members.

One on one, you can explain to the pack leader or someone who is smart enough to come to his or her senses how things are going to be (your own Organizing Principles) in the office. You will be teaching them the ‘right thing’ to do.  They do want to know the right thing. You can role play that in front of a mirror until you sound like Clint Eastwood playing ‘Dirty Harry Callahan’ in a movie.

Document your experiences, past and those in the future. Taking the negative energy and doing something with it will give you relief. Bullying is being addressed societally and it will help to have facts, in case you need them.

Find an ally. Don’t be rescued, be supported. People really respond to scrappy underdogs but not very well to victims.

Personally, I don’t believe their are employee problems, only management problems. The management of your place of business should be preventing this stuff from occurring.

If your place is so toxic, like working with a pack of rabid dogs, then leaving is a viable option. To leave without taking steps to correct the problem, however, could be cowardice.

I used to live in Manhattan. I loved the subways for their efficiency. But I did notice the people who walked like they owned the place and the people who trembled like prey on a tv special. Predators are not looking for a strong, confident person. They are looking for the weak and infirm. And the difference between those two groups was simply: attitude.

Finally, I believe that when we can see a ‘traumatic’ situation in a different light: “How is this blessing me?” everything can shift quickly. Mother Theresa was a good person but she could also ‘kick ass.’ To me, with my background, I think that is a great combination.

I hope this helps.

Tom