Ever felt like you were being victimised by someone, especially someone in a position of power over you? It’s a horrible feeling – like your choices are being narrowed and bit by bit taken away. It feels like you have no control anymore, at it’s worst, and is fertile ground for stress, anxiety and depression.

It’s hard under that kind of pressure to remember that you have responsibility for your own life, let alone power over choices you make on a day to day basis.

I’ve been in a situation like this – workplace bullying.  The attacks got very, very personal, to the point that I hated having to get up and come in to work – at a job I used to love, and considering I still had fairly fresh memories of what it used to be like living without any work at all. I found myself sliding into depression, and coming close to tears whenever I spoke to anyone about it.

Then one morning, when I was just so tempted to call in sick, not to have to face it anymore, but knowing I had to force myself to go in, I came to a decision and came up with a plan to help me face it, working out what small steps I would take that day in my own defence. It helped to have had a couple of people on my side, who kept telling me that “they can’t do that”, so I had a couple of avenues to pursue. From being in physical pain from what was being done to me at work each day, I took 3 steps that day to turn my situation around, and let me tell you I was so glad I’d made myself do it. That process of starting the ball rolling highlighted several more avenues where the law, as well as company policy, was clearly and obviously on my side.

I stopped feeling so helpless.

It was a shock to realise how much power I had given that person over me, and how far I had allowed it to go before I pushed back. If I had started doing that a lot sooner, things may have been a lot diffferent for me (although equally it may also have been a lot harder to clear up, before all the proof of this personal ‘vendetta’ became obvious for anyone to see). I had to accept that I had allowed it to degenerate that far. At that point, I took back my own position of power and opened my eyes to choices I’d had all along, but hadn’t seen because I was busy stuck in the ‘victim role’.

My focus shifted from just plain surviving, back up the scale to damage control, and making sure that my records and reputation weren’t destroyed because of this person’s personal targeting of me.  From there, I took more steps to make the company live up to what their official policies said, and when they closed ranks and started working to get me fired, eventually managed to get transferred to another location, working with a whole other calibre of quality people.  Ironically, since then I’ve been called on to help several other people going through the same bullying situation, both in my organisation and outside of it.  I even discovered myself listed with an ‘authority ranking’ for workplace bullying on one of the main social media sites online!

None of these things seemed even like remote options back when I was feeling powerless and victimised. They were always there, but it took fresh eyes and a new perspective to find them. Now I wonder what other areas I’ve been similarly giving away power and limiting my own options as a result.

Are you standing firmly in your own power too?