Are we more likely to be bullied at work if we are being bullied at home?

Bullying is emotional abuse, whether it happens at home or at work. In this article psychotherapist Jo Mercer discusses how being in an emotionally abusive relationship at home can make us more vulnerable to being bullied at work.

Paula has kindly asked me to contribute to her blog series on bullying in the workplace.  As we discussed it, the question that arose in my mind was: if you are being subjected to emotional abuse at home, are you more likely to suffer bullying at work?  The answer is a resounding yes, but perhaps not for obvious reasons.

I am a psychotherapist who specialises in helping people who are dealing with emotional abuse and am contacted every week by people seeking help with this distressing problem.  Since emotional abuse isn’t much talked about, it may come as a surprise to learn that it is a widespread problem that can affect people from all walks of life. 

By its nature, it is hard to quantify how many people in the UK are trapped in emotionally abusive relationships.  The problem primarily occurs behind closed doors and is rarely disclosed, except to the very closest confidants. When details are disclosed, the problem is often not understood in terms of abuse; because the behaviours are covert and subtle they can appear negligible to an outsider.

What is Emotional Abuse?

Emotional Abuse is an insidious pattern of behaviour designed to undermine, isolate, control, and coerce another person.  It is common for the behaviour to seem innocent at first, especially if individual acts are taken in isolation.  For this reason it is not unusual for the person in receipt of the behaviour to be unaware that they are experiencing abuse. 

However, these apparently trivial acts are repetitive and continuous, and the cumulative effect over time can be very considerable.  Here are some examples:

• Trivialising or ridiculing our opinions.
• “Pet names” that are derogatory, dressed in the guise of an affectionate joke.
• Passing slighting comments about how much we eat or what we wear
• Being dismissive or critical of family, meaningful friendships or cherished hobbies
• Telling us that we are silly, oversensitive or crazy when we challenge behaviour
• Ignoring us when we are speaking
• Gradually taking over control of aspects of our lives, including finances
• Complaining about how much time we spend speaking on the phone or walking to the local shop.

The Impact of Emotional Abuse

If we are continuously subjected to ridicule, subtle put-downs, covert threats, or gaslighting, we will begin to lose our self-confidence and over time may begin to doubt our own mind.  Because the behaviour is subtle, we may begin to locate the problems within ourselves, questioning why we never seem to be able to get anything right, or why we can never please our partner. We start to wonder if there is something wrong with us, particularly as we may find it very difficult to believe that partner, who we love, could wish us harm. We may well start to think that we are too sensitive, too demanding, or imagining things. We begin to walk on eggshells, becoming hypervigilant about the atmosphere in the home for fear of displeasing our partner.

Abusers generally seek to isolate their partners from friends and family gradually.  Consequently, the opportunity to “reality check” what is going on with trusted allies outside the relationship is slowly eroded.   

Finally, if our partner has made us feel small, insignificant, stupid and wrong, we feel shame.  This renders it almost impossible to speak up about what is going on.  It becomes a painful secret.  And so it is that the problem of emotional abuse becomes invisible.

Abuse in the Workplace

So what happens when a person in this position is at work? 

This is Emma’s story*:

“I realised over time that I was becoming more and more reluctant to go into work each day, I’d wake up feeling cheerful but the closer I got, the more I felt tired, downcast, and unmotivated. I mean, I was really dragging my feet. And I kept finding excuses to visit the bathroom, just to sit on my own in the quiet.  The dread I was feeling was just too overwhelming sometimes.  I started to think that I hated my job, but the truth is that it wasn’t the job that was the problem.

The work I was doing was just as interesting as it had always been.  My ambitions for progression hadn’t changed either.  It was just that those dreams seemed less realisable since my new manager started.  I couldn’t understand why everything felt so wrong. I brought it up with a group of friends one evening and everyone chipped in with encouraging suggestions: have a chat with your manager about your hopes for promotion and ask for feedback on how you are doing.  Ask if there is any training available, or if there’s an extra project you could take on?  As they were speaking, I realised that I felt sick at the thought of having any of those conversations.  In fact, I felt a bit the way I did when I told my husband about my career ambitions”.

Emma was in a relationship where her husband habitually underplayed her achievements and the importance of her salary to the family budget.  He talked about it as “pin money’, as though her contribution was inferior to his.  He made jokes about her how earnest her teammates were, though no-one should take such work seriously. When they were out socialising, he teased her publicly about NHS salaries in a way which felt humiliating.  If she protested he’d laugh, telling her that she was getting upset about nothing, why couldn’t she take a joke? In fact, he regularly commented that she had no sense of humour.  Within the family home, Emma felt on-edge, always treading carefully, anticipating any possible situation that might cause discord. It was exhausting.  Originally, work had felt like a welcome respite from this, a place where she could be her own self, separate from her identity as a wife and mother.  That had inexplicably changed.

Vulnerability to Bullying at Work

Emma’s new manager seemed to be distracted a lot of the time.  Sometimes when she was speaking to him, he’d just carry on, rifling through notes as though she wasn’t speaking.  Pausing to gain his attention, he’d often look at her for a long minute before raising a completely unrelated issue. Emma felt very confused.  Initially she wondered whether he really hadn’t heard her, but when she reiterated her point, he’d either gesture dismissively, or say he’d get back to her.  Which he never did.

Having never doubted her position in the service, Emma now began to feel anxious. She found herself watching her manager, trying to judge when would be a good moment to catch him. Often he’d sigh before she started speaking, and she would feel a hot, creeping embarrassment. She’d never felt so small.

In team meetings there was no really obvious difference in the way her manager spoke to her than to her colleagues. He was popular because he liked to make jokes, but Emma felt uncomfortable and on edge. “Come on Emma! Lighten up!” he’d said once or twice. She would cringe; he seemed to like putting her in the spotlight.  After a while she stopped saying very much in meetings, and she began to feel invisible.  He’d stare at her sometimes; it felt as though he was wondering why she was there. Indeed she began to wonder why she was there herself, it was true that she didn’t seem to have much to contribute these days.  The dreams of career progression began to fade, to be replaced with anxieties about the security of her role.

The Legacy of Emotional Abuse

Emma was unable to recognise that her boss’ behaviour was inappropriate because in certain crucial aspects it mirrored her husband’s longstanding treatment of her.

It felt familiar, and so it served to compound the doubts she was already carrying about herself. In fact she feared her boss’s belittling stance towards her was further evidence that’s she wasn’t up to much, just as her husband had said. Emma thought that she was the problem.

So the question arises, is someone in Emma’s position more likely to be picked on by a bullying boss or co-worker?  On the face of it, it appears not, as we can’t reliably claim that there is a particular type of person who is more likely to singled out by a bully. 

However, it is true that someone who lives in an environment where emotional abuse has been normalised will have more difficulty recognising, and dealing with, bullying behaviour at work.

If bullying behaviour isn’t recognised as such, but rather it feels like shameful evidence of inadequacy, it is likely to be held as a painful secret. In other words, it’s less likely to be reality checked with colleagues or friends.   

Lacking the support of a caring partner, and isolated from family and friends, someone in this position is in a very lonely place. It’s clear to see how difficult it is to muster the resources needed to confront bullying behaviour with such limited support. 

In earlier posts Paula has written eloquently about the steps we can take if we are being bullied in the workplace. I’d like to acknowledge that if we are being bullied at home, it will be much more challenging to confront bullying behaviour at work. If the abuse is long-standing, we may even be suffering from complex PTSD, and experience flashbacks in situations that feel potentially confrontational. It is important to seek support.

If anything in this post resonates with you, however terrifying it seems, try to find a trustworthy person who can become your ally.  The route to recovery begins when we are able to speak out about what is happening in private, so that we can begin to rebuild our sense of self.

Sources of Support

Controlling and coercive behaviour within a romantic or family relationship became a criminal offence in the UK in 2015 under Section 76 of the Serious Crimes Act 2015. 

If you are affected by the issues described in this post there are places to go for support.

*Client material is always held in confidence, and the example here is a composite picture with all identifying details changed.

Jo Mercer is a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist working in private practice online via Zoom.