I’m sitting in a girlfriends kitchen listening to Radio Four Woman’s Hour.  The rain is clearing up and the temperature is beginning to rise.  While she is away on holiday, we’re looking after  her two dogs who sit next to me forlornly hoping for an illicit snack before reluctantly giving up and heading back out to explore the garden again. It’s a normal Monday morning. Nothing unremarkable in its rhythm or pattern.

I tune into the radio conversation, this segment is talking about bullying and I stop to fully listen.  One of the guests is a psychotherapist and she is describing how she is struggling to manage a current bullying situation she is experiencing.  Her words are so simple and so heart rendering,  she is lost trying to work out, logically, rationally,  how to deal with the pain and confusion she feels.  I recognise her confusion and relate to her bewilderment.  In my experience, bullying comes from an emotional place.  The bully is trying to assuage an internal need for power, control, acceptance or  is driven by insecurity.  The bullied, when they realise they are being bullied, take flight, fight or are frozen in fear.

At 5 yrs old, I sit on the school bus trying to work out how to be first off when the bus grinds to its stop in our village.  I can then sprint home before James, that tubby, ginger-headed, bigger boy catches me and makes good on his taunts to “bash my face in”.  It takes about four months for the slow anger inside to build to a crescendo and one memorable moment when I get off the bus and turn to face him, shrugging my satchel off my shoulders and standing square up to him.  Children of all ages crowd around us chanting  “Fight! Fight”!  James lifts his fists, does a wee dance on his toes and bobs me squarely on the nose, upon which blood spurts out and I start to cry.  Everyone runs off and I wander home looking for comfort and care. But I make friends because of my courage and James leaves me alone after this.

In High school, I discover how evil and vindictive the female form can be; enduring 4 years of prolonged bullying, name calling and nastiness.  I don’t respond, I hang out with the non-cool girls who take comfort in the fact that they’re not the ones being picked on. Just as before, there is no sympathy at home, instead a mistaken belief that bullying toughens you up.  Ironically not having familial support, care or back up has a greater impact on my fortitude than the bullying does.

Many years later and as a senior professional in a FTSE10 organisation, I experience insidious, manipulative bullying from my Executive Director.  To begin with he starts ignoring my ideas and suggestions in meetings, occasionally belittling these when he can, then he starts to forget to ask me to attend meetings and when challenged makes some excuses before repeating this behaviour again.  I go on holiday and he reorganises my department and reduces my budget while I’m gone. When I return I ask to speak with him to resolve these difficulties and he questions my values not my skills or knowledge. He hires in another layer to stop me reporting into him. At this point other senior colleagues are starting to notice his behaviour.  I speak to the acting Executive HR Director, believing her to be a friend as well as colleague- she says all the right things but does nothing and the bullying continues.  Subsequently, I speak to the CEO’s senior aide yet still it continues. By this point I’m a shadow of myself, now too frightened to speak up, seeing plots and scenarios that don’t exist, second guessing potential situations, focusing everything through the narrow filter of ego; not being good enough, strong enough, clever enough, smart enough. My confidence is shot to pieces.  In addition I’m now dealing with a new, bumbling, inept boss, who needs me to help him navigate and interpret the political waters and the new business strategy. I dread getting up, showing up; hiding my strain from my team who need motivation and encouragement. I attempt to shrug off my worries that my, by now sub-standard, contributions make no difference.  I am frozen by fear.  A rabbit caught in headlights too blinding,  proving to all I’m worthless, useless, inept, unworthy.

I hit the burnout wall like a fly sizzling in an electric flytrap.

Recovery, without chemicals, is a long, slow, laborious slog. I tap, meditate, deep breathe, chant, star-jump, go on long walks, talk with my therapist and Craig and even decide this is the best time to do my NLP Masters certificate!  I swallow industrial quantities of brain sharp, fish-oil capsules, start a course of healing homeopathy and sob as the Reiki master works on my feet.  Over time my suicidal thoughts subside but the well of tears is deep and they flow unchecked, unwanted, unbidden, slowly providing healing and solace.  I journal furiously, pen barely touching the page as the words I’ve not been able to speak out in months, flow like a torrent that cannot be dammed.  I begin to come out of my cocoon, agree to go to Spain with some work based girlfriends so I can practice integration, care and support again and while there, allow myself to acknowledge that the persistent ulcer that’s been in my mouth for these past few months now needs specialist attention.

At this point I know that prolonged bullying has put a huge stress on my body.  Being chronically stressed because of the bullying triggers my inability to sleep which in turn fires my adrenaline. This is when a chain reaction is triggered releasing the stress hormone, cortisol, from my adrenal gland. Now my limbic system is shouting Fire, Fire! and the neurological response comes out to save the day. The limbic  system runs my emotions, memory and instinctual survival reactions. So my amygdala is constantly helping me to feel frightened and scared and is reinforcing my sense of danger while my hippocampus is reminding me of all those previous times and situations when I faced something similar and the reaction I chose which saved me.  Round and round this cycle goes, only my memories of bullying were when I was young and fighting or fleeing was the right decision.  Now, I’m a grown-up in a job I love/d and I’m frozen.

Faced with so much stress, fear, emotion, my body eventually reacts and shuts down. Ironically unable to speak out, to right the wrong, to fix the problem, the part of me that has been most stuck manifests itself in cancer of the mouth.

And I’m relieved.

Cancer gives me a societally acceptable excuse for my absence from work. Whereas before I’m ashamed of my burnout and my inability to stand up to the bullying, with a mouth cancer diagnosis, ironically I can talk again.

And an addendum to this story;  on Christmas Eve, 19 days after my cancer surgery, my new Executive Director sends me a letter telling me they are cutting my salary by 50%. The organisation does not recognise two consecutive illnesses.

Sometimes, it takes time to realise that no job, is ever worth it. Sometimes,  it’s just so blindingly obvious,  it hurts.