Workplace bullying is associated with depression, anxiety and stress-related complaints across a review pooling 65 studies and more than 115,000 people, and the strongest of those links is to stress symptoms. [verkuil-2015-bullying] The finding that changes what you should actually do about it is a different one from the same review: the relationship runs in both directions.
What the evidence shows, including the uncomfortable half
Exposure predicts later mental health problems, and existing mental health problems predict later exposure. The longitudinal data in that review support both directions rather than only the one people expect. [verkuil-2015-bullying]
The second direction is worth handling carefully, because stated carelessly it sounds like blame. It is not. It describes two things that are about the situation rather than the person: bullies select targets who appear less likely to push back or be backed up, and somebody already depleted has less capacity to object in the first weeks, which is when objecting is most effective and least costly.
- Bullying predicting later distress 45%
- Distress predicting later bullying 35%
- Neither direction established 20%
A schematic of the bidirectional relationship described in this section, drawn to show the shape of the loop rather than measured effect sizes.
Why that changes the sensible response
Because the natural plan is to wait until you feel more able to deal with it, and the loop means waiting lets both sides run. Every week of exposure lowers your capacity, and lower capacity extends the exposure.
The move that follows is not confrontation, which is frequently the wrong first step and occasionally makes things sharply worse. It is to start the parts that cost almost nothing and compound: a written record made as things happen rather than reconstructed later, one person outside work who knows the whole picture, and treatment for the anxiety or low mood in its own right rather than parked until the job resolves.
Telling bullying from a bad workplace
Bullying is repeated, targeted and aimed at a person; a bad workplace is diffuse and lands on everybody. The distinction is not academic, because the two need different responses and the wrong one wastes months.
| Workplace bullying | A badly run workplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it lands on | One person, or a small few | Broadly, across the team |
| Pattern | Repeated and directed | Chaotic rather than aimed |
| Standards applied | Different for you than others | Unclear for everyone alike |
| What changes if you leave | It usually follows the next target | It stays as it was |
| What tends to help | A record, and escalation with evidence | Boundaries, and often an exit |
Our guide to a toxic workplace covers the second column in depth, which is a genuinely different problem with a different answer.
The part people miss: it is often not dramatic
Most workplace bullying is an accumulation of small, individually deniable things rather than one incident you could describe to somebody. That is precisely what makes it hard to report and easy to doubt yourself over.
Being left off an invitation. Work reassigned without explanation. A tone that shifts only when nobody else is present. Any one of them sounds trivial said aloud, and it is the pattern rather than any instance that constitutes the problem, which is the single strongest argument for writing things down as they happen. A list of fifteen small entries with dates reads as a pattern. The same fifteen recalled from memory in a meeting six months later read as a grievance.
Is this a pattern or a bad patch?
For anyone trying to work out whether what is happening at work has a name.
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This matches the pattern closely, and the bidirectional finding is the argument against waiting until you feel more able. Get your own support in place alongside anything you do at work, rather than after it.
This is the shape the research describes. Start writing things down with dates as they happen, and tell one person outside work. Both cost little now and are hard to reconstruct later.
Few of these makes targeted bullying less likely, which does not mean the job is fine. A difficult workplace is a real problem with a different shape and a different answer.
A reflection prompt rather than a screener. No validated questionnaire on this site covers workplace bullying, so the link goes to the full set of tools.
When to seek help
Speak to a doctor if this is affecting your sleep, your appetite or your ability to function outside work, and say plainly that the trigger is ongoing rather than in the past, because a situation you are still inside is treated differently from one you have left. Take your record with you. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline.
How MyFreud can help
Daily tracking does two things here that are hard to get any other way. It produces the dated record that turns a pattern into evidence, and it shows whether the bad days track the working week, which is the distinction between a job that is harming you and a difficulty that would follow you elsewhere. Our bullying guide covers the wider picture, including the long-term effects of being bullied.
Download MyFreud and start today: App Store or Google Play.