How Power, Fear, and Control Operate — And How to Recognise the Signs
Patterns of Behaviour
Bullying is not “conflict,” “banter,” or a personality mismatch. It is a pattern of behaviour where one person, or a group, uses power to control, diminish, or destabilise someone else. It can happen at any age and in any environment: schools, workplaces, families, relationships, online spaces, and institutions. It may look obvious, or it may be subtle — carried through tone, exclusion, or the threat of humiliation.
The behaviour is the problem. Not the person being targeted.
Bullying teaches us how visible we think we’re allowed to be. It can shape identity, confidence, self-trust, and how we relate to others. Many people carry the effects of bullying quietly for years because the behaviour was never named clearly enough at the time.
At a glance
- Bullying is about power, belonging, and emotional survival, not just behaviour.
- The patterns often begin early — in family, school, or community roles.
- Bullying can appear polite, professional, or subtle — not only loud or obvious.
- The impact sits in the nervous system: vigilance, self-doubt, and loss of safety.
- Your responses weren’t failures — they were adaptations to stay safe.
- Therapy helps rebuild ground, self-trust, and the ability to meet relationships differently.
Where Bullying Begins: Early Lessons in Power
Bullying often begins in environments where power is uneven — families, schools, workplaces, social groups — anywhere there are rules about who is allowed to lead, speak, belong or take up space.
When someone learns early that closeness can be withdrawn, affection can be conditional, or belonging must be earned, the nervous system adapts. It may learn to:
- stay small to avoid attention
- agree to keep the peace
- hide emotion to avoid criticism
- shape its identity around what others expect
These responses are not personality traits. They are survival strategies — and the nervous system rarely forgets them.
Bullying in Adolescence: Image, Belonging, and Reputation
As identity begins to form, the stakes of belonging increase. Bullying here often shifts from physical harm to psychological strategies:
- exclusion
- ridicule masked as humour
- reputational rumours
- group chats and screenshot circulation
- “in-jokes” that isolate one person
These behaviours are frequently minimised as “friendship issues” or “drama.” But the internal impact is real: the nervous system learns to brace, anticipate rejection, and self-edit to stay safe. And unless someone names what’s happening, these patterns follow into adulthood unchanged.
Workplace Bullying: Power With a Polite Mask
Workplace bullying often appears more subtle. It hides behind professional language and organisational processes. It can sound like “feedback,” “professional tone,” or “maintaining standards.” The behaviour may look polite from the outside — while slowly eroding confidence, autonomy, and self-trust on the inside.
Targets of workplace bullying may begin to notice themselves second-guessing their judgement, apologising more often, or shrinking their presence to avoid criticism. The impact is not just emotional — it changes the way identity and safety are experienced in the body.
Family and Domestic Bullying: The Version No One Talks About
In families, bullying is often minimised or disguised as “jokes,” “discipline,” or “just how we talk.” But when affection is conditional, when love is paired with fear, or when belonging requires compliance, the nervous system learns that safety depends on staying small. The impact carries into adult relationships, where it can become difficult to know what respect and emotional security feel like.
Institutional Bullying: When Systems Protect Harm
Schools, workplaces, healthcare systems, charities, religious settings — all can reinforce bullying when:
- they silence the harmed person to “keep the peace”
- they prioritise reputation over safety
- they treat harm as misunderstanding instead of pattern
- they encourage the target to “be resilient”
Institutional bullying is bullying backed by structure. And this is often where shame settles in. Because when a system refuses to acknowledge harm, the person learns:
“My pain doesn’t count.”
That belief can shape someone for decades.
These Cycles Can Begin at Any Stage
Not everyone is bullied in childhood. Some encounter it only in adolescence. Some only in work. Some only in relationships. What matters is not when it begins, but that the nervous system remembers.Bullying is not about age. It is about power and safety.
Recognising Bullying: A Clear Vocabulary
You don’t need clinical language to understand bullying. You need words that point to the behaviour.
- Gaslighting: making you doubt your own reality.
- Humiliation: jokes or comments designed to make you smaller.
- Coercion: pressure disguised as choice.
- Exclusion: leaving you out intentionally to signal power.
- Smear Campaigns: shaping how others see you.
- Withholding: silence or distance used as punishment.
- Monitoring: watching what you do to control behaviour.
- Love-Bombing → Devaluation: warmth, then sudden withdrawal.
- Changing the Rules: no matter what you do, it’s “wrong.”
If even one of these is familiar, something real is happening.
The Internal Impact
The effects of bullying are often invisible:
- bracing before speaking
- apologising automatically
- shrinking yourself to avoid attention
- questioning your own feelings
- believing you are “too much” or “not enough”
These are not personal failings. They are responses to harm. Your body tried to keep you safe.
Survival strategies are not weaknesses. They are evidence that you adapted to stay here.
Some coping approaches protect us for a time. Later, they may need to change — but the adaptation itself was intelligent.
You Are Not the Problem
You did what you had to do to stay safe. The patterns that helped you survive were shaped by environments where emotional openness wasn’t protected. None of this was your fault. You adapted because the body learns from lived experience — not from theory or intention.
How Therapy Helps
Therapy does not tell you to be confident. It does not tell you to “ignore it.” It does not require you to confront anyone.
Therapy helps you:
- restore trust in your own perception
- recognise patterns without self-blame
- rebuild a sense of safety in your body
- reconnect with parts of yourself that learned to stay small
- learn to take up space again, slowly and steadily
You do not have to be loud to reclaim yourself. You only have to be able to stay in your own centre.
Bullying is not an event
Bullying isn’t something that happens once. It shapes how safety, trust, and connection are experienced over time. Healing means recognising how deeply the body learned to protect itself — and giving it a place where it no longer has to.
You are allowed to take up space now. You are allowed to exist without shrinking.
