The dilemma Wherever I go men seemingly make it their business to bully and harass me. What makes me so attractive to bullies? How do I find the energy to deal with them? I’ve tried counselling, but counsellors seem overwhelmed by the sheer scale of my problem and have nothing useful to say.

I started a new job a few weeks ago. A male colleague made sexual advances towards me. I tolerated this because I assumed he was a lonely older gay man and I felt sorry for him. Subsequently, I discovered he was in fact a married straight man and his cohort had been secretly filming my reaction to his advances and then sharing this around the office.

Another colleague confided in me that he has been falsely convicted of hideous sexual crimes, the details of which he did not spare me, and which he claims to be innocent of. It was a shocking story to be made party to. I suspect it was all lies designed to upset me. Another colleague cornered me and made lewd suggestions, including that he should be my pimp. I rejected him. He subsequently told some female colleagues – the only people who’d been nice to me – that I was a sexual predator and they should not be alone with me, because I’m actually straight and a danger to women. I wish these men were an exception, but they are representative of a wider trend in my life, starting from school.

Philippa’s answer It does seem as though you are a target for people who want to feel more powerful by harassing or teasing you. And teasing is another word for bullying when the person being teased isn’t in on the joke.

First, you are not alone. In July 2017, the TUC published a study showing that 36% of LGBTQ+ people have been harassed or bullied at work. If your work has a HR department, you should tell them exactly what happened, where and when it took place and how long it has been going on for. Or if you belong to a union, your union representative could be of assistance. Hopefully not everyone at work is a homophobe, a harasser or horrible. Ask others for help. We so often feel somehow that we should tackle our problems alone, but it is so much easier with allies.

The first defence is to avoid the bullies wherever possible. When you walk away, imagine you are walking away from a stranger. This way your body language will communicate a lack of interest in them. A bully wants you to react, take away your power, generally diminish you and make you feel bad. So don’t show them you feel hurt, scared or angry, and don’t react, then the bully loses their own power rather than eroding yours. You have power over your own mind and what you focus on, so focus on things that make you feel positive – like your relationships that are working.

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When you picture your bully, distort them in your mind as though they are as small and vulnerable as a slimy slug that you could just tread on; imagine you have a force field around you that the bully bounces off. Act as if you are confident, and if you go into their part of the workplace, take someone with you – bullies are more likely to attack when you are alone.

No one deserves bullying and it shouldn’t happen, but experiences throughout life can cause us to develop a victim mentality – it can become part of our identity, but it is an adaptation to environment and can be changed. Past experiences can make us hyper-vigilant so that we begin to assume every situation is about us. This reinforces our negative view of others and about life. Seeing ourselves always as a victim can make us stop taking responsibility for our lives, which seem to just happen to us. I’m not saying this is you, but I mention it in case it does resonate.

One of the indicators that shows we are in victim-mode is that we give a list of reasons why any solution offered to us will not work, so people who do try to help are often left confused or frustrated. I’m wondering whether this is what happened with your counselling. An experienced therapist would recognise if you were stuck in victim-mode and could help you break out of it.

There are no advantages to being a victim, but there are to being stuck in victim-mode – such as not having to take responsibility for things that happen in our lives as we believe everything bad is only the result of other people’s actions. We can remember that although we cannot be responsible for other people’s behaviour, we are responsible for how we react to them.

Look at your lifelong experience of being bullied with compassion. Feel the anger towards your bullies as fuelling your power to believe the following: “No, I’m not going to be manipulated by this behaviour of theirs any more.” Change will not happen overnight, but keep a journal of your intentions and the results of your different reactions, and you can chart your progress.

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