Asking Eric: The bullying never stopped

Dear Eric: I’m 75 and I have a problem I’ve dealt with for a long time. It has to do with bullies. In school I had fists shaken in my face, I was laughed at because I was skinny, shy and had bad pimples. I couldn’t wait to leave school each day.

At a very large company I did well professionally, however, the bullying never stopped. It consisted of people talking over me at meetings or one-on-one, laughing when I walked through an area. At one point management tried to make me supervisor over four people. One member was loud, outspoken, a bully and would make fun of everyone.

To this day, I relive all the times I walked away from or endured bad treatment. I’ll never see them again, but the events still play in my head now and then. Since then, I’ve learned that they or their wives each had health problems. I say to myself “what goes around comes around.” It’s easy to say “get over it” but I can’t seem to. How do I get past reliving those painful events? Even writing this was painful.

– Living in the Past

Dear Past: I’m sorry for what you experienced. The way other people have treated you is not your fault. And, while you can’t go back and undo what’s been done, it is possible to change your relationship to the memory. This isn’t “getting over” it, but it does have the potential to disempower the memory and free you.

Right now, the pain of the bullying and the resentment that resulted are, understandably, taking up a lot of real estate in your mind. It sounds like this treatment, at school and at work, was never fully processed, which means that you weren’t given what you needed to heal from it.

Consider talking to a therapist with the experiences you had. You can go into these sessions with a simple goal: I don’t want to be tortured by the memories of bullying. A therapist can provide a safe space to unpack what happened, uncover other areas in your life that connect to this treatment and help you develop health coping strategies.

Think of it as akin to the process of physical therapy, in which an injury in one part of the body might require you to strengthen another part of the body in order to heal. Sometimes recovering from trauma is the same. These bullies planted an idea about you in your head. It doesn’t have to be true, and it doesn’t have to stay in there.

Dear Eric: A good friend asked me for a letter of recommendation. I wrote something short (less than a page) that I thought was truthful and adequate and inserted my name in the signature block but did not sign it.

I told him he could edit it, expecting he would send me the edited version. He then added text about projects we’d worked on together, plus awards he’d gotten and been nominated for.

The day of the application deadline, I wrote him for the edited version and learned that he’d submitted it. I replied that I’d have to notify the chair of the hiring committee that I had not approved the letter. He responded immediately, offering to withdraw it, and I told him to do that.

A few days later, I wrote a message in which I tried to explain why he jeopardized professional and personal relationships by submitting his version without my review and approval. He refused to acknowledge he did anything wrong, saying my giving him the right to edit the letter justified what he did.

I have tried to remain cordial because we have family connections as well as professional ones. Is it all right for me to appear friendly when I don’t truly feel it? I feel as if I’m being deceptive, but I don’t know how else to handle the situation.

– Professional Courtesy

Dear Courtesy: It’s unfortunate that your friend is being stubborn instead of acknowledging his mistake and apologizing. It certainly suggests that he’s not a person who understands the value of professional connections, let alone the importance of getting clarity before acting. This whole situation is kind of an anti-recommendation – he’s not someone who responds well to feedback nor does he look before he leaps.