Day 10 – Solving Workplace Bullying: Trauma and Recovery

Wednesday, December 17, 2024

Today was heavy.

I spoke to three people who’ve experienced workplace bullying. Three different stories. Three different organisations. But underneath the specifics, the same pattern: bullying doesn’t just hurt in the moment—it rewires you.

By the third conversation, I felt exhausted. Not physically tired, but emotionally depleted in a way that’s hard to articulate. Processing the weight of what people have endured, holding space for their pain, trying to understand the full scope of damage and also trying to explore how it works and trying not to go too deep when people really don’t want to relive it—it takes something from you.

And then one person said something that’s stayed with me all day: “At first, my friends were sympathetic. They’d listen when I needed to talk. But over time, I could feel them getting tired of hearing about it. So I stopped talking. And then I was just… alone with it.”

When Support Systems Fade

The psychology research has a term for this: compassion fatigue.​

When people repeatedly hear about trauma, even those who genuinely care can become emotionally exhausted. It’s not that they stop caring—it’s that empathy itself becomes depleting when it’s sustained over long periods without resolution. Family, friends, and colleagues gradually withdraw their support, not out of malice but out of emotional self-preservation.​

This creates a devastating secondary trauma for bullying victims: social isolation precisely when they need support most.​

Research shows that social support is one of the strongest protective factors against the development of trauma symptoms. When that support erodes—when friends become “too busy” to listen, when partners grow impatient with the victim’s ongoing distress—the healing process stalls. Victims retreat inward. The psychological burden intensifies.​

One person I spoke to today described it perfectly: “I ended up back on my own without support, just replaying everything in my head over and over.”

Bullying As Trauma: What the Brain Science Shows

So is workplace bullying actually trauma? The research is unequivocal: yes.​

Studies demonstrate a clear association between exposure to workplace bullying and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Victims report the three core symptom clusters that define PTSD: re-experiencing the trauma (flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares), avoidance behaviours (avoiding triggers, emotional numbing), and persistent perception of heightened threat (hypervigilance, irritability, difficulty concentrating). I can attest to this too, these indicators induced by the stress of the situation creating new non-typical behaviours but then, worse, coded as stress again and then normalised.

Recent neuroscience research even shows that workplace bullying causes neurological damage to the brain. This isn’t metaphorical. This isn’t someone being “too sensitive.” This is measurable, physical harm to brain structure and function.​

How the Brain Processes Trauma

When we experience a significant emotional event—particularly one that feels threatening or overwhelming—the brain processes it differently than ordinary memories.​

Three key brain regions are affected:

The amygdala (our threat-detection centre) becomes hyperactive, keeping us in a state of constant alarm. This is why bullying victims describe feeling perpetually anxious, always waiting for the next attack, unable to relax even in safe environments.​

The hippocampus (responsible for memory processing and contextualizing experiences) becomes impaired. This disruption means traumatic memories get stored in fragmented, unprocessed ways—as isolated sensory fragments rather than coherent narratives. This is why victims experience flashbacks that feel like the bullying is happening right now, rather than remembering it as something that happened in the past.​

The prefrontal cortex (which handles decision-making, emotional regulation, and rational thinking) shows reduced function. This explains why victims struggle to make decisions, manage emotions, or think clearly—it’s not weakness, it’s neurological impairment caused by sustained threat exposure.​

What Happens When Trauma Isn’t Processed

Here’s where it gets critical: when trauma remains unprocessed, it doesn’t fade with time.​

Unprocessed traumatic memories stay stored in fixed, isolated neural networks. They remain frozen in a heightened emotional state. When triggered—by a similar workplace dynamic, an authority figure’s tone of voice, even unrelated stress—the victim doesn’t just remember the bullying. They re-experience it with the same physiological intensity as the original event.​

Serious long-term consequences can result from compounding the trauma over time:​

• Chronic anxiety and depression become baseline states
• Cognitive function deteriorates—memory problems, inability to concentrate, difficulty learning new information
• Physical health declines—insomnia, cardiovascular problems, chronic pain
• Relationships suffer—difficulty trusting others, emotional withdrawal, fear of vulnerability
• Professional capacity diminishes—inability to perform at work, confidence erosion, career regression​

This last point came up repeatedly in today’s conversations. I think any significant change in our circumstances can cause this last one, which also means being aware of it can help stop us making the wrong long term decisions in the moment.

The Career Cost: Taking Steps Backward

Every person I spoke to today described the same pattern: after experiencing bullying, their next career move was a step sideways or backward. The need to do something, anything, to get the confidence back and rebuild.​

People take jobs below their skill level. They accept lower salaries. They choose positions that felt “safer” but offered less challenge, less visibility, less growth.​

It wasn’t about ambition or drive—it was about shattered confidence.​

When you’ve been systematically undermined, when your competence has been questioned daily, when you’ve been gaslit into doubting your own perception and judgment, you don’t trust yourself anymore. You don’t believe you deserve opportunities. You become risk-averse, choosing security over growth because your nervous system can’t tolerate more uncertainty.

This is how bullying continues harming victims long after they’ve left the toxic environment. It doesn’t just steal the present—it steals the future.​

The Timeline for Healing

One of the questions that came up today: How long does it take to heal?

The research is clear that trauma recovery doesn’t follow a fixed timeline. It progresses through phases—establishing safety and coping skills, processing traumatic memories, and integrating growth—but the duration varies enormously depending on trauma severity, individual resilience, quality of support systems, and access to therapeutic help.​

Some people recover within weeks. Others need months or years.​

What matters most is whether the trauma gets processed. With proper support—therapy, social connection, time to heal—victims can integrate the experience, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and rebuild trust in themselves and others. The traumatic event becomes part of their story without defining who they are.​

But without processing? The trauma can remain. The neural networks stay frozen. The brain continues treating past threats as present dangers.​

What This Means for Solving Bullying

Today’s conversations reinforced something crucial: preventing workplace bullying is a public health imperative, not just an HR issue.

The neurological damage, the PTSD symptoms, the erosion of social support, the career regression, the years-long recovery timelines—this is a mental health crisis hiding in plain sight inside organisations.​

We need to stop treating bullying as interpersonal conflict. It’s trauma. And trauma requires trauma-informed responses: psychological safety, therapeutic support, time to heal, and systems that prevent re-traumatization.​

Today was exhausting. But it also clarified the stakes. This work matters because every person I spoke to deserves to have their experience validated, their suffering acknowledged, and their recovery supported.

They deserve more than being told to “move on” or “get over it.”

Their brains are still processing what happened. And that takes as long as it takes.

Today’s Reflection Question: If you’ve experienced workplace bullying, did you have support that lasted throughout your recovery—or did it fade over time, leaving you to heal alone?

Sources that popped up:

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10001227/
2. https://www.tsab.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/CCInformSecondaryTraumaAndCompassionFatigue.pdf
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9518343/
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178915000026
5. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/co-occurring-disorders/trauma-stressor-related-disorders/effects-being-bullied-harassed
6. https://stickneycounseling.com/recognizing-symptoms-of-ptsd-from-workplace-bullying/
7. https://www.pesi.co.uk/blogs/workplace-bullying-what-hurts-what-helps/
8. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/202106/understanding-the-trauma-brain
9. https://www.grwhealth.com/post/how-trauma-can-negatively-impact-the-brain/
10. https://khironclinics.com/blog/the-impact-of-unprocessed-trauma/
11. https://www.psychiatryfortworth.com/blog/5-long-term-effects-of-emotional-trauma
12. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moving-from-workplace-bullying-path-healing-nicki-eyre-frsa-pjeme
13. https://www.tammydunnett.com/conquerconflict/recovering-from-workplace-bullying–ee00a
14. https://www.interborough.org/how-long-trauma-therapy-typically-takes/
15. https://www.redefinedmindtx.com/understanding-the-six-stages-of-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/
16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02678373.2023.2251126