Bullying at work

9 November 2022

What is workplace bullying?

According to the NHS, bullying can involve arguments and rudeness, but it can also be more subtle.

Other forms of bullying include:

  • excluding and ignoring people and their contribution
  • overloading people with work
  • spreading malicious rumours
  • unfair treatment
  • picking on or regularly undermining someone
  • denying someone’s training or promotion opportunities

What effect does it have?

Bullying can make working life miserable. You can lose all faith in yourself, you can feel ill and stressed, and find it hard to motivate yourself to work.

Bullying is not always a case of someone picking on the weak. Sometimes a person’s strengths in the workplace can make the bully feel threatened, and that triggers their behaviour.

Bullying can cause stress in the workplace. According to the Health & Safety Executive, stress affects 20% of the working population, it’s the single biggest cause of workplace sickness in the UK and over 10.5m working days are lost to stress each year – costing British employers around £1.3bn.

In addition, the NHS suggests that one in five of all GP visits are aligned to psychological issues, including stress, anxiety and depression. The occupations with the highest rates are social work, teaching and public administration.

For some, the adrenaline released during periods of stress can act as an energiser, giving them increased motivation to get out of the slump they find themselves in but for others, it can feel like a downward spiral from which there is no return.

Whether you have a specific concern or challenge at work or you feel overwhelmed due to a number of factors, Behavioural Freedom will work closely with you to banish the negativity and put you back on a path of positive thoughts and actions. I will give you a new lease of life that will make you look at going into work in a whole new light.

How I Treat Stress

At Behavioural Freedom, I use a skills-based model for treating stress. During our sessions, I will teach you relaxation techniques and helpful ways in which you can fundamentally and positively change the way you behave, think, act and react. It’s also important to note here that you can’t be stressed when you are in a relaxed state. The skills you’ll learn during your time with me will be vital to both your on-going treatment and perhaps more so as you leave my care.

A combination of Applied Relaxation and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is considered by the British Medical Journal to be one of the most effective therapies to combat stress and put you on a path to having a positive mind-set and being able to live life to the fullest, free of worries. By combining both and adding in the element of hypnosis, I believe this is the most effective, pragmatic and relevant approach to the treatment of stress.

Please contact me today to start the journey back to behavioural freedom.