Mobbing & Bullying

Bullying

• Bullying is a repeated form of tyrannizing and harassing over a period of time.
• The perpetrator is in a physical or social power position over the victim.
• These aggressively hostile and abusive actions can be physical, psychological, and verbal, among others, and are intended to cause some harm to the victim.
• Examples of such actions include coercing, attacking, shouting at, harassing, threatening, stealing, hitting, destroying, torturing, labeling, spreading rumors, making fun of, continuously criticizing, dominating, mocking, controlling, pilloring, intimidating, degrading, humiliating, discrediting, circulating rumors, isolating, insulting, demoralizing, giving derogatory looks, manipulating, gossiping, making hidden insinuations, slandering, making unfounded accusations, psychological terror, constantly interrupting, overwhelming and under-challenging with tasks.
• The perpetrator achieves harassment and exclusion of the victim so that the victim quits and leaves the organization.
• The perpetrator could have strongly narcissistic, envious, Machiavellian, or dissocial to psychopathic personalities and attempt to dominate. These criminals project their own unconscious self-insecurity onto the victim. They often exploit their power position. Parents and teachers, for example, can use their anger against their own children as bullying.
• Attention: School administration is obligated to protect their students against this!
• Attention: Companies and supervisors are obligated to protect their employees' health! Law on the Implementation of Occupational Health and Safety Measures to Improve the Safety and Health Protection of Employees at Work § 6 Documentation (1) The employer must have the necessary documents according to the type of activities and the number of employees, from which the result of the risk assessment, the occupational health and safety measures determined by them, and the result of their review are evident.
• The German Occupational Safety and Health Act considers mobbing as health-endangering and therefore as behavior that must be reduced. If the employer does not fulfill their duty of care and help to stop the mobbing actions, they may become liable for damages. The demand for compensation for pain and suffering may also be an issue.
• In Germany, the word Mobbing is also used for bullying.

Mobbing

• When additional perpetrators as a gang support these harmful bullying actions of the main perpetrator, it is called mobbing.
• Malicious harassment: In the workplace, several people practice bullying against an employee so that the victim leaves the workplace.
• Mobbing is intentional and unlawful behavior.
• Mobbing from bottom to top in the hierarchy is also possible.

Consequences of Mobbing and Bullying:

• Decreased productivity,
• Anxieties,
• Depression including burnout,
• Adjustment disorders,
• Post-traumatic stress disorders,
• Somatoform disorders, headaches, dizziness, cardiovascular problems, stomach ulcers
• Sleep disorders,
• Worthlessness,
• Addiction disorders,
• Paranoia, persecutory delusions
• Suicide are among the consequences.

Combating Bullying and Mobbing:

• Take action immediately!
• Combat as early as possible!
• Confront the conflict directly and objectively instead of waiting and suffering.
• Meticulously document everything in writing, with images and timestamps, collect evidence (e.g., emails), recruit witnesses (e.g., colleagues who have quit).
• Clear and concrete naming of the mobbing actions and their damage. This should be accompanied in the presence of a third party.
• Interpersonal conflict should be processed.
• Ignoring is dysfunctional.
• Bystanders should combat it, otherwise they reinforce the bullying. They should be involved in the processing.
• Authority figures should act against bullying, otherwise they reinforce it.
• Works council and staff council should help.
• Trusted persons and self-help groups should help.
• Mobbing counseling center should help.
• Family medical support and sick leave should be ensured.
• Protection against stressful environments should be ensured.

Solution- and goal-oriented behavioral therapeutic combination treatment of individual and group therapy should be sought as soon as possible:

• Conduct thorough behavioral and relationship analyses!
• Victims often need additional social skills, self-confidence, and stress management strategies.
• Insight into one's own psychosomatic disorder should be gained.
• Learning the self-maintaining factors of the psychosomatic disorder should be enabled.
• Psychosomatic illness should be healed.
• Avoidance behavior should be reduced.
• Repressive thinking should be made conscious.
• Cognitive distortions and thinking errors should be convincingly corrected.
• Self-confidence and self-efficacy should be learned and practiced.
• Ability to distance oneself should be built up.
• Self-exploitation and self-exhaustion should be stopped.
• Self-assertive behavior should be built up.
• Development of social skills must be ensured.
• Improvement of self-perception and perception of others should be trained.
• An improved relationship with oneself and the social environment should be built up.
• Self-healing activities and habits should be newly cultivated and built up.
• Traumatic experiences should be processed and integrated.
• Self-opening for an alternative professional solution should be enabled.
• The legal battle for damages and compensation for pain and suffering against the perpetrator should be psychotherapeutically accompanied.