5 ways to deal with a professional who bullies and intimidates

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone behaved toward you in a bullying way with the intent to intimidate you?  

This may happen if you are working on trying to enlighten others to see a different perspective, you are challenging their confirmation bias, and/or you know more than the other person.  

We all have biases and we need to understand our own biases while also understanding the biases of others.  Click here's more about biases!  Sadly, many people are unaware of their biases and therefore make judgments and decisions that are skewed and/or inflexible.  

As a therapist and person with exceptionally high empathy, I tend to naturally spin the actions of others to look beyond their behaviors and emotions to the underlying reasons.  I do not often allow the negative behaviors to turn my behaviors and feelings negative.  This isn't always possible, especially after being personally attacked.  Since I am often in meetings being the voice of my clients I am frequently in situations where professionals do not act professionally. Other professionals (teachers, counselors, school psychs, administrators...) can use bullying and intimidation tactics instead of appropriate more professional forms of communication. This may happen as a response to the professionals picking up the anxiety, sadness, fear, and frustration from the parent of my client.  Parents of children with disabilities tend to have a lot of negative experiences as they work to getting their child appropriate services in an educational environment so they come into meetings bubbling with a lot of emotions.  The unprofessional bullying behaviors from professionals are also, at times, a reaction to me enlightening them to things they don't want to see or know. Sometimes it's because they realize that I know much more they do and they are feeling insecure. 

The problem with me being a therapist and person with exceptionally high empathy.... people think that they CAN intimidate and bully me!  Yes, I put up with a lot of crap from people because I can see that the person doing the bullying and intimidating is really insecure, afraid, less educated, weak, or has at least one 'ism' (racism, ableism, sexism...).  Because I don't bully or intimate back, the other person usually assumes they have won or "put me in my place."  

Don't ever assume that tolerance and empathy are weaknesses!  I am NOT weak!  I am more powerful because I don't attack back I work to create a better understanding for all.  I work to assure that everyone is felt validated.  This takes much more patience and skill to behave with integrity than "putting someone in their place" by bullying or intimidating.  

Here are 5 ways you too can be the better person when attacked by a professional using bullying and intimidation tactics.

1.)     The first thing you need to do is BREATHE!  You may or may not be shocked that a professional just used bullying intimidation tactics to attack you but either way, you will feel the punch in your gut so you must remember to breathe!  So right after it happens- take a deep breath in, all the way down to the bottom of your lungs and let it out slowly.  As you breathe in think similar words "I'm in control," "I'm better than this ASS," or "I will not be intimidated."  As you let your breath out think calm and relaxing thoughts.  You need to do this so you don't allow the ASS to win by pissing you off.

2.)    After you take a breath in and out--put a smile on your face.  Yes, this may seem passive aggressive but the bullying intimidator needs to know that you are not being "put in your place." This smile is there as evidence that YOU are the better person and gives the message that you cannot be attacked in this fashion.

3.)    This smile will also help you remember that professionals who use bullying and intimidation as a communication strategy are NOT being professional.  By keeping your cool, YOU are being the professional in the room!  Professionals do not attack even when attacked.  Professionals are mature adults that understand empathy and support.

4.)    Don't take anything the bullying intimidator says personally.  Their amygdala is out in control and they are in a lower level processing part of their brain -- think immature monkey.  They will do and say just about anything at this point & their goal is to squash you.  If they see you are taking it personally they will continue to attack.  When they see you are not bothered because you have a smile on your face they will be even more pissed off.  Do nothing back to the bullying intimidator but show as much kindness as you can muster.  It will make them even angrier and their true colors will be displayed in the meeting.  FYI be careful because retaliation will occur so you must document everything.  Parents of kids with disabilities & professionals who advocate for them are often the target of retaliation because we continue to fight battles the school districts often want us to give up on.  

5.)    Finally, reward yourself for not attacking back but standing your ground and letting the bullying intimidator know that you will not allow others to treat you this way.  Know that you were being the better person by not stooping to their level.  Don't let the behaviors of others stop you from fighting for yourself or your child.  

Key take-away:  Even when others act in an unprofessional manner continue to have integrity and behave in a manner that will make you feel pride.  People who bully and intimidate are lying to themselves if they feel proud of their behaviors or justify them by blaming others.  

(Image: photo of a brown dragonfly on a stem that also has a spiderweb attached both all covered with small drops of dew creating a dragonfly with stunning wings covered with small water beads and a cobweb enhanced by hundreds of tiny water drops and a quote from Karen Horney - “If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride” )

Why Bill Gates is a Part of the Educational Problem

There’s an article going around the internet posted by Huffington Post titled: Gates Says Fixing Education Toughest Challenge.  In this article Gates is quoted as saying: "And the one thing we have a lot of in the United States is unmotivated students.”

Wow, this is not reality.  We do not have UNMOTIVATED students we have students who have not been educated appropriately and therefore they have developed Learned Helplessness. I wrote an article on The Importance of Changing Learned Helplessness in Students with Disabilities and would love for Mr. & Mrs. Gates to understand the reality of why students are not being successful.  I know of many very intelligent students who dropped out or failed out because of this Learned Helplessness experience.  This article was very popular and I received a number of emails from people who wanted to tell me their story because this was exactly what they were/had experienced. 

I later received emails and phone calls from parents who were frustrated because they took the Learned Helplessness article (or emailed it) to the school and the staff often disregarded the student developed learned helplessness and continued to blame it on being unmotivated and unwilling.  This prompted me to write another article: Why We Should Help Studentswith Learning Disabilities. 

We need to admit that we as a nation are doing it wrong when it comes to education.  We are rewarding the wrong behaviors, setting kids up for consistent failures, and using an arbitrary grading system (Grades, ACT/SAT, and Standardized Tests).  In a more recent article I address this topic: Students don’t Fail, the Education System is failing our Students!

So, what can we do about this?  We can admit that it is uncomfortable to face reality.  To look at ourselves in the mirror and see the naked truth.  Our education system is the problem.  If Mr. & Mrs. Gates want to make the world a better place than they need to put money into education research.  We need to educate our children and stop letting so many of them fall through the cracks as if these kids don’t matter.  Mr. & Mrs. Gates could help financially support programs that are evidence based such as making sure all schools have systematic, explicit, and phonic based reading approaches/programs.  If a student is not progressing at grade level then this student is to receive one-to-one tutoring until they are at or above grade level.  We need to stop allowing teachers to just pass a student on or fail these students. 

We need to stop with the standardized testing and focus on educating these children.  A teacher can tell if a student is behind in the areas of reading, writing, and math.  We don’t need a standardized test to prove these students are behind.  Teachers should be allowed to identify these students so they can receive individualized support and the school district should pay for each student who is behind an individualized tutor until the student is at or above grade level.  Failure should NOT be an option.  We need to stop waiting until the standardized test scores come out to finally decide to help some of these students.  We need to stop waiting until the student is so far behind that it is almost impossible for them to catch up.  The school system is squishing the self-esteem of many children and causing students to develop learned helplessness. 

So here’s my final message to Mr. & Mrs. Gates.  Stop being a part of the problem.  Saying students are UNMOTIVATED is fueling the negative fire already in these children.  They are not UNWILLING they are UNABLE!  If I had the funds you have I would be making a difference in the way we educate our students, the way we motivate, and the way the culture & climates of the school are focused on competing against each other and not supporting each other for success.  I’d spend money educating the educators on EMPATHY because Empathy is the Antidote to bullying!  Honestly, education is not as challenging as Mr. & Mrs. Gates think, it will just take a while to see the positive changes once the discrimination stops.

Finally, if you want to know what discrimination does to a person watch: Dr. King &Lessons from A Class Divided. People with dyslexia and other learning disabilities are often discriminated against in the educational system.  There are rumors that Bill Gates himself is dyslexic but I do not believe that it true.  I believe if he was dyslexic then he would have empathy and stop blaming our children (here’s a great article by Pam Wright: The Blame Game!  Are SchoolProblems the Kids’ Fault?).  I do not believe that Mr. Gates knows what it is like to struggle or be discriminated against.  If this opinion is not true, then Mr. Gates can enlighten me but in the meantime, I have no evidence to prove he understands what it is really like in the shoes of someone who struggles.

Here's a picture & quote from a child who experienced only a couple of days feeling bad about himself. Think about what our current education system is doing to children and then tell me that kids are UNMOTIVATED Mr. Gates!