The Bully Feels Small. Let Them. (Here’s How.)
Let's not dress this up. Bullying at work is very common at all levels. Coaches bully coaches. Managers bully their teams. Colleagues bully peers. It happens in boardrooms, group threads, and performance reviews. It often happens in "feedback" chat that really isn't feedback to help you, but to get you to cower and leave. It happens in the meeting before the meeting, and the tone someone takes when they think nobody's paying attention.
And almost every client who brings this to me asks some version of the same question: What did I do wrong?
So let's start there.
You didn't do anything wrong. You were an easy target when someone felt small — and they chose to make that your problem.
What's actually happening
Bullying takes a lot of shapes. Exclusion. Undermining. Public humiliation dressed as a joke. Repeated criticism that has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with someone's ego. Micromanagement that's really just control with a job title. Gaslighting in a blazer. Also, they are obsessed with image management.
At the root of almost every bullying dynamic is a threat response that someone hasn't learned to regulate. Something about you — your confidence, your talents, your presence, your beauty, your kindness, your refusal to make yourself smaller — activated their nervous system. And instead of dealing with that, they aimed it at you.
Research calls this "threatened egotism." It's not low self-esteem that predicts aggression — it's the gap between an inflated self-image and someone (sometimes you) not confirming it. They needed you to be less. You weren't. So they escalated. The bully isn't powerful. They're panicking.
That's the thing nobody says out loud: all that posturing, the cc'ing your manager, the eye roll in the meeting, the "just asking questions" that aren't questions — that's what dysregulation looks like with a LinkedIn profile. That's someone who cannot tolerate feeling ordinary in your presence and has decided that's your fault.
It isn't. Their reaction is information about them — their fragility, their unexamined fears, their need for control to feel safe. It is not a verdict on your worth.
And you don't have to carry what belongs to them. Or give them a free pass so they can continue doing this to others.
The best gift you can give yourself and them — let them sit with their demons.
How bullying costs your health
The bully doesn't just make your workday harder.
Your body keeps the score whether you name the situation or not. Chronic bullying doesn't stay in your head. It lands in your chest, your gut, your sleep. Elevated cortisol — your primary stress hormone — disrupts sleep, suppresses immunity, and narrows the prefrontal cortex's ability to think clearly.
Reduced heart rate variability is another consistent finding. HRV is how researchers measure nervous system flexibility — your ability to shift between activation and rest. Low HRV means you're stuck in a sustained state of alert, scanning for the next threat even when nothing is happening.
That's not a weakness. That's a nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do. The problem is, it was designed for predators you could outrun — not someone who CCs your manager on everything.
The accumulation of bullying is what really gets people. The meeting you dread. The Teams message that makes you stick to your stomach. Your shoulders at your ears before they've said a word. That's your system staying ready and bracing itself. And that has a cost.
You need to start stopping the absorbing that energy to fight back.
Grounded ways to fight back against bullies
Not absorbing someone's energy doesn't mean being cold, performing detachment, or suppressing what you feel. You will probably feel something. Good. Your nervous system is doing its job. What it means is that you don't let their dysregulation become the organizing principle of your day — and especially not your self-concept.
Here's how you push back that energy:
Ask yourself first. What would actually change if you fully believed their behavior was about them and not you? Sit with that. Really.
Name it internally. "This person is dysregulated and directing it at me. This is about them." Not as a mantra. As a fact you return to.
Don't fake calm. Regulate your actual nervous system — breath, pause, feet on the floor — before you respond to anything. Performed calm fools no one, least of all you.
Track your HRV. If you have an Apple Watch, you can track it more frequently during the day by enabling the AFib history feature. Watch what your body is doing in the hours around this person. Data is clarifying.
Stay visible. Isolation is part of what bullying relies on. Be seen by people you trust — inside the org especially. Let the bully watch you not disappear.
Document everything. Dated, specific, factual. Your memory of how it felt is valid. The written pattern of what actually happened is what creates options.
Name the impact directly. If you're addressing it face-to-face, lead with impact, not accusation. If you're not sure how to say it in your own voice without it coming out sideways, use AI to help you draft it. No shame in that.
If you're a manager or a coach
If someone comes to you about this, your first job is not to solve it. It's for you to listen to and believe them. They may be having a tough time believing that this is happening to them. Or…may have been bullied too many times, and it’s shameful to admit it. Give them space to talk. Please.
The most common mistake well-meaning managers and coaches make is jumping to resolution before the person has been fully heard — and in doing so, inadvertently replicating the dynamic need where the target's experience gets minimized to maintain peace. Peace for whom?
Your second job is to help them separate their worth from the situation. Not because the situation doesn't matter — it does — but because clear-eyed assessment of what to do next requires that the person not be using all their cognitive resources to manage shame.
The bully is struggling with something they haven't been willing to look at. That's true. It doesn't mean you manage around it indefinitely. It means you understand the mechanism without making it your responsibility to regulate an adult's emotions for them.
About the Author
Minal Kamlani is a trauma-informed ADHD recovery coach based in NYC. She works with neurodivergent adults in recovery from trauma, burnout, and survival-based coping. Her coaching blends structure and nervous system awareness to help clients reclaim function—without shame or perfectionism. Learn more at Higher Vibes Coaching.