Audio Version (09:31)
Have you ever looked back over your life and realised you’ve experienced the same kind of bullying behaviour again and again?
Different people. Different situations. But somehow, the same pattern – as I like to say, same person, different face.
After a while, you start wondering: Why does this keep happening to me?
Well, there may actually be a psychological reason, and it has nothing to do with you somehow deserving or causing the behaviour.
In this article, I’m going to explain why some of us seem particularly vulnerable to bullying, controlling or manipulative people and why the answer may lie much further back than we realise.
In the extended YouTube version, I also discuss Self-Doubt Gives Poor Behaviour Somewhere to Hide, The Selection Effect, and We Can Become Over-Invested in Winning Approval. Click here to watch.
Introduction
One pattern I regularly see with coaching clients (and have noticed in my own life) is a history of difficult relationships that stretches back many years.
Often, when we explore those patterns, there are difficult experiences much earlier in life. Growing up with a critical, controlling or emotionally unpredictable parent can teach us to walk on eggshells, keep the peace, manage other people’s emotions or stay quiet rather than risk making things worse.
Of course, having a difficult childhood doesn’t mean you’re destined to experience bullying, and it certainly doesn’t mean you cause or invite it. The responsibility for bullying ALWAYS belongs to the person choosing to behave that way.
But our early experiences can influence what feels normal, which red flags we notice, how comfortable we are setting boundaries and how quickly we respond when somebody crosses a line.
If you weren’t allowed to say no, challenge poor behaviour or stand up for yourself as a child, doing those things as an adult can be surprisingly difficult and that’s where patterns can begin.
What Feels Familiar Doesn’t Always Feel Dangerous
Our brains learn about relationships long before we’re old enough to consciously understand them.
If you grew up with frequent criticism, conditional approval or unpredictable moods, you may have learned to walk on eggshells, keep the peace and monitor other people’s emotions.
As an adult, you may know these behaviours aren’t healthy, but they can still feel strangely familiar and familiarity can easily be mistaken for normality.
A controlling partner, intimidating manager or colleague who makes cutting comments may not immediately set alarm bells ringing because you’ve experienced similar behaviour before.
What somebody else quickly recognises as a red flag, you may simply see as something you need to learn how to handle.
We Learn What We’re Allowed to Object To
We begin learning boundaries as children. Ideally, we learn that we’re allowed to have opinions, emotions and limits and that we can disagree without losing the relationship.
But if saying no was considered disrespectful, disagreement led to punishment or your feelings were regularly dismissed, you may have learned that setting boundaries isn’t safe.
As an adult, when somebody treats you badly, instead of thinking, “You don’t get to speak to me like that,” you might wonder, “Am I overreacting?” You may explain away their behaviour, give them another chance or assume you’re partly to blame.
Compassion is a wonderful quality. But when compassion for somebody else’s behaviour repeatedly overrides compassion for yourself, it can leave you vulnerable to people willing to exploit it.
Bullying Behaviour Often Begins with Boundary Testing
Bullying doesn’t always begin with something dramatic. It can start with a sarcastic comment, a subtle put-down, an unreasonable request, a joke at your expense or somebody taking credit for your work.
Then they watch what happens.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re consciously testing you, but people learn from our responses. If poor behaviour meets a firm boundary, they learn what you won’t tolerate. If it’s ignored, excused or accommodated, they learn something too.
People who grew up keeping others happy may instinctively accommodate. They laugh off the comment, agree to the unreasonable request, apologise when they’ve done nothing wrong or try harder to win the person’s approval.
The bully hasn’t found somebody who deserves bullying. They may simply have found somebody whose boundaries are easier to push.
The Fawn and Freeze Responses Can Make Things Harder
Most of us have heard of fight or flight, but when we feel threatened, we can also freeze or fawn.
Fawning involves trying to reduce the threat by pleasing, appeasing or accommodating the other person. This can be particularly common in people who learned early in life that keeping somebody else happy helped keep them safe. In effect, it’s what we commonly called ‘people-pleasing’.
So, when a manager behaves aggressively, you become even more helpful. When a partner becomes angry, you apologise. When somebody criticises you unfairly, you find yourself trying to explain or appease rather than challenge them.
Then, hours later, you think: Why didn’t I say something?
In the moment, your nervous system may be falling back on a response it learned years ago. Understanding this doesn’t mean we can’t change it, but it does explain why “just stand up for yourself” isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds.
Recognising the Pattern Changes the Pattern
One of the most powerful things about understanding our behaviour is that patterns which were once unconscious can become conscious.
You can learn to recognise the physical feeling you get when somebody crosses a boundary. You can notice your tendency to immediately explain away poor behaviour. You can catch yourself automatically apologising, appeasing or assuming you’re at fault.
Then you can begin doing something different.
That doesn’t necessarily mean becoming confrontational. Healthy boundaries can be calm, clear and remarkably unexciting.
“I’m not comfortable with that.”
“Please don’t speak to me that way.”
“That’s not something I’m able to do.”
“I don’t agree with your interpretation of what happened.”
For somebody who was never allowed to speak like that growing up, these sentences can initially feel incredibly uncomfortable. But uncomfortable doesn’t mean wrong. Sometimes it simply means new.
The Wrap-up
If you’ve experienced bullying in more than one area of your life, it’s understandable to wonder whether there’s something about you that attracts it.
I would encourage you to ask a slightly different question.
What did my earlier experiences teach me to consider normal?
Perhaps you learned to tolerate criticism, control or emotional unpredictability. Maybe you learned that keeping the peace was more important than expressing your feelings. Perhaps you became exceptionally skilled at understanding everybody else’s behaviour while rarely stopping to ask whether their behaviour towards you was acceptable.
None of this makes you responsible for somebody else’s bullying. But understanding the patterns we bring into relationships gives us an opportunity to change what happens next.
We can learn to notice red flags earlier. We can stop automatically explaining away behaviour that hurts us. We can trust our own judgement more. We can develop boundaries that perhaps we weren’t allowed to have when we were younger.
Most importantly, we can stop asking, “Why do I keep attracting people like this?” and start asking:
Why does this behaviour feel familiar to me, and what am I going to do differently now that I recognise it?
What Next?
Again, in the extended YouTube version, I also discuss Self-Doubt Gives Poor Behaviour Somewhere to Hide, The Selection Effect, and We Can Become Over-Invested in Winning Approval. Click here to watch.
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