050 - What do I do if I think I'm being bullied

In this vital episode of The Pit Pony Podcast, Sharon and Sarah discuss one of the most common - and distressing - questions that surfaces in the Life After Teaching community: What do I do if I think I’m being bullied?

Drawing on hundreds of real teacher experiences, they unpack the early warning signs, the subtle shifts in communication and behaviour, and the emotional toll that workplace bullying can take. You’ll learn:

• How to spot the red flags (even the ‘low-level’ ones)
• The difference between a bad day and a toxic pattern
• Why you must trust your gut — and what to do when it whispers
• How to keep a record that empowers you, not paralyses you
• What to say in the moment to reclaim your confidence and dignity
• And crucially, how to answer the hardest question of all: what do I want to happen next?

This episode is both compassionate and fiercely practical. If something doesn’t feel right at work - or hasn’t for a while - this one’s for you.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Pit Pony podcast with myself Sharon Cawley and me Sarah Dunwood in which we talk to teachers from all walks of life who exited the classroom from what they thought was a job for life and thrived on the other side of teaching. Coming up in this episode... Yeah well I was surprised you turned up on time for the briefing at half eight. Sorry what did you say? Pardon can you say that again? And you'll find find the glib confidence with which they put you down. 

When you say pardon can you say that again? They never deliver it the second time with the same level of confidence and they go oh I was I was only joking I just meant no no what did you say? You can start to put people right back in that transactional confidence of adult to adult communication. Something as simple as I am stopping you in your tracks and simply asking you to repeat what you said and if you start to do that when it happens again you retrain them. Hello listeners this is the second in a sequence of special episodes so today we are focusing on the key topic of our group which is what happens if I think I'm being bullied. 

So I will bring in my good friend Lady Sharon Cawley who's now gonna laugh. Hello hello hello hello yeah what if I think I'm being bullied? That is one of the biggest themes and threads that not only comes out in our group Sarah but in our Pit Pony podcasts with our guests. That turning point the reason we do the podcast in the format we do with our guests is because we wanted it to act as an antidote to a lot of the posts within the group.

So we interview teachers who've left the classroom and the structure was really really simple. I give a little bit about their history we introduce them they say what they're doing now and then we start at the end of their career. What was the critical moment? What was happening at the time you were exiting the classroom? And nine times out of ten it comes down to the point where something I'm going to use the language something changed I felt there was a sea change I felt targeted I didn't quite know what it was but they take us back to the point and it sits around that topic of bullying in the workplace. 

There's not a hard and fast definition for it it can be different things for different people there can be reasons and different motivations that sit behind bullying but it is fundamentally there's a generic thread that runs through this idea of being bullied. I don't feel safe anymore in the workplace. Yeah I think psychological safety in the workplace I think for me as well sometimes this we're going to go all over the place with this I think but I think sometimes people don't realize how long it's been going on for until they're out of it and start to reflect back and and even this week you and I have had a conversation where I've actually said to you I actually now can go back to kind of five years before I left and now start to recognize some things that weren't right. 

It doesn't mean that I was being bullied or anything of that nature but I can recognize things that weren't right at the time but I didn't recognize it at the time. I always think it's like you know an old style volume button on a radio it starts in some ways in your head as a whisper feeling there's like and there's this soft voice in your head but second guess is wonder what that was about she seemed to Pit a coffee cup up and quick and exit when I sat down or hmm he didn't message me the way we've messaged before or there's something and it starts with a very gentle but uneasy whispering within you and if you ignore it if you dismiss it which we do naturally as human beings we look for the right and the good and I'm overthinking and that kind of thing I'm tired the volume goes up a bit and then it goes up a bit more and up a bit more to the point where it is shouting out loud that what's going on in your workplace all of these little signs we might call them red flags whatever the terminology is of the day things are happening that didn't happen before that's making you feel unsafe anxious nervous paranoid all of those emotions that sit around people's behaviors are changing towards me and around me and this doesn't feel right and that's the stage where you can justifiably ask the question am I being bullied I think I'm being bullied can I ask you a question from from your experience with supporting group members what you think if I if I I'll put you on the spot for a change instead of you putting me on the spot top five low-level red flags that by themselves you don't necessarily go hmm but what what are the top five things that the people are coming to us with going this doesn't feel right or this is happening or whatever it's to do with communication a lot of it is how you're communicated with very often it can start with emails email tones change with colleagues okay so they've they've been in a swim lane and they've been in a communication channel and then all of a sudden there's a curtness there's a formality there's a change within written communication the staff room the staff room if you still have a staff room or if you have some kind of communal area in which you are interacting and connecting with staff there's an atmospheric change outside of the classroom there is a tonal change in the way in which you are spoken to someone's popped into your room and whereas so it could be emails the staff room someone's come into your space and the way they are communicating with you feels that it's gone from this informality to quite formal and critical it can be in meetings I've been shot down things are not things are not right so the main thread that runs with it is when relationships have changed with people who you've been in a previous swim lane with it's typical that the room went quiet when I walked in it's those kind of signalings it's looking for changes in interactions with people now let let me make this clear because I can't necessarily give you a concrete top five in terms of behaviours but there's one thing I can tell you you can be bullied by a head teacher a deputy head a job share a TA my experience of bullying within schools is it's not top to bottom down I've actually had head teachers who are being bullied by their SLT it's a toxic trait and its characteristics with the individuals within which you are spending floor space with I think that's so important that it isn't just seen as a a top down in terms of the hierarchy because you and I both know that we have dealt with with so many supported so many people where it's come actually from beneath I don't mean this in that way but in terms of a hierarchy from people below the person on the hierarchy or a different level from them on the hierarchy and I think it goes to that thing doesn't it of it's not all SLT it's not all middle leaders it's not all this it's not like it can happen to anybody at any stage of their career or any level it can happen and it's not always on one-on-one yeah bullying can come with cliques yeah it can come when there's been departmental changes we talked about the mean girl culture when there are a group of people who are excluding you it can come at different times in your career you've come back from maternity leave and things have changed you've had sickness and things have changed there's not a one-size-fits-all where this is concerned so it's not necessarily one-on-one it's not due to an authoritative based infrastructure it's to do with communication and it's to do fundamentally the bottom line and we're going to talk about strategies for capturing and empowering yourself but I think I'm being bullied my go-to position with a member of that group is not what's happening because what's happening is actually secondary in this how are you feeling because if you can try and capture how you're feeling I feel as though my confidence is waning I'm second guessing myself in decisions I'm making I'm feeling anxious at night I'm nervous going through the school gates in the morning my knees lock when I see a certain person on the corridor that's the starting point yeah and I think it starts with you checking in with yourself emotionally brief interlude dear listener a couple of questions are you a tutor or even a pit pony considering tutoring and do you fancy getting in the room with myself and Sarah Dunwood learning about the wonderful world of tuition then why not join us at the National Tutors Conference hosted by Conexus Tuition on the 29th of July 2025 it's at Chesford Grange Kenilworth links to the tickets are in the show notes below and we will both see you on the other side and I I think that's so important because I don't believe a lot of people trust their own intuition and trust that you and I talk about our gut feeling all of the time and mine's right about 80% of the time yours is about 95% of the time you're you're really tuned into it and I think that's where you and I work really well because I'll give a different perspective or you'll go actually no Sarah you're missing something here but people don't tune into it partly because they're so blooming busy on the hamster wheel to use a cliche of what it is like to work in a school or another environment it doesn't need to be school but you're in you're doing you're you're doing five hours a day teaching you've got everything else that's going on with it actually who's got the who's got the time to really check in with how they are feeling you sit on the sofa at night with a glass of wine and a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate and you're exhausted you're numb you know you don't feel right but you don't actually give yourself the space to really be analytical about why that is and what that is and I think this is why this is such a powerful episode you and I know in our experience of life when you are blundering through and you're blind to what's happening around you you can be being bullied in the dark blissfully happy blissfully happy because you've just not Pited up on these signals and these red flags so you're in the dark and then all of a sudden you are going home at the end of the night and you're feeling as though stomach quite not right because you're now bumping into things in the dark and then what happens is you're coming home and you've bumped into the I'm talking metaphorically please bear with me and hold on with your fingertips but you've gone through your day in this darkness because you've been bullied but you're bumping into obstacles and furniture and you've got a sore knee and then all of a sudden you start to have an awareness that something is going wrong and going on and the light even in a dim light starts to go up a bit so you start to look differently across your day so when you're coming home with a bruise it's because you've been ignored in the corridor it's because that person walked out of the room awareness is everything and actually eventually what happens is there's usually a critical incident and it's bang the big light goes on and you go oh my god I'm being bullied I am being harassed I'm being Pited on here I'm being targeted right if you can bring your own awareness earlier you're not waiting till the big light goes on you're not waiting until you're sat in a pool of anxiety on the city at night you've checked in earlier and it's this kind of episode that's crucial if something starts to give you an it stick with it and go I remember that podcast episode them two women did this is what they were talking about get wise and get wise quicker and I think there's there's two things here for me nobody goes to work however many days a year we work and has a work life that doesn't have challenges nobody has that perfect job where you bounce out of bed in the morning you go you love every minute of the day there's no there's no rub there's no pinch points there's no crosswords because I mean you and I are the perfect example of this sometimes you and I will have robust conversations with each other over something she's laughing at me listeners you can't see that but we will have robust conversations where we'll disagree about something and then we'll unPit and we'll figure it figure it out and we'll circle round and either one of us was right and one of us was wrong or both of us were wrong or both of us were actually right and we just needed to find the middle ground on something but it's not a fallout and it's not it's just the natural rhythm of working so I think it's really important to couch this in yes something might go on in the workplace where on that particular day it does to use your metaphor give you a bruise on your shin and actually the the internal self-reflection at that point goes that was Sharon having a bad day that was Sarah having a bad day they'd had the worst class in the world period four and they'd not had chance for their lunch I completely understand fundamentally it's not about you it's about them so I think that's really important because not everything is about bullying not everything is about somebody coming to to get you to undermine you whatever but I think the difference is for me and I think probably it's it's an awareness that's come about over five years because because I go back to times previous where I wouldn't necessarily have been aware of this in a work environment but there comes a point where you go this has happened multiple times now this feeling the ick somebody in a conversation with me today said I just can't explain it to you but it gives me an ick and you use that phrase a lot when that starts to happen and I think psychologically this is the natural order of things something happens once if you you kind of bat it off something happens a second time you go okay that's a bit weird that's the whispers yeah there you were then and then the third the volumes come up and then and and then it's either a fourth or a trigger incident or or something that makes you go oh hang on a minute this ain't right and that is the that's a different swim lane from somebody having had a bad day in work that then the next day they go in and and it's different and this for me is really critical because it might be that there's a trigger incident and you've not been listening to the whispers you've not been listening to or or seeing the the red flags as they've come along but when you get to that point of awareness of the stark awareness there's two things to do at that point was actually three things to do at that point in my mind you acknowledge what has happened in that moment how it's making you feel what it's bringing to your awareness about what has happened previously you then go back and you can actually start going okay what have been the things that have happened previously where else have i felt out of kilter how did i feel what were the circumstances even if you can't pin it down to a date and a time but what are these things that have happened along the way the well as a new way because you can reflect back once you've it's 20 20 vision isn't it it's perfect in hindsight so you can start to build the the picture beforehand oh that wasn't right john completely blanked me on the corridor oh i remember that now this that and the other um i apologize to anybody i know who's called john i'm not talking about you i just Pited a name but then what you can do as well when you've got to awareness is you can go right from this point forwards every single little thing no matter how small or insignificant i might play it down to be in my own head i am now keeping a log 100 and once you get to that stage and you hit the nail on the head there how little somebody rolling their eyes at you is not little somebody using barbed humor and laughing after an insult is not okay i didn't expect you to have it in on time let's face it yeah and that smile where they're not smiling open up and give yourself permission to stop gaslighting yourself and excusing this behavior with the well they've just had a bad day i'm being oversensitive i'm being hypersensitive put yourself first and the best way i always protect myself is i imagine i am my child i am going in now to bat for ellie no i'm not having someone roll their eyes at ellie no i'm not being chuckled at in a really sinister kind of way no you've just actually you've just diminished me in front of a colleague there but you've passed it off as humor you've ignored me you are not treating me with respect as either a colleague an employee a job share or whatever and i go back down to it's not about your actions it's about how you are making me feel and that's valid and that's your empowerment i i think it's it's actually two things sitting alongside each other i think the how it makes you feel is absolutely critical but alongside that logging what it was when it was who it was because and i'm going to use a completely different example in a really different context and it's really personal to me and it's medical so back in well no god since my late teens i've really struggled at certain times of the month in terms of pain and so on and so forth that i just because of the way girls brought up we're just told that's that's that's normal you suck it up you crack on with it and in my mid to late 30s it had become debilitating like seriously impacting my life and every time i went to a doctor they were like it's just not you it's just it's just how it is for you you just have to crack on with it blah blah blah so what i did in 2011 was and it had to be a spreadsheet of course it had to be a spreadsheet but i kept a spreadsheet of every single little twinge pain episode symptoms blah blah and i did it for six months and some days there were multiple multiple logs of of what had gone on during the day when i took that to a consultant printed out here you go this has been my life for the last six months they immediately took me far more seriously than i'd ever been taken before because there was there was a trail of evidence and it was exactly that how it made me feel the the fatigue the exhaustion the i can't get up off the sofa it's virtually impossible for me to go into work i can't eat i can't i'm feeling depressed i've got i've got anxiety i don't want to go out this that and but also the actual time date what the what the physical symptom was and i think that for me has always been my advice with people in the in these situations do what i did to get my diagnosis of endometriosis that i was absolutely and utterly riddled with and had i been identified 10 years earlier completely different outcome but do that do that you know yourself and you've hit a brilliant resonatable example there right you go in you've worked up the courage and the doctor sits opposite you and says so what's the problem there's no way you can even begin to articulate it give a sequence of events and capture it going in front of your head teacher and just randomly saying well he rolls his eyes at least lands a book on the table he's laughed at me he's ignored me it never ever captures a context the amount the frequency and the impact than evidence call it a dossier call it a document whatever because it gives a context and what also it does is it signals you ignore this because you you can ignore and dismiss me in a conversation but actually i've got something now in writing so i went to my head teacher with this in writing and i was still fobbed off now as a head teacher i'd be going bloody hell if that gets in the hands of the governors if that goes to Ofsted if that goes over my head all of a sudden you've done exactly that it happened here but if i just read out one line or just cherry Pited 10 lines of that spreadsheet it would never ever be able to capture what was happening and fundamentally one of the hard things is when it's the bloody head teacher you've got to go in front of and we can touch on whistleblowing policies a whole host of different things fundamentally what happens if i think i'm being bullied first and foremost acknowledge you are the amount of time you waste wrangling with whether or not i am is really crucial time so reframe it i don't know whether i'm being bullied or not right i think i'm being bullied i'm going to prove it one way or another i'm going to go and seek proof so i'm going to go in in a day and it's interesting we always use this one the great drew povey gives us this if you suddenly decide you're going by in a bmw every car you see on the streets of bmw so you're actively looking for bmw so you've got to be measured you can't go in and and actively look for these signs of being bullied but you go in measured and you say right from right now i am going to prove to myself one way or another whether or not i am yes and what you've just given there is a great blueprint it's fact finding i'm going to provide myself with a series of facts over a period of time and you know where i would put in that spreadsheet no incidents today spoke to me lovely in the corridor didn't have maybe come at it to prove whether or not you're being bullied by really capturing when it doesn't happen because you might be low you might be going through difficult times and actually that relationship with that person in school is actually mirroring and masking another issue that you might have going on in your life yeah so the best piece of advice is go and find out prove it one way or another with a diary or a journal and i think i think that's the absolute critical bit isn't it is you're not going in to prove that you are you are going in in terms of your your evidence gathering one way or the other i either am or i'm not because you're absolutely right go back to my example i did i did put any days where i had like what most people would consider a normal day i don't know what a normal day is without pain but what i considered to be a normal day i would put a line entry that says i was i was okay today hello loyal listeners it's that time in the episode when me and sarah put out our little begging bowl and ask you to help fund our podcast because it's coming out of our pockets and our kids have been living on beans on toast for months while we've been messing about pretending we live on loose women there's going to be a link in the episode notes and it's called buy us a coffee this is your chance to help fund the podcast give a little something back thank you because that also then built up the pattern for me in terms of um actually there are about seven days a month interspersed where i can actually function but there's 23 a day where 23 a month where i'm not it will allow you to build a pattern to build the and i use this analogy all of the time about boiling frog it's that you don't until you start actively not necessarily looking but recognizing your environment and what's going on that's the difference of the boiled frog analogy you put the frog in the pan of water and you slowly turn the until the frog is being boiled the frog doesn't realize it's being boiled because it's not paying attention to its environment you put a frog into a bucket of boiling water straight out because there's a massive change in the environment for me it is that it's not you're not looking for things happening you are being alert to when something happens and recognizing it and i think there's a stage beyond that as well and this is where it's accountability for yourself what strategies do you put in place when it does happen so for example if somebody is passively aggressively making comments that are barbed that you're unhappy with call it out address it so you're not doing a secret squirrel where you compile in a fact file on this person if somebody has said something to you that has made you feel uncomfortable one of the best things you can do to halt them in the track is go sorry pardon can you say that again oh and if they've said something passively aggressively mean-spirited to you ask them to repeat it really calm and really measured yeah well i was surprised you turned up on time for the briefing at half eight sorry what did you say pardon can you can you say that again and you'll find find the glib confidence with which they put you down when you say pardon can you say that again they never deliberate the second time with the same level of confidence and they go i was i was only joking i i just meant no no what did you say you can start to put people right back in that transactional confidence of adult to adult communication something as simple as i am stopping you in your tracks and simply asking you to repeat what you said and if you start to do that when it happens again you retrain them you don't have to go i'm not happy with the way you because then because then you're hysterical and then you're hypersensitive the best way when somebody has made you feel uncomfortable is ask them to repeat it yep if somebody has ignored you in the corridor you can make a choice and say john oh yeah i said good morning oh sorry i didn't say john i said good morning and you can start to very non-combative hmm really really healthy that's not okay and you put that on your log yes and you slightly let them know you've become aware of it and one of two things is going to happen then they've either got carried away with their own power and they think they can treat you like that or they're going to be really angry that you've called them out and they're going to amplify the and before you know it your critical incident will come quicker correct so not only do you seek to gather confirmation one way or another but when it's happening in the moment think about strategies without necessarily addressing it head-on so say their email tone has changed mirror it if they've gone from signing off have a great weekend john to regards john mirror it and mirror their behavior as well so there are psychological things you can do to empower yourself and they are actually quite i'm not going to use the word easy because if you are feeling like this about a person it's awful especially if you're not confrontational where i think they're doable it's harder to go into your head teacher and offload it's harder to pull them up in the moment to go do you know you've just made me feel like a bag of dirt there for what you've just done there sorry can you just repeat that pardon what did you say they are some really powerful but manageable tools you can have in your bag for when you are under the cosh from somebody and let's face it i don't know the psychological reason why people suddenly put someone in their but the chances are you're threatening them in some way they're unhappy in an element of their life and you are the punch bag you threaten them they're unhappy or they're jealous of you there will be something that sits with that other person that's a them problem it's not a you problem it's a them problem they might be under pressure and they don't like the fact that you're and you've got a life they might be having a breakdown in their marriage that you know nothing about and you've just booked venice for the weekend the very sight of you triggers them for something in them it's not your fault i think is what i'm trying to say yeah i and i think as just to to take it to another level that let's go back to previous episode support plans more often than not what we see in the group when somebody's put on a support plan there's been some sort of environmental change there's been a change in leadership there's been an offstage there's been something where the decision makers are having to take some action whether misguided or not and certain types of people get caught in the crosshairs of that so quite often and we know that this is not generalization we know this we've let's just work this out we've probably had between us individual conversations with at least 1500 individuals in the in the last couple of years based on based on what we know we do sitting outside of the group more often than not when these people are being put on support plans they are the type of person who actually probably does push back a little bit or does speak out or they're expensive there's a couple of diggings there they've been there for donkey's years okay they've got the respect of the staff they've got the respect of the kids they do things their way they get their results they can be a bit of a lone wolf but it works for them they can be somebody who's had a position of authority come back off a maternity leave and has gone back to main scale they can have been sat as the head of a department and they are expensive and they're a man in the 50s or a woman in their 40s they can be an NQT an ECT there's there's something within them that makes them vulnerable when you look across the landscape of how we want to change the staff that we've got in our school it still goes to it's a them issue correct rather than a you issue now we said in the last episode that does not take away from the fact that in any walk of life any employment there are going to be people who do need to go through a capability route at some point because something's not right well they have to go through a conduct route because something's not right you know you know yourself put your parental hat on yeah you are sending your child to school and you know anecdotally you've got kids around the table okay and they're talking about a teacher that's struggling in the classroom now my heart bleeds but say you've got kids who are those kids in the class and they're like it's out of control in that lesson mum she can't control the class she's leaving the room crying you know it you know there's somebody there who is struggling to perform don't matter whose fault it is yes but there are people who are not capable of doing the job that they want to do which is educate kids to the and make the most progress yeah yeah so so i think if we if we park that part of that reality and go to the experience of of the people that we have supported and we have dealt with because that's where we can talk from a position of fact i would say 98 of the time it is because the person who is making a decision about what is happening with you as the person who's on receiving end that's their issue quite often couched in some sort of smokescreen that hides the actual issue with them oh it's capability is it because i've been teaching for 20 years my results blooming excellent the kids are great there's no behavior issues in my classroom xyz was suddenly suddenly i'm not teaching right is that the issue no it's not there's something else so i think that it's a them issue not a you issue is really important to reflect on when you're sat there in a pool of shame thinking that suddenly you've become the worst teacher in the world the worst employee in the world in a different context if other people are listening because yes there might be a degree of responsibility or reflection that you've got to do about yourself but it won't be all about you and and what else i would go back to as well is when this starts to happen in the workplace it's very rare i come across an adult who at some point in their life cannot find a point when they were a kid that they were bullied at school okay there will have been mean girls nasty people that they've been Pited on in a fight there was a horrible lad and what's really hard when you are going through it as a teacher and an adult or as a parent or whatever is to not feel as frightened and as helpless as you did when you were eight years old so sometimes we freeze in that moment because what we are facing isn't necessarily what we're facing on that corridor we've got years of previous experiences that are making us feel as intimidated and as frightened as as helpless as we did as a kid because it goes to psychological safety correct everything's embedded in our memory i'm not a i'm not a neurologist or anything like that but everything's embedded in our memory and effective leadership an effective work environment creates a place of psychological safety it's okay to be in that environment it's okay to have two conversations when you're in a psychologically safe work environment because it's not personal we've grown up absolutely but you're absolutely right that what will happen and that you and i have talked about this so many times that the word triggered like many other words narcissist psychopath sociopath gets bandied around now in context which diminishes the reality of what that word means when you draw to when you experience a situation and your brain will go looking for similar experiences to hang it on to and it will bring that up that's what a trigger is and you and i are big i put you onto it didn't i a couple of years ago the chimp paradox which i think i think everybody should read or listen to depending on your preferred way but there's real psychology about what happens in terms of your brain recognizing patterns bringing things from deep dark buried memories and then how it makes you feel i think it's important to recognize that 100 because basically what's happening is your body has gone under threat you're in a threat response and that's where the whole gaslighting and everything comes on because something's happened and it's reminded you and your body's in threat fight flight and here's the interesting one we very often when we feel that we've been bullied double down and be even nicer to our bullies in order to make them go away so there's there's a big conversation piece that sits outside of this but what i would like to just bring back down now which was some golden nuggets that's come out of this episode the first one is if it's not feeling right and it's not felt right for one two three times stop in your tracks listen to our words and start to reflect because that's the first line of defense that you have do not dismiss this by thinking am i being bullied i need to now prove it within my head your next stage is i am going to seek through curiosity which is a nice neutral place to come from i am going to seek with curiosity to understand why i am feeling like this and that what you outlined in keeping a record of good days bad days micro moments micro aggressions how i am feeling on a day-to-day basis over a prolonged period of time a protracted period of time is very very powerful and then call it out ask them to repeat themselves if they've ignored you hi john did you not see me stand your ground and start to give a subliminal message i see you i see what you're doing and i'm going to do it in a very very non-confrontational way where i'm going to say good morning to you and also mirror their behavior whether it's in the written form or if they're ignoring you don't seek to say good morning make a note of it so i think there's some real strategies there that you can use but one way or another you don't have to put up with this you might fall into one of those categories that we've talked about i know the writings on the and i can see what's happening and then what i always ask the people i'm supporting is and this is the most important thing that you will ever ever be asked once you do go forward and once you call it out and it's a question that i don't think you should be asked but you will invariably be asked and what do you want to happen okay because that puts the onus back on you actually it's not up to me to decide what happens here it's actually up to you to act upon what i say which is always my first response but on a deeper level what do you want to happen do you want to carry on working in that workplace do you want to take this as a sign to say i need to get out i'm not putting up with this anymore you've got to have an end game in mind because if you are caught between the crosshairs particularly if it's group bullying in a pack mentality or if it is from above what do you really want the outcome of this to be is it that you want a negotiated exit from this toxic environment is it that you want to continue working there and this be dealt with so you can get back to that peaceful serenity that you were in beforehand always be thinking four steps ahead they're going to ask me what i want to happen as a result of this that's on them but what do i want because i'm taking back control because we always go back to this when it's pit pony this whether we like the word just or not is just a job that leverages a lifestyle for you and your family and if it's making you ill go back to the original blueprint of our amazing pit pony which is about five years old this week four years old this week work out what you want do i need this what do i want my life to look like because we've only got so many times around the sun and you can take control if you think going back to the opening of our episode what happens if i think i'm being bullied well all of that okay that was a whirlwind hundred percent hundred percent was it was it zamo from grain jill who said just say no was that bullying or drugs that was drugs and it wasn't zamo who said it it was it was it was about zamo was oh my god how old are we zamo didn't say no did he that was no he didn't that was the point all right okay so ignoring my reference to grange hill to the issue that was nothing to do with bullying and then the kid who didn't say just say no that they're my last garble words of wisdom don't be zamo don't be saying all the youngins who are listening to this will be like what just googling zamo google zamo yeah yeah google zamo yeah don't do drugs kids words to live by and on that note yeah and on that note what do we know right my friend see you on the other side cracking episode that see you soon thanks for staying with us during another great episode of the pit pony podcast and on behalf of myself sarah dunwood mike roberts at making digital real we wish you all the very best and we'll see you soon if you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps please find my link in the comments below see you soon