March 30, 2010
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OvercomeBullying.org Newsletter #011
Protect Your Physical and Mental Health
Hi,
Over the years I've learned from many different styles of martial arts. Kung-fu, tai-chi, hapkido and aikido. While I originally learned these styles to protect myself from physical threats (no doubt prompted by my experiences with bullies when growing up) their real value was in showing me ways of reacting to attacks both physically and mentally. When attacked by a bully you need to find ways to deflect and mitigate the damage they might do. Stay as strong and healthy as you can and avoid sliding down the slippery slope caused by the effects of stress, insomnia, lack of exercise and poor nutrition. In this issue we take a look at some of the ways you can protect yourself from the effects of bullying.
All the Best,
Anton
Anton Hout
Founder, OvercomeBullying.org
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In This Issue:
- We Want to Hear Your Feedback About the Book
- How Is Your Nutrition Affected By Bullying?
- Dealing with Stress More Important Than Dealing With Bully
- New Articles by Anton Hout and Dr. Linda Kennedy
- How To Protect Yourself When Working
- Thought for Today
We Want To Hear Your Feedback About the Book
The release of the new edition of "What Every Target of Workplace Bullying Needs to Know" is off to a great start. But we don't want to rest on our laurels. We want to continue to make it better and better. That's were we need your help. We have some ideas for what we would like to include but we want to hear from you...
Send Me Your Feedback! If you have read the book already please send me your thoughts. Did you find the information useful? How did it help you? What would you like to see included in future versions? You can reply to this newsletter or use our Contact Us form on the website. Thank you.
Haven't read the book yet?... Don't Learn About Workplace Bullying the Hard Way!
Workplace Bullying has been referred to as "the slow poison" and with good reason. It can sneak up on you and before you know it your career, your health, your marriage and even your life can be in jeopardy. Don't wait until workplace bullying and harassment takes its toll on you and your family.
You can find more information about the New Edition here:
https://www.overcomebullying.org/workplace-bullying-book.html
How Is Your Nutrition Affected By Bullying?
As you may know, bullying has serious and wide ranging health implications. The effects of bullying are primarily stress related. Ongoing stress for long periods of time results in a cascade of effects on the body that result from the release of excessive amounts of things like adrenaline and cortisol into the body. In addition to the many mental and emotional problems like anxiety, worry, fear and anger there will be associated problems with sleep patterns and nutrition.
Nutrition is often overlooked by those being bullied. As the stress levels rise you may find yourself craving more carbohydrates. This can go to the extreme where you may find your entire diet consists of junk food high in carbs. Fruits and vegetables will appear less and less frequently on your plate. But this leads to a vicious cycle.
This stress and depression driven diet only makes things worse. Your body becomes more and more deprived of the nutrients it needs to help you cope with the stress. Your depression will deepen, your immune system will be compromised and your self esteem will take a beating. This just plays into the bully's hands as you become more of an emotional and physical wreck.
I started looking more closely into this problem and realized that it goes much deeper than just making sure to get your major food groups every day. As the lack of nutrition takes its toll you may find yourself seeing a doctor. Most doctors are trained to ignore nutrition as a contributing factor (as well as bullying) and prefer to simply match your symptoms to a drug being pushed by the pharmaceutical companies.
I just watched a documentary film produced by James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch called Food Matters. They have a DVD at their website but I opted to watch the documentary online so it only cost me $4.95. The documentary is about 80 min and in it they interview several nutritionists, scientists and doctors that provide a reasoned and eye-opening overview of how important nutrition is and how our western medical system has failed us. It was well worth the $4.95 just as a foundation of background info and a kick in the pants to get me eating healthier again.
They also have a wealth of other information about specific topics related to nutrition. For example the Depression and Mental Illness section offers in-depth lessons about how nutrition is vital to your mental health, but you can check out the first 2 lessons fr'ee here.
Dealing with Stress More Important Than Dealing With Bully
Yes, the bully is causing you a huge amount of stress and if they would just stop your life could get back to normal. So it's easy to think that dealing with the bully and stopping the abuse is the first priority. The problem is that in the meantime your physical and mental health are deteriorating and making you more unstable and suceptible to illness, depression, anxiety, anger and emotional outbursts. Which makes it easier and easier for the bully to do their work convincing everyone that you are the "real" problem.
You first need the tools to deal with the stress effectively. Once you can get a handle on that you will be in a better position to cope with and surmount the problem with the bully. This will also give you a foundation and insight into yourself that will help immunize you from future bullies and not be such easy prey.
For a long time I've used and recommended Wild Divine and Healing Rhythms which use biofeedback hardware hooked up to your computer to teach you how to control your stress. But I've found another approach that you will want to check out as well.
The Heartmath Institute offer products that are in some ways similar. Their emWave system is available for Windows and Macintosh for the desktop version but they've also developed a mobile device that allows you to track your stress levels wherever you are. I won't go into too much detail here as I've created a page about it on the website where you can watch a couple of videos that help explain what emWave is.
>> Learn More About emWave and Watch Videos
New Articles
Effects of Bullying: Implications into Adulthood - By Dr. Linda Kennedy
Bullying in childhood can have a profound effect that lasts into adulthood and for the rest of our lives -- for both the targets and the bullies. Special thanks to Dr. Linda Kennedy who contacted us and offered to contribute this insighful article. We look forward to working with Dr. Linda and seeing more of her articles in the future.
Workplace Bully Types: Know Your Enemy
What type of bully are you dealing with? This overview will give you an idea of what to look out for. Many bullies don't fall neatly into one category and will use many tactics to attack their targets, but they will generally tend toward a particular style as their primary bullying approach.
How To Protect Yourself When Working
Last time we told you about a submission from one of our readers that listed reasons that targets are chosen for abuse and it was an incredibly popular post. Well, they have done it again. This time putting together a terrific list of ways to protect yourself when working.
>> Read How To Protect Yourself When Working
Thought for Today
"He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything."
~ Arabian Proverb