Bullying in the Caring Professions

I've been sick with a migraine or sinus headache plus nausea for several days. I've mostly been in bed, maybe 60%-80% of the time. So I haven't posted much. I started to feel a little better around 1 a.m. last night.

I've got my laptop right beside me and I was looking over Tim Field's anti-bullying material. Tim is a Brit who set up the UK's Workplace Bullying Advice Line in January 1996. He had over 400 calls before the first year was over. As a result of helping people who were being bullied, he wrote:

"The three worst affected sectors seem to be teaching, nursing and social workers - the caring professions. Since 1999 there's been a noticeable increase in cases from the voluntary/charity/not-for-profit sector."

This corresponds to my experience perfectly, although in the U.S, I would expand this to include clergy, and I would be specific to include therapists who are not just social workers. Bullying is entrenched in the lefty fields and in the compassionate sectors. This is staggering: bullies are hard at work in the caring professions. So if you encounter a teacher, nurse, social worker, therapist, clergy, or someone who works or volunteers at a non-profit -- there's a high chance they are culturally very familiar with bullying. They're part of a bullying culture. They're either doing it, enduring it, or ignoring it.

Because teachers, preachers, and healers are the ones doing the bullying, it will be really tough to change culture.

This is a sick system. They're the ones doing it, yet they're the first ones we appeal to for help in stopping it. Is it any wonder we have a bullying crisis? It's quite corrupt.

Later in Tim's piece, he speaks of an ominous event in his personal life involving his experience of helping those in the teaching profession who were complaining of bullying, and not getting the support they needed from their union.

"...my recovery was dealt an apparent setback when in August 2003 I became the target of a vexatious writ of libel sponsored by the National Union of Teachers. It seems like someone took exception to that fact I'd helped over a thousand NUT members, all of whom reported being betrayed by their union. Long story short, and with the help of some wonderful friends, I negotiated a mutually-agreeable out-of-court settlement in July 2004."

And he said the attorney for the other side "[shot] his client in the foot by admitting the NUT were conducting a war against me." He also said the experience was "enriching and empowering."

Tim died of cancer in 2006.