ABSTRACT
PERSONALITY It is paradoxical that many of the adult victims of bullying who present themselves to me and to my colleagues for counselling keep saying, ‘I don’t understand how this could be happening to me.’ Yet, for the most part, they do have this understanding because the behaviour has been happening to them for years and goes back into their childhood. What happens to them at work or in their community is often no more than an extension of what happened to them in school or at home when they were children. The core of the problem is that they have problems within interpersonal relationships and lack the mechanisms to assert themselves against would-be dominators. As one victim told me, ‘It’s as though I have the word VICTIM above my head in neon lights.’
