Life As Performance Art 185

I really had to work at standing up to bullies. I was easily intimidated in the workplace, being at bottom rung in an occupation that does not facilitate advancement or promotion, poorly paid, and at the mercy of other worker’s attitudes of superiority. As many of you know, I am employed as a mental health peer support worker and we the psw's are continually being shafted and screwed up our backsides by our employer. I will go no further in identifying them as they can be notoriously thin-skinned and vindictive, and they are ruthless bullies towards anyone weaker than they are when we presume to stand up to them. In my early years in the profession I really had to put up with ignorant and superior attitudes from psychologists, case workers rehab therapists and others getting three to four times the amount of pay that I was. The systemic stigma is such that it is widely assumed that to be a peer support worker, then you are somehow permanently damaged and broken, or if not exactly so, then you are still not ever going to be completely whole. At first I didn't know any better and if an occupational therapist with whom I had never had a therapeutic relationship wanted to know what kinds of medications I was on, (none, actually), or where I was hospitalized (nowhere, never). It was the case manager who outed me to a client that I had a mental illness that had me drawing the line. She could not understand why I was offended and assumed that it was her right to talk about my mental health status to a client, when it was none of her damn business. I was blunt and brutal with her. She never figured it out, but by then, I no longer cared. It was the occupational therapist at another worksite who tried to pull the same one on me twice. Both times I let her have it, and still she didn't get it. She became aggressive and combative, trying every trick in the book to bully me and hold me down, and I stood up to her and fought her ever step of the way. I knew this could easily trigger me and put me in a relapse, but I didn't care. My emotional survival and integrity were at stake and the only one who could fight my battle was me. I also had a new, temporary supervisor filling in for the regular who was on mat leave and she was like Margaret Thatcher revisited. Plus, her assistant, the occupational therapist I was fighting with, had a very condescending mentality. I kept calling her on her crap and otherwise standing up to her, and she got so angry that a meeting was called with her and me and the supervisor. It was very ugly. They tried to accuse me of all kinds of things that were not true, and I blew up in their faces every single one of their lies. We eventually had to end the meeting, since we were clearly getting nowhere, but eventually I saw that I had won a critical moral victory with those two. It was gruelling and exhausting, but for the rest of that year they both finally were treating me with respect. It was hard work but worth it. I also, instead of being weakened and sickened by the conflict, came out all the stronger, and all the more healed. The takeaway is that we do not owe anyone our submission, not even our bosses, and the best way to keep someone’s foot off your neck will be by not prostrating before those imbeciles in the first place. Never give an inch to those bullies. We are better and we are worth better, but they are only going to start to believe it when they see that they cannot beat us down. You will also find the strength to fight, when all resources are exhausted, because you will have God and his angels on your side, and that makes you a majority.