Humiliation as a Mechanism of Control IN BULLYING DYNAMICS AT WORK
Abstract
Workplace bullying is typically defined as repeated, unreasonable behavior that demeans, intimidates, or undermines an employee who is unable to defend themselves effectively. Although its psychological and organizational consequences have been widely documented, the role of shame has often remained implicit. This article argues that shame is not a secondary outcome but a central mechanism through which bullying operates as a form of power. Drawing on empirical studies and theoretical work, shame is conceptualized as a self‑conscious, relational emotion that becomes especially destructive in hierarchical workplaces where visibility, evaluation, and dependence are structurally embedded. Building on research from organizational psychology, phenomenology, and trauma studies, the article further argues that shame functions not merely as an emotional consequence of workplace bullying but as a mechanism through which identity is destabilized, belonging is threatened, and organizational control is maintained. Bullying exploits shame to attack identity, threaten belonging, and enforce silence. At the same time, bullies frequently displace their own shame through domination and humiliation. Distinguishing shame from guilt, examining the dynamics of status, legitimacy, and visibility, and integrating findings on employee silence, psychological safety, and shame management, this article highlights clinical and organizational implications of treating shame as a core element of workplace bullying and offers directions for future research.
Workplace Bullying and the Emotional Landscape of Organizations
Workplace bullying has been defined as persistent, unwanted negative acts, such as public criticism, social exclusion, and undermining of work, that occur over time and place the target in a position of helplessness (Einarsen et al., 2011). These behaviors can be direct, such as verbal aggression, or indirect, such as spreading rumors or systematically withholding information (Einarsen et al., 2011; Keashly & Jagatic, 2011). Bullying is not limited to isolated episodes but involves patterns that erode the target’s capacity to cope and to seek protection. Research has demonstrated strong associations between bullying and a range of psychological outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress symptoms, as well as organizational consequences such as reduced job satisfaction, increased turnover, and diminished productivity (Einarsen et al., 2011; Rai & Agarwal, 2018). Gupta et al. (2020) found that workplace bullying is associated with serious mental health outcomes and impaired organizational functioning across multiple Western samples. A five-year prospective study by Einarsen and Nielsen (2014) further demonstrated that exposure to workplace bullying predicts subsequent mental health problems, strengthening evidence that bullying is not merely correlated with psychological distress but contributes to its development over time. Nielsen et al. (2015) likewise concluded in their meta-analysis that workplace bullying is strongly associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms, highlighting the potentially traumatic nature of prolonged interpersonal mistreatment. Malola et al. (2024) additionally found that workplace bullying significantly increases psychological distress and employees’ intentions to leave their organizations. Their study further demonstrated that supervisor support partially mitigates these adverse outcomes, underscoring the protective role of supportive leadership while illustrating that organizational relationships can either amplify or buffer the harmful effects of bullying.
Although this literature frequently references “psychological distress” or “emotional harm,” shame is rarely foregrounded as a central construct. Lewis (2004), in one of the earliest explicit examinations of shame in workplace bullying, argued that shame is a pervasive yet under‑recognized feature of bullying experiences and that its effects persist long after the specific episodes have ended. Based on case accounts of university and college lecturers, Lewis (2004) found that targets frequently reported enduring feelings of moral and professional failure, self‑contempt, and social degradation, even when they intellectually understood that they were mistreated. These findings suggest that shame may be a key explanatory variable for the depth and longevity of bullying’s impact.
Bullying occurs in a context where work, identity, and social status are tightly interwoven. Organizations are not neutral spaces but systems that distribute visibility, legitimacy, and authority. Evaluations, promotions, and informal status hierarchies shape how people see themselves and how they are seen by others. In such environments, emotional life is organized around belonging and exclusion, esteem and contempt, inclusion and erasure. It is within this emotional landscape that shame becomes both a vulnerability and an instrument of control. Research by Daniels and Robinson (2019) demonstrates that shame is a discrete organizational emotion that emerges through social evaluation and is closely associated with important workplace outcomes, reinforcing the idea that organizational structures actively shape emotional experience. Similarly, Hays and Blader (2017) demonstrate that status hierarchies influence perceptions of legitimacy, determining whose voices are regarded as credible and whose perspectives are discounted. Formal authority and informal status therefore shape not only access to organizational resources but also employees’ experiences of recognition, belonging, and exclusion. These findings help explain how hierarchical workplaces create conditions in which shame can become an effective mechanism of social control.
Phenomenological work has also begun to conceptualize workplace bullying as an erosion of recognition rather than merely a series of hostile acts. Drawing on Schutz’s sociology of knowledge, Martínez-Hernáez (2026) argues that bullying progressively reorganizes colleagues' perceptions of the targeted individual through rumors, silences, and informal labeling. As these altered social meanings become normalized within the organization, the target’s professional legitimacy and social identity are gradually undermined, illustrating how workplace bullying functions not only through interpersonal aggression but through the systematic reconstruction of organizational reality itself.
Taken together, these findings suggest that workplace bullying cannot be understood solely as repeated negative behavior directed toward an individual employee. Rather, it operates within organizational systems that regulate recognition, legitimacy, and belonging. Shame, therefore, emerges not simply as an emotional consequence of bullying but as one of its principal mechanisms of power, enabling domination by reshaping how individuals perceive themselves and how others perceive them.
Shame as a Self‑Conscious, Relational Emotion
Shame is generally classified as a self-conscious emotion, requiring the capacity for self-evaluation and awareness of others’ perspectives (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In contrast to basic affects such as fear, which may arise in response to physical danger, shame involves the felt exposure of the self as deficient or unworthy. The person experiences themselves as “seen” in a diminished way, either in actuality or imagination. Lawlor et al. (2026) extend this understanding by conceptualizing shame as a multidimensional emotion that simultaneously shapes bodily experience, social relationships, and processes of stigma, underscoring that shame is fundamentally rooted in the experience of the self as evaluated by others. Shame’s phenomenology includes bodily responses—such as flushing, a desire to hide, postural collapse, and narrowed attention—and cognitive components such as global negative self‑judgments and intrusive ruminations (Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Nathanson, 1992). Brown’s (2006) grounded theory study on women and shame further characterizes shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (pp. 43-52), emphasizing its social and relational nature.
While these perspectives emphasize the cognitive and relational dimensions of shame, phenomenological accounts further illuminate how shame is lived through the body. From a phenomenological perspective, shame arises when the gaze of the other becomes internalized. Rather than simply feeling negatively about oneself, individuals come to experience themselves through the perceived judgment of others. Fuchs (2002) argues that shame represents a rupture in the spontaneous experience of the lived body, transforming it into a “body-for-others.” This shift explains why shame is accompanied not only by painful self-evaluation but also by an embodied sense of exposure, constriction, and alienation. In workplace bullying, where individuals are repeatedly subjected to public evaluation, humiliation, and social scrutiny, this phenomenological disruption becomes particularly salient as targets increasingly experience both their professional identity and embodied self through the degrading gaze of the workplace.
The distinction between shame and guilt is particularly important in the context of workplace bullying. Guilt is linked to specific behaviors and often motivates reparative action: one feels bad for what one has done and seeks to correct it (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Shame, by contrast, is more global and targets the self: one feels wrong as a person, defective, or fundamentally inadequate. Miceli and Castelfranchi (2018) argue that this distinction reflects fundamentally different forms of self-evaluation. Whereas guilt focuses on a specific harmful action and preserves the possibility of moral repair, shame implicates the self as inherently flawed, making constructive resolution substantially more difficult. This difference has practical implications. Guilt can usually be addressed through apology, restitution, or changed behavior, whereas shame tends to promote secrecy, withdrawal, and self‑attack rather than a constructive response (Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Lewis, 2004). Supporting this distinction, Tangney et al. (1996) found that guilt-proneness predicts constructive and reparative responses to interpersonal conflict, whereas shame-proneness is associated with defensive, self-hostile, and destructive reactions.
Brown (2013) similarly argues that guilt is adaptive and value‑congruent, whereas shame is more likely to drive destructive, hurtful behaviors than to resolve them. Evidence from bullying research further supports this distinction. Menesini and Camodeca (2008) found that guilt is positively associated with prosocial behavior, whereas shame is more closely related to bullying, victimization, and maladaptive interpersonal responses. Building on these findings, Merkin (2017) argues that shifting individuals from shame-based self-condemnation to guilt-based responsibility promotes accountability and reparative action, thereby reducing the interpersonal dynamics that sustain bullying. In bullying contexts, the target frequently experiences the aggression not as feedback about a discrete action but as a judgment on their entire professional and moral worth (Daniels & Robinson, 2019).
Shame is also relational and systemic. Ahmed and Braithwaite’s (2006) work on shame and bullying conceptualizes shame as a boundary emotion that arises at the intersection of self and others, regulating social bonds and moral norms. This conceptualization aligns with broader theoretical accounts that describe shame as a fundamentally social and regulatory emotion, emerging through the perceived evaluation of others and functioning to monitor social acceptance, belonging, and moral standing (Lawlor et al., 2026; Daniels & Robinson, 2019). Rather than merely reflecting an internal emotional state, shame regulates interpersonal behavior by signaling threats to recognition, inclusion, and identity.
In their research on bullying and victimization, Ahmed and Braithwaite (2006) argue that the ways individuals manage shame, whether they acknowledge it and make amends or displace it by attacking others, have direct implications for bullying roles and victimization (Ahmed & Braithwaite, 2006; Braithwaite & Ahmed, 2015). This view situates shame not only within individual psychology but within networks of relationships, organizational cultures, and shared meanings. Shame signals threats to social belonging, moral standing, and identity; it is therefore intimately tied to power.
The Workplace as a Shame‑Sensitive Context
In modern organizations, workers are continually observed, evaluated, and compared. Performance metrics, formal reviews, informal reputational gossip, and implicit norms all contribute to a climate in which the self is exposed and assessed. Braithwaite and Ahmed (2019) emphasize that workplaces are “shame‑rich” environments because employment is central to identity, economic survival, and social recognition; failure or exclusion can thus have devastating consequences.
In healthy workplaces, this vulnerability is contained by fairness, respect, and constructive feedback. Mistakes can be acknowledged without moral annihilation; differences can be negotiated without humiliation. Edmondson (1999) defines such an environment as one characterized by psychological safety, the shared belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for making mistakes. Psychological safety, therefore, provides the interpersonal conditions in which employees can acknowledge errors, express uncertainty, and engage in learning without fear of damage to their professional identity. Edmondson (2003) further argues that psychologically safe environments foster the confidence to take interpersonal risks, such as admitting mistakes, asking for feedback, or voicing dissenting opinions, thereby supporting constructive conflict rather than defensive silence.
In unhealthy workplaces, however, the same structural features become tools of coercion. Supervisory feedback may be delivered through public embarrassment; performance management may involve character attacks; collegial disagreements may be handled through ostracism and ridicule. Daniels and Robinson (2019) argue that organizational practices involving evaluation, criticism, and status threats can evoke shame in ways that regulate behavior and reinforce conformity, particularly within hierarchical settings. Likewise, Lian et al. (2014) demonstrate that abusive supervision functions as a coercive exercise of power rather than constructive performance management, shaping employees’ emotional and behavioral responses through fear and intimidation. Extending this perspective, Krishna et al. (2024) found that workplace bullying undermines affect-based trust and the climate for conflict management, thereby increasing employee silence and reducing employees’ willingness to speak up. Under these conditions, shame is not incidental. Rather, it becomes embedded within organizational processes and interpersonal practices that suppress voice, discourage dissent, and maintain existing power relations.
Lewis (2004) notes that academic lecturers who had been bullied often continued to feel intense shame about their perceived professional inadequacy even years after leaving the institution. This suggests that the workplace, as a setting in which identity and status are intensely negotiated, can deeply imprint shame. The target does not merely recall individual episodes; they may come to inhabit an identity of failure. This internalization contributes to the well‑documented difficulties bullied workers face in re‑entering employment, trusting new colleagues, and reclaiming professional confidence (Rai & Agarwal, 2018; Lewis, 2004). Dzurec et al. (2014) similarly conceptualize workplace bullying as a form of interpersonal shaming communicated through everyday workplace interactions, arguing that repeated humiliation and social devaluation progressively undermine employees’ sense of professional identity and belonging. These findings align with broader European and US research on workplace bullying, which consistently identifies the erosion of recognition, belonging, and voice as central consequences of bullying rather than peripheral effects (Gupta et al., 2020; Martínez-Hernáez, 2026).
Shame as a Mechanism of Power in Bullying
Bullying is an abuse of power that often relies on shame as its primary emotional mechanism. Power in this context is not limited to formal rank. It includes control over meaning, credibility, and the social definition of reality. Keashly and Jagatic (2011) describe how bullies manipulate the interpersonal field through repeated negative acts that signal the target’s inferiority or unacceptability. The bully’s capacity to frame the target as incompetent, unstable, or problematic grants them influence over how others perceive the situation and over how the target perceives themselves. Shame is the affective correlate of this framing.
When a worker is repeatedly ridiculed, corrected in a humiliating manner, excluded from critical communication, or portrayed as unreliable, the attack is not limited to discrete behaviors. The message conveyed is often ontological: “You are not the kind of person who belongs here,” “You are fundamentally inadequate,” “You are wrong in essence.” Humiliation—the public exposure of the person as inferior or contemptible—is particularly damaging because it links shame with status loss and social visibility (Elison & Harter, 2007). Once the target begins to internalize this imposed position, overt coercion may become less necessary. Shame has already destabilized the person’s capacity to assert themselves.
Braithwaite and Ahmed (2019) argue that shaming mechanisms in organizations operate as “moral technologies” that compress complex identities into simplified labels—such as “too sensitive,” “not leadership material,” or “difficult”—and use these labels to justify exclusion or mistreatment. This compression is a hallmark of bullying. In an ordinary conflict, people may disagree about tasks or decisions. In bullying, the conflict becomes generalized and moralized, reducing the target to a caricature and denying their complexity.
Phenomenological analyses of Western workplaces suggest that bullying reorganizes typifications of colleagues and gradually strips targets of recognition, illustrating how shame-driven processes function as moral technologies within organizations (Martínez-Hernáez, 2026). Shame is generated by this reduction and then reinforces it by eroding the target’s confidence and voice.
Shame‑based bullying also affects audiences. Public humiliation sends a message not only to the target but to coworkers: this is how people are treated when they deviate, dissent, or challenge authority. Witnessing such acts may induce vicarious shame and fear of “contamination,” leading bystanders to distance themselves from the target to protect their own standing (Einarsen et al., 2011; Keashly & Jagatic, 2011). Thus, shame functions as a collective regulatory mechanism, aligning the group around the bully’s implicit norms.
Shame Management in Bullies: Displacement and Narcissistic Pride
Ahmed and Braithwaite’s (2006) empirical work on shame and pride management in bullying contexts provides a framework for understanding bullying behavior as, in part, a response to the bully’s own shame dynamics. In a large survey of employees in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Braithwaite and Ahmed (2015) found that bullies tended to score high on shame displacement—externalizing blame and “hitting out” at others—and on narcissistic pride, characterized by feelings of dominance and arrogance. In contrast, those who were victims of bullying reported high scores on both shame acknowledgment and shame displacement, as well as humble pride and narcissistic pride, reflecting the complex emotional positions of targets.
These findings resonate with earlier clinical and personality research in Europe and the US. Mollon (1984) proposed that for some patients with fragile selves, shame can be more central than guilt and that defensive grandiosity and sensitivity to humiliation are defining features of narcissistic disturbance. Gramzow and Tangney (1992) showed empirically that pathological aspects of narcissism are positively associated with shame‑proneness and splitting, suggesting that narcissistic personality traits and shame are intimately connected. More recent narrative and systematic reviews confirm robust associations between vulnerable narcissism and shame and more complex patterns for grandiose narcissism (Asgarizadeh & Ghanbari, 2022; Khalili & Rahmani, 2023).
Taken together, Brown’s (2006, 2013) grounded theory work on shame, Ahmed and Braithwaite’s (2006) study, Braithwaite and Ahmed’s (2015, 2019) studies on shame management, and contemporary reviews of narcissism and shame provide a useful framework for understanding how bullying may be linked to defensive responses to threatened self‑worth. Employees involved in bullying report lower levels of shame acknowledgment and humble pride and higher levels of shame displacement and narcissistic pride, whereas victims show elevated scores on shame and both forms of pride, reflecting complex emotional positions (Ahmed & Braithwaite, 2006; Braithwaite & Ahmed, 2015). This interpretation aligns with broader research linking dark personality traits and narcissistic dynamics to bullying behaviors and to deficits in empathy and recognition (Sui et al., 2026; Jang & Lee, 2022) and with clinical and conceptual observations that envy, emptiness, and fragile self‑organization can underlie workplace domination, although such formulations should be distinguished from peer‑reviewed empirical claims (Hecker, 2025). Brown (2006, 2013) notes that shame is more likely to drive blame, perfectionism, and withdrawal than empathy and accountability, offering a conceptual bridge between narcissistic defenses and bullying behavior.
This interpretation aligns with broader research linking dark personality traits and narcissistic dynamics to bullying behaviors and to deficits in empathy and recognition (Sui et al., 2026; Jang & Lee, 2022) and with clinical and conceptual observations that envy, emptiness, and fragile self‑organization can underlie workplace domination, although such formulations should be distinguished from peer‑reviewed empirical claims (Hecker, 2025).
These findings also suggest that some bullies may use humiliation as a way of dealing with their own unacknowledged or unmanageable shame. By projecting defectiveness onto others and insisting on their own superiority, they avoid confronting their own vulnerabilities (Ahmed & Braithwaite, 2006; Braithwaite & Ahmed, 2015, 2019). While such interpretations do not absolve bullies of responsibility, they illuminate the psychology behind the behavior and help explain why rational negotiation or conventional performance feedback often fails to change entrenched patterns.
At the same time, bullying cannot be solely understood as an expression of individual pathology. Individual shame dynamics unfold within organizational environments that may either constrain or reinforce abusive behavior. Organizational cultures that reward domination, normalize humiliation, conflate aggression with effective leadership, or fail to hold perpetrators accountable create conditions in which bullying is more likely to emerge and persist (Einarsen et al., 2011; Rai & Agarwal, 2018). Houghton et al. (2021) further demonstrate that the relationship between organizational characteristics and workplace bullying is moderated by leadership power orientations, showing that authoritarian and highly agentic leadership styles can amplify organizational conditions conducive to bullying, whereas more communal and democratic leadership orientations may attenuate these effects. These findings underscore that bullying is not sustained by individual characteristics alone but is shaped by leadership practices and organizational cultures that legitimize or discourage the misuse of power. In such contexts, displacing shame onto others becomes a socially reinforced means of preserving status, authority, and self-worth. Conversely, organizational cultures characterized by psychological safety, accountability, and respectful leadership reduce opportunities for shame to be weaponized as a mechanism of control. Integrating individual and systemic perspectives is therefore essential. The psychological processes by which individuals manage shame cannot be separated from the organizational contexts that either reward or inhibit them. The bully’s personal shame dynamics operate within, and are amplified by, wider structures of power, leadership, and organizational ideology.
Internalization of Shame in Targets and Employee Silence
Targets of workplace bullying often internalize the shaming messages directed at them. Lewis (2004) reports that lecturers who had experienced bullying described enduring feelings of being “professionally ruined,” “weak,” or “fundamentally at fault.” Even when they received external validation or left the bullying environment, these internalized narratives remained active. This internalization transforms external violence into an inner structure of self‑relation. The person no longer merely remembers being demeaned; they begin to speak to themselves in the bully’s voice.
One specific consequence of the internalization of shame is employee silence. Krishna et al. (2024) show that workplace bullying is positively associated with multiple forms of silence, including defensive and ineffectual silence, and that affect‑based trust mediates this relationship. While their study focuses on trust rather than shame directly, other work has identified shame as a mediator between bullying and “diffident silence,” in which individuals withhold their voice not only because speaking is risky but also because they feel inadequate or unworthy (Rai & Agarwal, 2018). In such cases, silence is not simply strategic; it arises from a sense of disqualification. These findings can be read alongside broader work on psychological safety in Western organizations, which demonstrates that environments punishing interpersonal risk‑taking and vulnerability are associated with reduced voice and increased concealment of distress (Edmondson, 1999).
When shame has become internalized, targets may doubt their own perceptions, fear that they will not be believed, or worry that speaking up will confirm others’ negative views of them. They may minimize their experiences, rationalize the bully’s behavior, or blame themselves for failing to cope. This contributes to the well-documented phenomenon of under-reporting and delayed reporting of workplace bullying (Einarsen et al., 2011). The emotional mechanism extends beyond fear of retaliation. As bullying becomes chronic, targets frequently begin to question their own perceptions and judgments, progressively losing confidence in their ability to interpret their experiences accurately (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Internalized shame reinforces this process by undermining the person’s sense of professional legitimacy and self-worth (Lewis, 2004; Rai & Agarwal, 2018). This erosion of self-trust explains why many targets remain silent despite considerable psychological distress: shame convinces the person that they are the problem and that their suffering is evidence of their weakness rather than of organizational wrongdoing. The bully’s degrading messages are gradually internalized as part of the target’s own self-understanding, making disclosure feel not only risky but also undeserved, as though speaking up would merely confirm the very deficiencies they have come to believe about themselves.
Shame, Social Identity, and Structural Vulnerability
Workplace shame does not occur in a social vacuum. Employees enter organizations with pre‑existing social identities—such as gender, race, class background, sexuality, age, disability status, and migration history—that are differently valued and differently exposed to stereotyping. These identities intersect with professional norms to produce unequal vulnerability to bullying and shaming. Recent research demonstrates the robust relevance of intersectional approaches to understanding vulnerability: Zheng et al. (2025) show that the intersection of gender and cultural background shapes both exposure to workplace bullying and its consequences, while Gloor et al. (2024) demonstrate how social identities—including gender and feminist identification—influence not only who is targeted but also how bystanders interpret and respond to mistreatment. These studies reinforce the idea that socially valued or devalued identities interact with workplace norms and power dynamics to produce differential exposure to and harm. Nathanson (1992) and subsequent scholars have highlighted that shame is often linked to cultural scripts around masculinity, femininity, competence, and respectability; certain groups are more frequently positioned as inherently deficient or “out of place.”
Hecker (2025), for example, describes how workplace narcissists and bullies may exploit societal stereotypes to target women and other marginalized colleagues, combining envy, contempt, and power to induce chronic shame. This mechanism aligns with Gloor et al.’s (2024) theorization of 'selective incivility' as a form of modern discrimination, in which identity and workplace norms shape vulnerability to targeted disrespect and shaming. In such cases, bullying not only damages individual dignity but also reproduces wider patterns of gendered and racialized subordination. The shaming of a woman as “too emotional” or of a minority colleague as “not a good fit” taps into cultural reservoirs of stigma, magnifying the impact beyond the immediate interaction.
This structural perspective is essential for clinical and organizational work. Without it, shame is easily individualized. Targets may feel personally defective for struggling when, in fact, they are being subjected to norms designed to privilege others (Daniels & Robinson, 2019). Reframing shame in terms of systemic forces allows for a more accurate distribution of responsibility and can be profoundly relieving. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?,” the person can begin to ask, “What values and power relations are being enforced through this treatment?” This re‑orientation does not remove pain, but it changes its meaning and opens space for solidarity, resistance, and political understanding.
Shame, Trauma, and Embodiment
The connection between workplace bullying, shame, and trauma has received increasing attention. Lewis (2004) notes that bullied lecturers often displayed trauma‑like symptoms, including intrusive recollections, avoidance, and hypervigilance. Rai and Agarwal (2018) similarly describe bullying as a chronic stressor that can lead to enduring psychological impairment. Shame is a central component of this trauma. It is not merely an emotion that accompanies the events; it is part of what makes them traumatic. Being repeatedly shamed at work means being repeatedly positioned as unworthy in a setting where one’s livelihood and identity depend on the recognition of worth.
Somatic and trauma‑informed approaches emphasize that shame is felt in the body as much as in thought. Nathanson (1992) describes patterns of “shame posture”—slumped shoulders, lowered gaze, constricted breathing—that emerge in response to humiliation and become habitual in chronic settings. Over time, the person may enter workspaces already anticipating exposure, leading to ongoing autonomic arousal or collapse. This embodied dimension explains why cognitive insight alone often fails to dissolve shame. Targets may understand that they were bullied and still feel themselves “shrink” under evaluation or social gaze.
Recognizing the embodied nature of shame has significant implications for clinical practice. Trauma‑informed interventions may need to address the person’s capacity to occupy space, maintain grounding, and tolerate relational visibility in professional contexts. Recovery is not only a matter of changing beliefs; it is also a matter of restoring the nervous system’s ability to remain regulated in situations of scrutiny and authority. For many bullied individuals, trauma symptoms and shame reactions intertwine. Separating the two conceptually can help clarify treatment goals, but in lived experience, they are closely linked and must be addressed together (Nielsen et al., 2017).
Clinical Implications: Working Directly with Shame
If shame is central to workplace bullying, clinical work with bullied individuals must bring shame to the foreground rather than treating it as a peripheral reaction. Lewis (2004) suggests that acknowledging shame explicitly helped lecturers begin to differentiate between their own values and the judgments imposed upon them. Therapeutic conversations that name shame—and that frame it as an understandable response to relational violation rather than as a personal defect—can reduce isolation and self‑attack.
A first clinical task is normalization and contextualization. The therapist can help the client understand how shame arises in settings of power imbalance, social dependence, and moralized evaluation. Situating the bullying within organizational culture, broader social inequalities, and the bully’s own dynamics of shame displacement allows clients to shift from self‑blame to critical analysis. Ahmed and Braithwaite’s (2006) and Braithwaite and Ahmed’s (2015, 2019) models of shame management are useful here, showing that bullies often displace shame onto others while victims tend to internalize it. Highlighting this pattern can support clients in “relocating” shame—from themselves back to the abusive system or perpetrator. Brown’s (2006) shame resilience theory adds further nuance, emphasizing the importance of recognizing shame triggers, developing critical awareness of messages that drive shame, reaching out for support, and speaking about shame in ways that foster connection rather than isolation. Integrating these elements into therapeutic work with bullied workers can help rebuild shame resilience in professional contexts.
A second task is narrative reconstruction. Bullied individuals frequently carry condensed shame scripts such as “I am weak,” “I am professionally worthless,” or “I am too difficult.” These scripts must be explored, historicized, and rewritten. Depth‑oriented and narrative approaches allow clients to examine how these beliefs were formed, whose voices they echo, and what alternative stories better reflect their experiences. The aim is not simplistic affirmation but restoration of complexity: the client is someone who was targeted within a particular system, not a person whose entire worth can be reduced to those experiences. Lewis’s (2004) qualitative work suggests that articulating one’s story to an attentive listener can itself be a powerful antidote to shame, because it replaces the internal monologue of degradation with a dialogical process of meaning‑making.
Because shame is embodied, clinical work may also involve somatic interventions. This can include helping clients notice and soften shame‑related postures, supporting them in experimenting with different ways of holding themselves in imagined or real workplace scenarios, and integrating techniques from somatic experiencing or other body‑based modalities to regulate autonomic responses. While empirical research specifically on somatic interventions for workplace bullying is limited, general trauma literature supports the value of addressing body states in addition to cognitions (van der Kolk, 2014).
Finally, therapists must attend carefully to the risk of re‑shaming. Bullying often leaves clients hypersensitive to judgment. Clinical language that pathologizes reactions, minimizes experiences, or implies that the problem lies in personality rather than in relational violation can inadvertently reproduce workplace dynamics. A shame‑aware stance emphasizes respect, curiosity, and non‑moralizing attention. It treats the client’s responses as meaningful, adaptive attempts to survive in a damaging environment, even when those responses later become constraining (Sui et al., 2026).
Organizational Implications: Addressing Shame and Power
Organizations often fail to address bullying because they misunderstand its emotional dynamics. Policies focus on isolated incidents and ignore patterns of humiliation, exclusion, and status loss. Investigations may ask if a rule was broken, not whether a worker is systematically positioned as inferior. Without attention to shame, institutions treat severe bullying as a personal conflict or as a problem of individual sensitivity.
Ahmed and Braithwaite’s (2006) work suggests that organizational norms around respect and transparency influence how shame and pride are managed and, consequently, how bullying emerges. Later studies (Braithwaite & Ahmed, 2015, 2019) find that workplaces that link achievement to mutual dignity rather than dominance experience less bullying. In contrast, environments that normalize narcissistic pride and trivialize displacement of shame create breeding grounds for humiliation and aggression. This implies that interventions must target culture, not only policy. Systematic reviews of workplace bullying in human resource development and organizational behavior echo this conclusion, emphasizing that bullying persists where humiliation is tolerated and recognition and voice go unprotected (Gupta et al., 2020).
Empirical evidence confirms it: organizational climates for safe expression change bullying outcomes. Krishna et al. (2023) show that shame links bullying to employee silence, especially where psychological safety is lacking. Rosander and Salin (2023) find that hostile work climates and bullying reinforce each other. Krishna et al. (2024) also show that fair conflict management weakens the link between bullying and silence. The message is clear: interventions must build climates that encourage safe expression and actively discourage shaming. Where disagreement or reporting results in humiliation or retaliation, shame will enforce silence, and bullying will persist (Liu et al., 2020).
To address shame and power, organizations should revise feedback and performance systems to eliminate humiliation. Train leaders and HR in shame dynamics, including how exposure and contempt function as violence. Create confidential, trauma-informed reporting channels. Show, through accountability, that status does not protect perpetrators. Where narcissistic leaders dominate unchecked, their manipulation and shaming shape the entire climate, driving suffering and dysfunction (Hecker, 2025). Leadership intervention is crucial.
Future Directions for Research
Despite important contributions by Lewis (2004), Ahmed and Braithwaite (2006), Braithwaite and Ahmed (2015, 2019), Rai and Agarwal (2018), and Krishna et al. (2024), shame remains understudied in workplace bullying research. Several avenues merit further exploration. Longitudinal research is especially critical. Recent studies document the long-term effects of bullying on shame, identity, and occupational outcomes. For example, Rosander et al. (2022) examine post-exit trajectories, showing that leaving a toxic workplace does not always resolve psychological distress or eliminate exposure to future bullying. Glambek et al. (2015) link workplace bullying to expulsion from working life, including unemployment and disability, across a five-year period. Farley et al. (2026) provide evidence that bullying can drive personality change over four years. Case studies also illustrate the process of identity reconstruction, from a fractured, self-diminishing identity to reclaimed agency, over extended periods. Longitudinal designs are needed to capture how shame and self-evaluation evolve after the initial trauma and what supports recovery. Gupta et al.’s (2020) systematic review identifies conceptual and methodological gaps in bullying research, including limited attention to shame as a distinct mechanism, and suggests that integrating shame theory into future designs is a promising direction.
Intervention research is also needed. Empirical evaluation of clinical and organizational programs that explicitly target shame, such as narrative interventions, somatic approaches, and leadership training on shame dynamics, would provide evidence for best practices. Additionally, intersectional research should examine how shame in bullying is shaped by overlapping identities and structural inequalities and how interventions can be tailored to address these complexities.
Finally, theoretical work could further integrate shame into models of organizational ethics and power. Viewing shame as a moral and relational technology invites questions about how institutions decide whom to shame and under what conditions, and how alternative cultures of dignity and accountability can be constructed. Addressing these questions would not only advance academic understanding but also offer practical guidance for creating workplaces that do not rely on humiliation as a means of control. Recent intersectional research demonstrates how overlapping identities, such as race, gender, and sexuality, influence both the experience of bullying-related shame and the effectiveness of interventions (Hollis, 2018; Pacheco et al., 2026). Incorporating these insights is essential for designing actionable and equitable solutions in practice.
Conclusion
Shame is a central affective mechanism in workplace bullying. It is the means by which bullying injures identity, threatens belonging, and enforces silence. By attacking the self rather than merely criticizing behavior, bullies use shame to exert power in environments where social recognition and economic survival are intertwined. Targets often internalize this shame, leading to long‑lasting psychological and somatic consequences and to the withdrawal of voice. Bullies may themselves be organized around displaced shame and narcissistic pride, but their behavior is reinforced by organizational cultures that reward domination and tolerate humiliation.
Recognizing shame as integral to bullying, rather than incidental, has profound implications. Clinically, it calls for trauma‑informed, relational approaches that directly address shame and its embodied, narrative, and structural dimensions. Organizationally, it demands interventions that challenge shaming practices, transform leadership cultures, and create climates in which conflict and accountability are managed without humiliation. For research, it opens a rich field of inquiry into how shame circulates through systems of power and how it can be reoriented from a weapon into a signal for repair.
© 2026 Dr. Kerstin Hecker. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any form without the author's prior written permission, except for brief quotations with proper citation.
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