To get ideas about what everyone can do to celebrate Freedom Week, go here.

For individuals bullied at work, learn the predictable stages of the workplace bullying experience.

Our books – for bullied targets and their families, and for employers wanting to tackle, not ignore, workplace bullying.

One of the tools bully managers use is play divide-and-conquer games with the work team. They gain support of both willing sycophants and others in the group who fear that an alliance with the target will lead to their punishment. Thus, the bullying that began with a single instigator quickly escalates into a many-against-one situation. The founder of the international movement, Heinz Leymann called it mobbing, meaning there are multiple perpetrators.

As a social psychologist, it saddens me to see how easily coworkers are convinced to turn on their beleaguered colleague. Sometimes the bully explicitly orders coworkers to stop assisting, meeting with and socializing with the target. Remarkably, most follow that order. Sometimes, what the bully wants — to isolate the target — is conveyed implicitly, no need to ask or demand.

The exclusion of a person from their “tribe,” their social group is a hurtful act. Humans are social animals. One of our fundamental needs is to belong to a group. When that need is thwarted, injury follows. fMRI research found that ostracism from a small group after only 5 minutes of bonding activity triggers pain pathways in the brain. And the initial emotional reactions of anger, then sadness are universal. Imagine, then the impact of denying contact with people you’ve worked with for over a decade. “Work” is so much more than tasks assigned by managers.

In the U.S. we tend to downplay the cost of doing things alone. Our cowboy mythology is the basis of much of our self-praised individualism. We think we need no one else. In collectivist societies, this hubris sounds silly. To them, extended families are needed to enjoy a quality life. Another way we rationalize the “benefits” of isolation is our reverence for entrepreneurship. Start a business in your garage. Go it alone. Sell it on Shark Tank TV. Get rich. Of course, not discussed is how to build a healthy organization, not only with respect to profits but regarding its people.

The truth is that nearly all of us benefit from socializing with other human beings. (I do acknowledge that exceptions exist, e.g., hermits.) When under duress, as all bullied targets are, companionship with people who unconditionally love them is the antidote to distress. Isolation generates stress. Positive socialization reduces the stress. We also know that newborns raised for the first 18 months of life without at least one nurturing, warm, loving caregiver, are likely on a life course filled with decades of dysfunctional antisocial conduct and an inability to successfully enjoy intimate relationships with others in adulthood.

So, rejection by another human carries serious consequences for us humans. I had a legal case in which a warm, wonderful surgeon who had grown his practice to support over 25 other physicians was traumatized by the younger doctors who attempted to get him to resign. With all of their education they resorted to middle school tactics of ostracism – they left when he entered rooms, and in group meetings, they spun their chairs so he saw only their backs. Their ostracism campaign cost him his mental health along with his faith in human nature. (He won $8.4 million at trial.)

Ostracism and social exclusion have serious consequences for fully functioning adults. Don’t let anyone try to diminish the harm it causes.

What can you do as a bullied target? Use your own magnetic power to pull your friends back into your fold. Tell them about the perpetrator’s goal. Remind them that the group has the power to overcome most of the bully’s tricks. Lean on your long history with those friends, lest they become former friends.