Bullying: PDF Worksheet, Tools and Exercises for Clinical Practice

Naming bullying in session is rarely the obstacle. The real difficulty is helping a child or adolescent distinguish it from a one-off conflict, stop internalising blame, and leave the appointment with a behavioural repertoire they can actually deploy at school. This PDF worksheet on bullying gives you a structured, visual support to do exactly that, without spending half the session on conceptual groundwork.

Why bullying resists verbal explanation

Young patients typically arrive with two competing distortions: they either minimise what is happening ("it's just joking around") or catastrophise without being able to label it. The absence of precise vocabulary sustains both. Explaining the difference between a conflict, a mean moment, and repeated targeted aggression at the oral level often collapses into a lecture that the patient nods through without really anchoring anything.

There is also a powerful attributional trap. Research consistent with Olweus's foundational framework shows that bullied children frequently conclude that the victimisation reflects something deficient in themselves, not something strategic in the perpetrator. That belief interferes with help-seeking, distorts the therapeutic alliance early in treatment, and feeds the kind of social withdrawal that compounds low self-esteem and social anxiety. Oral psychoeducation alone rarely shifts it durably.

What the fiche contains: a visual support for a layered concept

The fiche moves through six numbered panels, making the structure transparent to the patient from the first glance.

Panel 1 defines bullying through a triad that clinicians know from Olweus: on purpose, over and over, power gap. The visual layout separates the three criteria clearly and adds a decisive clinical sentence: "All three together = bullying. Two out of three usually means something else." Having this in print lets you point rather than repeat, and lets the patient re-read it at home.

Panel 2 maps the four subtypes (physical, verbal, social, cyber) with brief, concrete examples. This is often the moment when a child recognises social exclusion or group chat mockery as bullying for the first time, which is a formulation-relevant shift you can debrief immediately.

Panel 3 addresses attribution directly: "Bullies pick targets for reasons that say much more about them than about you." This sentence, printed and visible, carries more weight than its verbal equivalent in many consultations. It also opens a natural path toward the Belief-O-Meter for Children if the self-blame schema is entrenched.

Panel 4 is the most immediately practical: five named coping strategies (tell an adult, hide reaction, avoid, fake brave, boring reply) with ready-to-borrow neutral phrases printed verbatim: "Eh, maybe." "Who cares?" "If you say so." For patients with limited assertiveness skills, seeing the exact words removes the barrier of having to improvise under stress. You can pair this panel with the 50 Coping Strategies for Children and Adolescents worksheet for broader behavioural activation between sessions.

Panel 5 addresses bystander behaviour, useful for patients who witness bullying and feel paralysed. Panel 6 lists clear escalation signals (physical injury, threats of violence, self-harm ideation) alongside a "To discuss in session" checklist that structures the follow-up conversation without requiring you to prompt every item.

> Key point: the fiche is a visual support that facilitates the explanation in session, not a self-administered questionnaire. The numbered panels give the practitioner a shared map to work from together with the patient, shorten the psychoeducation phase, and leave the patient with a concrete reference they can return to.

When and how to propose it in session

This fiche fits naturally from the second or third session, once the initial anamnesis is done and the patient has enough trust to discuss peer situations. For younger children (approximately 8 to 12), you can read through the panels together; adolescents often prefer to scan independently and flag what resonates.

A low-labelling introduction: "I want to show you something that might help us name what's been happening at school. Have a look and tell me which parts feel familiar." This avoids pre-empting the patient's own recognition.

When working with parents in parallel, the Anxiety in Children and Adolescents parent programme and the Depression in Children and Adolescents parent programme both address secondary emotional consequences that frequently overlay bullying exposure. If hypervigilance and intrusive re-experiencing are present, consider a PTSD symptom screen before focusing on coping skills.

Debrief Panel 4 behaviourally: ask which strategy the patient has already tried, what the outcome was, and which one they would be willing to experiment with before the next session. The assertive body language tools make a clean companion exercise for the "fake brave" strategy. For patients whose self-critical narrative is prominent, the Growth Mindset worksheet can consolidate gains from the psychoeducation work.

The fiche does not substitute for case formulation or safety planning when risk is present. It shortens the distance between understanding and action, which is often where the work gets stuck.

Sources

• Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Blackwell Publishing.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Education (2014). Bullying Surveillance Among Youths: Uniform Definitions for Public Health and Recommended Data Elements, Version 1.0. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2024). Bullying - Youth Violence Prevention.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - StopBullying.gov. What Is Bullying.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - StopBullying.gov. What Is Cyberbullying.