Working with Bullying: Supporting Perpetrators

This article explores the drivers of bullying and how therapists can guide change with empathy, accountability, and clinical insight.

Related articles: Working with Bullying: Supporting Victims, Anger Management: De-escalating Anger.

Introduction

When we talk about bullying, our attention tends to settle on those who have been hurt — the victims whose confidence, trust, and safety have been eroded by repeated harm. But every story of bullying has two sides. On the other stands the person enacting aggression: the child who lashes out to avoid humiliation, the teenager whose dominance masks fear, or the adult whose control has become a shield against vulnerability.

For clinicians, this is complex territory. Supporting those who bully means engaging with behaviour that causes harm while recognising that such behaviour rarely develops in a vacuum. It is shaped by emotion, attachment, social learning, and culture. Our work requires balancing compassion with accountability — understanding the “why” behind the behaviour without excusing it.

This article, a companion to our previous article on supporting bullying victims, explores how mental health professionals can conceptualise and treat bullying from the perpetrator’s perspective. Drawing on research, developmental theory, and clinical practice, we outline practical approaches for children, adolescents, and adults, and discuss the ethical and emotional challenges that come with this work.

Understanding the perpetrator

Bullying is intentional, repeated behaviour that exploits a power imbalance (Ferraz de Camargo, Rice, & Thorsteinsson, 2023). That imbalance might be physical, social, or psychological, and the aggression may take many forms — from overt violence to subtle relational manipulation or digital harassment (Rettew & Pawlowski, 2022).

Perpetrators are often stereotyped as cruel or inherently antisocial. Yet most research paints a more layered picture. Many bullies are not callous but emotionally dysregulated. Some have themselves been victimised. Others learn to bully through modelling — observing coercive or competitive dynamics in family or school settings. Bullying can become a maladaptive tool for securing control, respect, or belonging in environments that reward dominance (Carney & Hazler, 2015).

Clinically, then, the question is not “Who bullies?” but “What purpose does bullying serve for this person, in this context?” Understanding that function is the cornerstone of effective intervention.

Why people bully: The psychology of power

Power is the common denominator in all forms of bullying. The act of intimidating or humiliating another can temporarily relieve feelings of weakness or shame. For some clients, bullying offers a perverse sense of mastery in a world that otherwise feels unpredictable.

Psychologically, several mechanisms are at play:

• Defensive control: Aggression masks vulnerability or anxiety.
• Status and belonging: Dominance gains social recognition, particularly in adolescence.
• Learned coercion: Children internalise the relational scripts modelled at home.
• Instrumental gain: Adults may use aggression for advancement or control.
• Emotional regulation: Anger or envy is discharged through harm rather than processed internally (Low, Monsen, & Schow, 2025).

Recognising these functions allows therapists to reframe bullying not as senseless cruelty but as a maladaptive coping strategy — one that can, with work, be replaced by healthier forms of self-regulation and connection.

Risk and protective factors

Understanding why individuals engage in bullying requires a multifactorial lens. Perpetration rarely stems from a single cause but rather from an interplay of temperament, emotional regulation, attachment history, and social environment. These elements converge to shape how a person interprets power, threat, and belonging.

For some, bullying reflects reactive aggression rooted in insecurity or shame; for others, it is a learned social tool reinforced by peers or institutions. Identifying both risk and protective factors across these domains allows clinicians to move beyond moral labels, building formulations that balance empathy with accountability.

Individual risk factors

Traits such as impulsivity, poor emotional regulation, or low empathy are strongly linked to bullying behaviour (Rettew & Pawlowski, 2022). Some perpetrators display externalising symptoms or conduct problems; others exhibit internalised distress that manifests as control over others. Neurodevelopmental conditions, trauma exposure, or chronic stress can further impair self-regulation and empathy.

Family and environmental risk factors

Family systems that use coercion, harsh discipline, or inconsistent boundaries often teach children that dominance equals safety (Carney & Hazler, 2015). In contrast, warmth and predictable structure foster empathy and emotional containment. Family disconnection, parental mental illness, or domestic violence are frequent contextual contributors.

Peer and institutional risk factors

Peers and institutions play a crucial role in maintaining or interrupting bullying. Research consistently shows that peers who reward aggression with attention strengthen its persistence, while bystanders who model defence or inclusion can disrupt it (Marsh, 2018). Schools and workplaces that value competition over cooperation may inadvertently legitimise aggression.

Protective factors

Protective factors include strong parental attachment, emotional literacy, and environments that model compassion. Access to supportive adults, restorative programs, and opportunities for prosocial leadership can transform trajectories (Ferraz de Camargo et al., 2023).

Beyond these individual and contextual elements, bullying should be understood as a relational transaction shaped by culture and opportunity. Peer audiences, institutional silence, and even online algorithms can amplify dominance behaviour. For clinicians, addressing bullying means engaging both the individual’s skills and the systems that reward their aggression.

Developmental and lifespan considerations

Bullying evolves with development. Its motives and meanings shift across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and even later life. Viewing these patterns through a lifespan lens helps clinicians tailor interventions appropriately.

Childhood: Learning power and control

In early childhood, bullying typically emerges from frustration, poor impulse control, or modelling. Aggression becomes a form of communication for unmet emotional needs. When it secures attention or compliance, it is reinforced. Attachment disruptions, family conflict, or neglect increase vulnerability.

Treatment at this stage focuses on skill building and family involvement. Helping children label emotions, practice empathy, and use words instead of force builds lasting change. Parent coaching in consistent, warm discipline is essential (Carney & Hazler, 2015).

Adolescence: Status, identity, and peer hierarchies

Adolescence introduces social comparison and identity formation. Bullying can become a strategy for maintaining popularity or avoiding rejection (Low et al., 2025). Some adolescents use cruelty as currency in competitive peer cultures.

Clinically, interventions combine cognitive work (challenging distorted beliefs about status and strength) with emotion regulation and perspective-taking exercises. Restorative and group-based programs can help teens re-humanise peers they’ve harmed while rebuilding self-esteem through prosocial means.

Adulthood: Institutional aggression

In adults, bullying often migrates into workplace or relational settings. Power imbalances, stress, and organisational silence sustain it (Rettew & Pawlowski, 2022). Perpetrators may rationalise aggression as “leadership” or “discipline,” particularly in competitive fields. Schema therapy helps unpack entitlement, defectiveness, and mistrust schemas that underlie such patterns.

Later life: Legacy and meaning

Even in older adulthood, bullying can persist — sometimes in families or care settings. For others, guilt or unresolved relational ruptures from earlier life emerge. Therapy here may focus on accountability, self-forgiveness, and repairing relationships, supporting psychological integration and closure.

Across the lifespan, bullying represents an attempt to manage vulnerability through control. Clinicians’ work is to replace coercion with connection and help clients experience strength without subjugation.

Clinical formulation: Moving from blame to responsibility

Therapeutic progress begins with a formulation that links the function of behaviour to the client’s history and emotions. The goal is neither to shame nor to excuse, but to understand.

A strong formulation answers four questions:

1. What does the bullying achieve? Control, belonging, revenge, or protection from shame?
2. What beliefs sustain it? Common cognitions include “Respect must be earned through fear” or “If I don’t dominate, I’ll be dominated.”
3. What emotions drive it? Anger, envy, fear, and humiliation frequently sit beneath aggression.
4. What systems maintain it? Peers, families, and workplaces may reward coercion.

Therapists can share parts of this formulation with clients to foster insight. The shift from blame (“They deserved it”) to responsibility (“I chose this, and it harmed someone”) represents a critical turning point.

This process requires emotional containment. Confrontation without empathy breeds defensiveness; empathy without accountability breeds collusion. An “empathic accountability” stance allows clinicians to affirm the person’s worth while holding firm boundaries around harmful actions. This stance models the relational balance many perpetrators never experienced: warmth without permissiveness.

Therapeutic pathways for change

Helping perpetrators of bullying change is rarely linear. Many arrive in therapy under pressure — from schools, employers, or courts — and may not see their behaviour as problematic. The therapist’s task is to meet defensiveness with curiosity, and hostility with steadiness. Progress depends on helping clients recognise the emotional logic behind their actions while strengthening their capacity for empathy and self-regulation.

True change occurs not when shame is imposed externally, but when insight transforms the meaning of power internally. The following pathways outline practical and evidence-informed strategies for guiding that process across developmental stages and contexts.

Establishing safety and alliance

Engagement is often difficult. Many perpetrators enter therapy involuntarily, minimising their behaviour or fearing judgment. Early sessions should focus on building alliance through curiosity and fairness. Simple statements such as “My role isn’t to label you, but to help you understand what’s driving this” can reduce defensiveness.

Psychoeducation and motivation

Psychoeducation helps normalise emotional experiences without justifying aggression. Exploring power dynamics, empathy, and relational responsibility provides cognitive scaffolding for change. Motivational interviewing can elicit ambivalence and build readiness by linking behaviour to personal costs — damaged relationships, disciplinary action, isolation.

Cognitive and behavioural work

CBT techniques target cognitive distortions and impulsive behaviour (Ferraz de Camargo et al., 2023). Therapists can help clients identify “trigger thoughts” and replace them with balanced interpretations. Behavioural rehearsal, role-play, and problem-solving exercises enable practice of assertive, non-coercive interaction.

Anger management modules — recognising physiological cues, using “pause-plan-act” sequences, or stress inoculation — are especially valuable for reactive bullies.

Emotion regulation and empathy development

Emotionally focused interventions teach clients to recognise underlying shame or fear before it escalates into aggression. Mindfulness, compassion-focused therapy, and affect labelling enhance tolerance for vulnerability. In adolescents, empathy training through role reversal or restorative dialogue can be transformative (Marsh, 2018).

Family and systemic work

In children and teens, parental engagement is non-negotiable. Family therapy can interrupt coercive cycles, address communication breakdowns, and model non-violent problem solving (Low et al., 2025).

For adults, systemic work might involve coaching around workplace dynamics or couple therapy to rebuild mutual respect. Clinicians should collaborate with external supports — schools, HR departments, supervisors — to ensure consistent boundaries and safety.

Schema and insight-oriented work

In adults, schema therapy addresses the deeper structures sustaining aggression — entitlement, mistrust, or defectiveness (Sanders, 2022). Through imagery rescripting and mode work, clients learn to access their “vulnerable child” states and develop self-compassion, reducing the need for dominance as protection.

Restorative and reparative practices

When appropriate and safe, restorative processes allow perpetrators to face those they’ve harmed and make amends. These must be carefully facilitated to prevent re-traumatisation, but when done well, they transform abstract empathy into lived accountability (Carney & Hazler, 2015).

Case vignette: “Michael”

Michael, aged 38, is referred by his employer after several staff lodge complaints about his “hostile management style.” He describes himself as “tough but fair” and views his team’s distress as weakness: “I’m not here to babysit adults.”

Early sessions reveal a history of humiliation. Raised by a critical father and emotionally distant mother, Michael learned that mistakes invited ridicule. As a teenager, he coped by becoming the aggressor — dominating peers before they could mock him. Success in high-pressure workplaces reinforced the pattern: control equalled safety.

Phase one: Engagement and formulation

Michael enters therapy sceptical, viewing the referral as punitive. The clinician begins by validating his commitment to excellence while gently exploring the interpersonal cost. Together, they map a formulation: when Michael feels criticised, shame triggers anger; anger restores control. This insight reframes aggression as a defence, not a fixed trait.

Phase two: Cognitive and emotional work

Using CBT, Michael learns to spot early physiological signs of anger and to name underlying emotions (“I feel dismissed,” “I feel exposed”). The therapist introduces mindfulness to lengthen his response window. Imagery rescripting addresses memories of paternal humiliation, allowing him to express sadness and grief that had long been displaced.

Phase three: Restorative and systemic work

At work, Michael experiments with new behaviours: inviting feedback, delegating, and acknowledging others’ contributions. He participates in a leadership development program that integrates empathy and reflective communication. Over months, his staff report improved morale. Michael admits, “For the first time, I feel respected and liked — I didn’t know both were possible.”

This vignette illustrates that beneath aggression often lies fear, and beneath fear, a longing for connection. Therapeutic progress comes not from punishment but from helping clients reclaim their capacity for relational safety.

Clinical challenges and ethical considerations

Working with clients who have bullied others can be some of the most ethically and emotionally demanding work in clinical practice. It requires therapists to hold multiple perspectives at once — protecting potential victims, maintaining empathy for the client, and managing their own moral responses to aggression.

The work sits at the intersection of justice and compassion: we are invited to see the human behind the harm while never losing sight of the harm itself. This balancing act challenges even seasoned clinicians, demanding self-awareness, supervision, and an unflinching commitment to ethical clarity.

Resistance and denial

Many perpetrators externalise blame or minimise harm. Pushing too hard for confession can entrench defensiveness. Motivational interviewing and reflective questioning (“What was happening for you in that moment?”) can invite ownership gradually.

Risk and safety management

Therapists must remain alert to ongoing harm, particularly when children, partners, or employees are at risk. Risk assessment and collaboration with relevant authorities may be necessary. Ethical transparency — explaining limits of confidentiality early — protects both client and clinician.

Dual roles and systemic pressure

In school or workplace contexts, clinicians may be asked to serve both therapeutic and consultative roles. Maintaining clear boundaries prevents perceived bias. The therapist’s loyalty is to the client’s psychological growth, not institutional agendas.

Comorbidity and complexity

Substance misuse, trauma histories, or personality pathology often co-occur. These require integrated treatment planning. Some clients need parallel anger or addiction programs; others benefit from trauma-focused modalities such as EMDR once stabilised.

Clinician countertransference

Working with those who harm others can evoke anger, fear, or moral judgment. Reflective supervision is vital to process these reactions. Clinicians should monitor their tone and body language; modelling respect and firmness teaches as much as any intervention. More on this topic: Understanding Transference and Projection in Therapy.

Ethical balance: Compassion and accountability

Ethically, the clinician must hold the paradox of care and confrontation. We do not condone harm, but we recognise the humanity of those who cause it. As Carney and Hazler (2015) observed, sustainable change emerges when individuals experience both empathy and the clear expectation of responsibility.

Summing up: A therapeutic roadmap for clinicians

Here’s a concise framework clinicians can adapt across settings:

1. Assessment and formulation
   • Gather developmental, relational, and systemic history.
   • Identify the function of bullying behaviour.
   • Map emotions, beliefs, and environmental reinforcers.
2. Psychoeducation and motivation
   • Teach about power dynamics, empathy, and emotional regulation.
   • Explore personal costs and readiness to change.
3. Cognitive and emotional regulation work
   • Challenge thinking errors and teach impulse control.
   • Use mindfulness, compassion-focused, or CBT techniques.
4. Relational and systemic intervention
   • Engage families, schools, or organisations.
   • Facilitate restorative conversations if safe.
5. Maintenance and growth
   • Reinforce prosocial identity and empathy.
   • Prevent relapse through follow-up and reflective practice.

Conclusion

Working with perpetrators of bullying tests our clinical balance and our humanity. It invites us to see beyond the aggression to the vulnerability beneath it — to recognise that those who harm are often, themselves, trying not to feel small or powerless.

Through empathic accountability, structured intervention, and systemic collaboration, clinicians can help clients transform destructive power into relational strength. In doing so, we interrupt cycles of harm and model the very compassion that bullying seeks to erase.

Key takeaways

• Bullying behaviour serves emotional and relational functions — often control, belonging, or protection from shame.
• Clinicians must integrate empathy with firm accountability.
• Effective intervention requires developmental sensitivity and systemic collaboration.
• CBT, schema therapy, and restorative approaches have strong empirical support.
• Supervision and reflective practice protect therapists from countertransference fatigue.
• The ultimate goal is not merely stopping aggression, but enabling connection and relational maturity.

Questions therapists often ask

Q: How do I balance accountability with empathy when working with a young person who bullies others?

A: Hold both pieces at once. You name the harm clearly, but you don’t collapse the child into the behaviour. The article emphasises understanding the function of the bullying—power, control, protection, status—which often reflects unmet needs or skill gaps. When you treat the behaviour as a maladaptive strategy rather than a moral failing, you can challenge it firmly while still supporting the young person’s capacity to change.

Q: What’s the first thing to assess when a client engages in bullying?

A: Start with what the behaviour does for them. Power dynamics, safety, belonging, and emotional regulation are common drivers. If you understand the payoff, you can target the underlying vulnerability—poor impulse control, social confusion, low self-worth, or a chaotic environment—rather than just policing the surface behaviour.

Q: How should I involve families without framing the child as “the problem”?

A: Bring parents into a conversation about skills, needs, and patterns instead of labels. The article encourages helping families see bullying as a sign that something isn’t working, not an identity. You support parents to strengthen boundaries, model healthy relating, and reinforce prosocial behaviour without slipping into blame or shame.

Q: What therapeutic approach tends to work best with young people who bully?

A: A skills-first approach. Emotion regulation, perspective-taking, problem-solving, and communication work go a long way. The article also stresses relational safety—if a client feels defended or judged, they’ll double down on bravado. Motivational interviewing techniques can help them articulate their own reasons for change rather than complying to avoid trouble.

Q: How do I prevent sessions from turning into debates about “who started it”?

A: Pivot away from the narrative and toward responsibility. The article highlights keeping the focus on the client’s choices, the consequences of those choices, and what they can take ownership of now. You can acknowledge context without letting it dilute accountability. The working question becomes: “Given what happened, what can you do differently next time?”

References

• Carney, J. V., & Hazler, R. J. (2015). Bullying intervention practice brief. American Counseling Association.
• Chow, A. R. W., Pingault, J. B., & Baldwin, J. (2023). Early risk factors for joint trajectories of bullying victimisation and perpetration. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 32(10), 1723–1731. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-022-01989-6
• Ferraz de Camargo, L., Rice, K., & Thorsteinsson, E. B. (2023). Bullying victimisation CBT: A proposed psychological intervention for adolescent bullying victims. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1122843. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1122843
• Low, E., Monsen, J., & Schow, L. (2025). Predicting bullying victimisation among adolescents using the risk and protective factor framework: A large-scale machine learning approach. BMC Public Health, 25, 321. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025–21521-0
• Marsh, V. L. (2018). Bullying in school: Prevalence, contributing factors, and interventions. The Center for Urban Education Success, University of Rochester.
• Rettew, D. C., & Pawlowski, S. (2022). Bullying: An update. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 31(1), 1–9.
• Sanders, C. E. (2022). Bullying victimisation: Definition, prevalence, risk factors, consequences, and prevention. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367198459-REPRW27-1