Two Sides of the Hallway: How Therapy Helps Teens Who Are Bullied and Teens Who Bully
It usually starts small. A seat that's suddenly "saved." A group chat that goes quiet when one name joins. A nickname that sticks a little too well. By the time a parent notices their teen has a stomachache every Monday, a phone flipped face-down at dinner, or grades that slide without explanation, the pattern has often been running for months.
We tend to tell this story with a hero and a villain. In our offices, it rarely looks that simple. The teen who is targeted needs safety, repair and a way back to themselves. The teen doing the bullying usually needs something too, and punishment alone almost never supplies it.
This piece is for the parents living through it and for the clinicians who sit across from these teens every week. Here's what bullying looks like in high school now, what it does to everyone involved, and how individual and group therapy can change the trajectory.
The Short Answer: How Does Therapy Help With High School Bullying?
Therapy helps teens who are bullied rebuild safety, self-worth and social confidence, and treats the anxiety, depression or trauma symptoms bullying often leaves behind.
For teens who bully, therapy addresses what drives the behavior (insecurity, stress at home, a need for status or poor emotion regulation) and builds empathy and better ways to get those needs met. Individual therapy offers privacy and depth. Group therapy offers something no single session can: practice with real peers in a space where the old social rules are suspended.
How Common Is Bullying in High School?
Roughly one in five U.S. high school students is bullied at school each year, and about one in six is bullied online. Those are the national numbers from the CDC's most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey published in 2023. A separate CDC survey of teens ages 12–17 put the figure at one in three when bullying anywhere is counted.
The hallway is no longer the boundary. Cyberbullying follows a teen home, into their bedroom, even showing up at 2 a.m., which is part of why parents so often miss it. Girls, LGBTQ+ teens and teens with developmental disabilities report being targeted at notably higher rates.
The Impact of Being Bullied in Teens
Bullying is not a rite of passage. In CDC data, teens who had been bullied reported anxiety at about twice the rate of their peers (29.8% vs. 14.5%) and depression at more than twice the rate (28.5% vs. 12.1%). Long-term studies following children into adulthood find that being targeted predicts higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression years later.
The damage is also quieter than a diagnosis. Teens start editing themselves (what they wear, where they sit, whether they raise a hand). Many conclude the problem must be them. And many never say a word to an adult.
Warning Signs Parents Can Watch For:
Frequent headaches or stomachaches, especially on school mornings
Avoiding school, the bus, practice or certain online platforms
Sudden changes in phone use: hiding the screen, or abruptly deleting apps
Lost or damaged belongings, or unexplained marks
Falling grades, dropped activities or a shrinking friend group
Trouble sleeping, irritability, or comments like "no one would care"
Any talk of self-harm or not wanting to be alive needs a same-day response. Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Understanding the Teen Who Bullies
The teen doing the bullying is rarely the cartoon villain of after-school specials. Some are socially powerful and use cruelty to protect their rank. Others are struggling at home, carrying untreated anxiety or ADHD, or repeating what's been done to them.
That last group matters most. Researchers call them bully-victims, or teens who are both targeted and doing the targeting. In research led by Duke's William Copeland and Dieter Wolke, bully-victims had the worst adult outcomes of any group, across health, finances and relationships.
The research on teens who bully only is more mixed. One major study linked bullying others to antisocial personality disorder in adulthood. Another found that, once family hardship and childhood psychiatric problems were accounted for, the bullying itself added little extra risk. For clinicians, that's the point: the behavior is often a signal of something underneath, and that something is treatable.
Why Punishment Alone Falls Short
Suspension removes a teen from the room. It doesn't teach them to read a peer's distress, tolerate their own shame, or find status without hurting someone. Consequences matter—accountability is part of healing for everyone involved—but without skill-building, the behavior often just moves online or goes underground.
How Individual and Group Therapy Helps Both Sides
Individual therapy gives a teen one relationship where they don't have to perform. That alone can be corrective. From there, the work looks different depending on which side of the story they're on.
But since bullying is a group phenomenon, even more healing can happen in groups. A well-run teen group is a social laboratory: the same pressures exist, but a skilled facilitator changes the rules.
For teens who have been bullied, group offers proof they are not the only one. They practice speaking up, setting boundaries and making a new friend in real time, with immediate, kind feedback. Many say hearing another teen describe their exact experience did more than any reassurance from an adult.
For teens who have bullied, a skills-based group builds empathy through role-play and peer feedback. Hearing "that would have wrecked me" from a same-age peer lands differently than hearing it from a principal.
Bystanders matter too. Most bullying happens in front of other students. Groups that teach teens how to safely interrupt or support a target can shift the culture of a whole friend group.
A Word of Caution
Teens who were bullied and the specific teens who bullied them should not be placed in the same therapy group. Restorative conversations between them can be powerful, but only when they're voluntary, carefully prepared and run by trained facilitators. Clinicians should also screen out teens whose aggression is severe enough to make a group unsafe.
What Should I Do If My Teen Is Involved in Bullying?
If your teen is being bullied:
Listen first. Thank them for telling you. Resist the urge to call the other parent tonight.
Write it down. Dates, places, names, and screenshots of anything online.
Contact the school in writing. Ask what their bullying policy requires and what the safety plan will be.
Protect their sleep and their phone time, without taking the phone away as a punishment for being targeted.
Book a consultation if symptoms last more than a couple of weeks or your gut tells you something is off.
If your teen is the one bullying
Stay calm and stay curious. Ask what happened and what was going on for them, not just what they did.
Hold clear, proportionate consequences, paired with a path to repair the harm.
Look at the bigger picture: stress at home, a friend group shift, online life, signs of their own distress.
Get support. Needing a therapist is not proof you've failed as a parent. It's one of the most protective things you can do for your child's future.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Yes. Therapy treats the anxiety, depression and trauma symptoms that bullying often causes, and helps teens rebuild self-worth, assertiveness and friendships. Cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma-focused approaches are common starting points.
-
Often, yes. Bullying behavior is frequently linked to underlying stress, untreated mental health conditions or skill gaps in empathy and emotion regulation. Therapy addresses those roots, which discipline alone usually doesn't.
-
They do different jobs, and many teens benefit from both. Individual therapy offers privacy and depth; group therapy offers real-time practice with peers and the relief of not being alone.
-
A bully-victim is a young person who is both bullied and bullies others. Research shows this group faces the highest long-term risk for mental health, health and social difficulties, so early support is especially important.
-
Many teens see meaningful change within 8–16 weekly sessions, though it varies with symptom severity, whether bullying is ongoing, and family involvement.
-
The core work is the same, but cyberbullying adds documentation, platform reporting, privacy settings and family agreements about phone use. Because it can follow teens home, it often feels inescapable, which therapy addresses directly.
Both Teens Deserve a Different Ending
Every bullying story has at least two teenagers whose futures are being shaped in real time. One is learning whether the world is safe. The other is learning whether power has to hurt. Therapy gives both a chance to learn something better.
At Collaborative Minds Psychotherapy, we offer individual and group therapy for teens in New York and New Jersey navigating bullying, whether they're the ones being targeted, the ones doing the targeting, or somewhere in between.
Ready to talk? Call or text (201) 252-7689 to discuss individual and group therapy options with our intake coordinator. You can also book a call directly on our website.
If a teen is in immediate danger, call 911. For a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.