By: Stan Popovich
How Can You Deal With Bullies in a Healthy Way?
You can deal with bullies by staying calm, protecting your safety, seeking support from trusted adults or friends, and responding with confidence rather than fear. While you can’t always control a bully’s behavior, you can control how you respond, build resilience, and take steps to protect your mental health and well-being.
Dealing with bullies can be stressful and emotionally painful, no matter your age.
Knowing how to respond in healthy and safe ways can help protect your confidence and well-being.
What Is Bullying?
Bullying is repeated behavior meant to hurt, intimidate, or control someone. It usually involves a power imbalance — social, physical, or positional — that makes the target feel vulnerable.
What Are the Different Types of Bullying?
Bullying takes different forms. Verbal bullying includes teasing, name-calling, insults, or threats. Social bullying harms relationships through exclusion, rumors, or public embarrassment. Physical bullying involves hitting, pushing, or damaging belongings. Digital bullying uses texts, social media, or online platforms to harass or humiliate someone.
How Can You Deal With Cyberbullying?
Being targeted online can feel relentless—mean comments, rumors, or messages can reach you anytime. Notice your stress without judgment and take a small step to regain control: save evidence of harmful messages, block or mute the bully, and reach out to a trusted adult or counselor. Use grounding techniques—like deep breathing or a brief walk—before responding. Over time, these deliberate actions reduce fear, protect your mental health, and help you navigate online spaces safely.
How Does Bullying Affect Mental Health?
Ongoing bullying can affect mental health and confidence. Anxiety may cause constant worry and tension. Depression can bring sadness, irritability, and loss of interest. Social withdrawal may lead to isolation.
Bullying can occur at school, work, home, or online, affecting both children and adults, so recognizing its impact early is essential for building resilience.
How Can You Handle a Bully?
1. Show that you have confidence: Believe in yourself and display confidence when dealing with conflict, as bullies often target people who seem unsure. Activities like martial arts can help build confidence, resilience, and practical self-defense skills while also giving a sense of achievement.
2. Make eye contact: Strong eye contact signals confidence and awareness. When you look someone in the eye, you communicate self-assurance and presence — qualities that make you a less appealing target.
3. Take care of yourself: Focus on your health and well-being by doing things that make you feel good and boost your confidence. Engage in hobbies or activities that bring you joy and help you build positive, supportive relationships.
4. Stand up for yourself: Stand your ground when dealing with conflict from others. Make eye contact, stand up straight with your head high, speak in a strong voice, and wear clothes that show that you are confident in yourself. It’s not about how strong you are, but rather the willingness to show others that you won’t be taken advantage of.
5. There is safety in numbers: A bully will tend to go after someone who is alone. A bully will be less likely to bother you if they know that you have a group of people that will back you up. Having acquaintances can go a long way in preventing someone from bothering you.
6. Find others who share your interests: You can always make friends at a youth group, book club, or social organization. Learn a new sport, join a team, or take up a new hobby such as chess, art, or music. Volunteering is a great way to feel better about yourself and expand your social network.
7. Control your emotional response: Try not to let the bully see that they are getting to you. Bullies feed on attention, so showing fear, frustration, or anger can encourage them to continue. Stay calm, ignore their attempts to upset you, and focus on keeping control of the situation. Often, if they don’t get the reaction they want, they will move on.
8. Talk to the person: If it feels safe, calmly ask the person if something you did upset them and apologize if needed. Stay polite, keep your emotions in check, and focus on solutions. This can sometimes lead to understanding or reconciliation. If it feels unsafe, don’t handle it alone—get help from a trusted adult.
9. Tell a trusted adult: Adults in positions of authority, like parents, teachers, your boss, or coaches, often can deal with bullying without the bully ever learning how they found out about it. Write down what happened, when it happened, and who was involved. If the bullying is online, keep the evidence — save or copy any photos, videos, texts, e-mails, or posts.
10. Forgive, but don’t carry the burden: Try not to carry the burden of anger, hurt, or pain with you. That will only give more power to the bullies and encourage them to do even more. Forgive them for their hurtful comments but choose not to carry the weight of it with you. Fight the effects of bullying with extra-strong doses of self-love.
Even with these steps, sometimes you need extra support. Here’s where to get help.
Where Can You Get Help for Bullying?
If you’re being bullied, reaching out reduces stress and strengthens resilience. Talk to a parent, teacher, coach, or school counselor. Stay connected to friends who support you and do not participate in bullying.
You may also consider speaking with a mental health professional. A counselor can provide personalized coping strategies and guidance to help you manage the situation and protect your well-being.
How Can You Manage Stress Caused by Bullying?
Bullying activates your body’s stress response — cortisol rises, adrenaline increases, and your brain shifts into high alert. That’s why advice like “just ignore it” often doesn’t work.
A practical way to regain control is the stepwise exposure map. List situations that feel intimidating, rate them by stress level, and take small, controlled steps starting with lower-stress situations. This might include brief interactions with supportive peers, role-playing responses, or joining structured group activities.
Track what builds confidence and what still feels challenging. Gradually increase difficulty. This process retrains your brain to see bullying situations as manageable rather than overwhelming.
How Can You Handle Verbal Bullying at School or Work?
Facing a bully can make your heart race and your thoughts spiral: “What if I say the wrong thing?” That reaction is normal. Acknowledge it without letting it control you.
Focus on what you can control. Stand tall. Maintain steady eye contact. Speak calmly and briefly. Position yourself near supportive peers or coworkers when possible.
Reflect afterward. Did you respond intentionally? Did you stay composed? Each controlled response weakens fear and strengthens confidence for the future.
How This Fits the Managing Fear Framework
Many people try to manage fear by searching for a single solution, but fear can appear in different situations and may require different approaches. The Managing Fear Framework combines multiple strategies and techniques to help individuals explore different tools, discover what works best for their situation, and develop a more flexible way to respond to fear.
A Layman’s Guide to Managing Fear expands on this framework by providing practical strategies and tools to help readers understand fear, develop coping skills, and build confidence in handling challenging situations.
Whether you experience occasional fears or recurring anxiety, having a variety of approaches available can help you feel more prepared and better equipped when fear returns.
