The Anti-Bullying Game (Lifegames)

Designed for adults and adolescents who experience difficulties with peer relationships, this game enables both victims amd bullies to understand the dynamics underlying bullying behaviour and helps them to explore more adaptive interaction styles. Exploring the machanisms behind passive and provocative behaviour, the game focuses on interactive processes, communication, belief systems and assertiveness. Providing an opportunity for exploration within a safe group, the game helps young people to understand the dynamics of the power differential between victim and bully. It promotes positive self-esteem and encourages behaviour to be taken over into other settings. The board game comprises a game board, counters, dice and four sets of colour-coded cards arranged in categories corresponding to coloured shapes on the board. This is part of a series of therapeutic board games, each of which has been carefully developed utilizing an integrative psychotherapy model which incorporates systemic, cognitive-behavourial, humanistic and psychodynamic orientations. A therapist should always be present playing the games, which address factual issues and focus on emotional expression, belief systems, cognitive processes, behavourial responses, relationships, fantasies, memories and dreams. They provide a safe, boundaried space where children and adolescents may explore their inner feelings, and can be used to answer questions which children may have been afraid to ask.