Peer Pressure

Let’s have a serious conversation for a minute. Yes, I know the picture I chose isn’t very serious, but this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and it needs to be talked about.

Peer Pressure.

This has got to stop. Now.

We spend our time trying to teach people never to give in to peer pressure, but why aren’t we talking about stopping it?

DO NOT PRESSURE YOUR FRIENDS TO DO SOMETHING THAT THEY DON’T WANT TO DO.

How dare you ever push your friends past the point of them being uncomfortable about something? (We are all guilty of this).

I also believe that peer pressure shows itself in many different forms. Anything that has to do with putting pressure on one of your friends is peer pressure. This has got to end.

We should be working together to back our friends up in these situations, to make sure that we aren’t making our friends uncomfortable. We should make sure that we aren’t enabling our friends to stumble in an area that they’ve been struggling with (e.g. drinking alcohol, dating relationships, gossiping, etc.).

Don’t pry for information, that’s pressure. Don’t talk about one of their friends to them, that’s pressure. Don’t keep pushing someone to do anything that they don’t want to do, that is pressure.

Let’s focus on loving our friends and encouraging them. Let’s be kind to people and not cause those around us to stumble. You are valuable and you deserve to have friends that make you feel safe. Your friends are valuable and they deserve to have a friend that makes them feel safe.

Obviously we aren’t perfect. But can we just love each other and stop trying to make everyone be exactly like we are? Just be yourself and love your friends for who they are.

Katyana

Thank you for being patient with me these past couple weeks. Life has been quite crazy and my emotions have been high, so I wasn’t in a good place mentally to be writing. I’m doing better now and I will continue to write in the coming weeks.