Having respect within your group of friends is important for anyone. Peer pressure can influence respect in a positive and negative way. You may feel pressure from your friends to act a certain way and do certain things in order to gain respect from them and feel that you are part of a group. At times this can make us do silly things and take risks we wouldn’t normally take. After all, everyone wants to be accepted and be respected by their friends.

You might feel pressure from your friends to have sex, take drugs or stay out late, and resisting that pressure can be very difficult at times. We all fall into it at times, and to believe that adults don’t would be wrong. It happens to everyone at some stage in our lives. We fear that our friends will take the ‘mic’ out of us and do or say things which make us feel bad, or maybe stop being friends with us altogether. But doing things because they please other people can be very dangerous, and if it’s something we really don’t want to do it can cause us worry and even pain.

It can be hard, but we should never do things or try to be something we’re not. Bending to the will of others and doing things to please them, just because we think we’ll get respect isn’t the best way to go about things. Respect from others should and usually comes from having respect for ourselves. We must first respect ourselves and do what we think is right before pleasing others and doing what they think we should do.

There are no quick answers to this, and learning to stand up for what you want and not feeling like you have to do things to make others happy or to fit in can take a little time. The first thing, and most important, is to want to stand up for yourself. After that it’s a case of using different ways to do this, trying different approaches and tactics and learning what works and what doesn’t. Everything in life is a learning process and we just need to realise that to help us build ourselves up so that we can do what we want to and not always what other people want us to do.

For more information see the ‘Respect Yourself’ page on this website.

Links

www.likeitis.org/peer_pressure.html

This is a great website which gives young people lots of information and advice about peer pressure in a fun and interactive way. The site helps young people understand what peer pressure is and how you can deal with it and be yourself.

http://teenadvice.about.com/cs/peerpressure/a/blpeerpressure.htm

Another great website which gives you loads of information and advice to help you understand more about peer pressure, how to tackle it and why we are influenced by our friends and peers.