Peoples actions creating negative atmosphere

[cj-1996]

Hello

This is quite a big post, but just letting out my frustration and hoping you will agree with me.
Recently when going out with a group of my friends at school, about ten of us, I noticed how other groups inflicted a negative atmosphere upon us, of course we ignored them but it REALLY frustrates me how they have the CHEEK to call one of my closer friends ugly, she isn't exactly a Cheryl Cole, but she's a lovely person. And how other groups big themselves up to the extent that I want to turn around and give them a reality check.
I know that there are always going to be some mindless idiots out there, but why do they feel the need to do this? I'm naturally a shy person, and I forced myself to go out with this large group of people because I don't have much experience in doing so, and it really isn't my sort of thing. I like being able to be listened to when I speak, by everybody not just a select few. Which is why I keep to smaller groups such as 2-3.
I ride a bike, I have long brown hair and blue eyes, I wear minimal make up, and I like country music. As I walked past a group of girls with my bike on the way home, they were laughing at me, at least I think, unless I'm just being too sensitive... But it really made me upset, because if most people are like this now, what will it be like ten years down the line?
I just wish some people would change their ways... Like, soon. Pretty darn soon.

[Anxious_gal]

this sounds like high school?

Um well you can only control your own actions and feelings.
Take it as a compliment that they feel so threatened by you and they are sooooooo insecure they have the need to put down in order to make them selves feel better.
the best thing to do is hold you head up high x

[harasgenster]

Anybody who calls anybody else ugly actually just hates themselves. Just think about it, most people don't get an urge to say that do they? Usually you don't notice if someone of the same sex is attractive or not because it doesn't come up and if they weren't good looking you wouldn't think anything of it. Someone who has consciously checked if someone is pretty or not and thought about it enough to mention it is hypersensitive to the idea of attractiveness and constantly rating everybody else because they're terrified they're ugly.

That's the way I've always seen it anyway. It happens a lot in secondary school. Teenagers are renowned for low self esteem as they try to get used to who they are. That's why you get so many cliques of people trying to be more popular than one another. They put each other down to make themselves feel superior, because inside they feel like a nobody. I've spoken to people who used to do that kind of thing now that they've grown up and grown out of it (and are ashamed of their actions!) They say the same thing - they mocked others because they didn't like themselves and they wanted other people to think they were superior to make up for the fact they felt bad about who they were.

When it comes to people laughing at you as you go by. They probably weren't. People who are anxious do this a lot - think people who are laughing are laughing at them when in fact there's no evidence to suggest it. I did it a lot as a teenager.

When you say what's it going to be like in ten years? The answer is: better. It tends to depend on what atmosphere people are growing up in but by the time I was 16 all the girls treated each other like adults. We were being treated like adults by the adults around us by then which probably forced us to mature. Can't say as much for the boys though!

I'm now 24 and the only people who act like you say above are pretty pathetic and everybody thinks so. Once you become an adult, at least in my experience, people who act like you have described become the joke.

Don't worry. Being a teenager is rubbish but most people will grow out of this kind of behaviour eventually. When I was a teenager I wasn't very popular. I liked punk music and dressed differently and I'd always been pretty eccentric. It really didn't bother me back then what people thought of me though because as far as I was concerned, all that mattered was that I was a good person. If I treated others as I would like to be treated that was the only thing that mattered. If others didn't seem to like me then, well I probably wouldn't like them, so why care? I didn't want to be friends with idiots.

I wish I still thought like that, but unfortunately I care whether people like me nowadays (even if I don't like them!), but the best advice I could give you as a teenager would be to try and remind yourself how much it doesn't matter what others think. If you know your a good person then anyone who gets at you or your friends is an idiot and you should see them as they are: pathetic.

Sound a bit harsh but it got me through my youth!