It is a human need to socialize and belong to a community. The community then dictates the culture and norms of its people. As an individual, you have your own sets of values and beliefs, which may or may not be aligned with the values and beliefs of your community. When your individual values are aligned with those of your community’s, you meet with the approval of your peers and feel comfortable with your decisions and choices.

The problem arises when your individual beliefs conflict with those of the community’s. Depending on the extent of the conflict, you may feel like you’re different, misunderstood or even an outcast. These are the situations in which the burden of “peer pressure” is felt. Peer pressure is nothing more than the unwritten rule of conformity that any community demands from its members. While trying to resolve these conflicts, do you compromise on your own values to appease your peers or do you stand firm and stick to your values, despite the reaction of your peers.

One thing that comes into play during this whole debate is how strong your values are in the first place. Do you care enough about them to feel them strongly, voice them and own them even in the face of opposition? Where are these values even coming from? Are they a product of your upbringing? Are they faith based? Have they been formed after a lot of thinking and deliberation over the years and have become a passion or even an important cause for you? All these questions are important because you can only fight peer pressure when you have something worth fighting for.

Once you figure out how important your values are and why they mean so much to you, you can try to work out how to deal with peer pressure. To do anything that’s different from the majority, one needs to be prepared to deal with criticism and a feeling of not being understood and sometimes even accepted.

To be able to do this you have to have the strength to oppose, wisdom to do so in the best possible manner and acceptance of the fact that despite your best efforts to explain, not everyone will agree with your ideas or like them. You have to realize that just like you don’t agree with other people’s ideas sometimes, it’s perfectly fine for them to not agree with yours. What does matter is that YOU like your ideas; you feel strongly about them and are willing to stand up for them. Conformity is what makes a society but distinctive values are what make an individual stand out in a society.

Dr. Madiha Khan,

MD (USA) General Adult Psychiatrist