“Did you see what he’s wearing? He looks like a clown””Why are you talking to her? Nobody even likes her””Did you see she went with him in lunch break, are they a thing?” These remarks are heard and said by all of us on a daily basis however are taken lightly. Though they may seem to be run-of-the-mill chatter but they have a deeper and severe psychological impact on the person whose being targeted. Relational aggression is used by friends or peer groups to bring the victim’s social status down or ruin their relationships with others. It is a mix of gossiping, spreading rumours or taking pranks too far. At school, all of us feel like we’re in a competition and it is essential to stay at the top. This leaderboard takes into account the number of parties one goes to, the number of friends one has or the clothes one wears, but rarely studies, arts, music or sports. Relational aggression usually starts as harmless banter but gradually leads to self doubt and one subconsciously starts believing what their labels reduce them to. From having friends tell me,”I don’t want you to come to my birthday party” when I was a toddler, to being made fun of for not being popular enough, to being controlled on who I can talk to and what I can do. The roots of this aggression, this bullying that gradually can lead to serious damage are vested in our own homes. Being told by your parents that they are disappointed in you, being told that you always create a fuss for no absolute reason, and being called a “spoilt child who is grateful for nothing”. What starts in our homes as a way of parenting in turn educates us that the best way to hurt someone, to make someone feel pain, is to exclude them, is to talk badly of them and to give them the silent treatment. We all, everyday experience some drama, some “really, she did that” moment, some rejection, some exclusion, but it is in our hands on how to deal with it. When feelings of exclusion, distrust and subconscious manipulation occur repeatedly, they can cause irreversible damage to a person’s personality and character. A person may start feeling anxious, detached from their own self and under confident. They may stop having ideas of their own and become dependant on their friend groups even for the smallest of things. It may also lead to insecurity and not feeling comfortable in your own skin. This situation can have two possible solutions. One, when the people in question, don’t let the opinions of the others get in their heads and disregard whatever is said about them, and move on. Nonetheless, this is hard even for the strongest people. The other relates to the fact that even though commenting on someone may seem better than hitting them, words can cause the deepest of pain. When faced with comments or gossip that causes damage to your relationships, messes with the trust you and your friends have created and leads you question who you are, the most common way to deal with it, is tit for tat. However, as Michelle Obama once said, when they go low, we go high. We need to rise above it all, we need to believe that the best thing we as individuals can do is be the bigger person. Along with this, we need to consider this sort of aggression as severe as physical aggression and be careful of its signs.
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