Why Judge Me?

[slayinsummer]

I'm part of a group of friends that I think don't like me and judge me, they sometimes avoid me and I think they are talking behind my back. With recently starting high school, I'm struggling to find my place in the school where I belong. I'm starting to get real tired of it because I thought I had a really good friend before she went behind my back, it's hard to know when the right people come along. I also think the friends I have recently made, talk behind my back and when I try to do stuff with them, they either walk away sometimes or pretend I'm not there. I'm slowly starting to realise that I have to put in effort to make new friends and build a stronger relationship but I want them to do that to. I feel like they just put up with me and I'm not forcing them to do anything. I'm going to start some out of school activities to try and make new friends because then I will feel and see the effort I'm going to put in and I think more people will start to like me when I do it and hopefully I will see results. I don't want to put to much effort in because I know life isn't about being popular but being who you truly are and don't let peoples judgement change that. Many times I have found out that I wasn't included in activities with my friend group and just makes me feel down and question whether I'm good enough or not. But I think that if I find the right people to connect with life will be better and I will form stronger relationships with my family and newly made friends. I just think that if I put in the effort and people out there put in the effort then we could connect more easily and things will slowly start to get better if I just put the effort in and try.

[MsPurple]

Hi slayinsummer

You sound like you have some great idea of expanding your number of friends like out of school activities etc. I made lots of friends playing netball (may didn't go to my school). Starting an after school activity sounds like a great idea.

You friends sound like they are not being very nice to you. I am not sure if they notice what they are doing and how hurtful it is. It is something no one should have to deal with. I myself had to deal with it as well. I ended up moving schools (due to education reasons and location reasons) and I made a new group of friends. Maybe you could also mingle with other groups of people at your school.

If you ever want some support outside of the forums there is a youth mental health service called headspace. (www.headspace.org.au). You can see if there is a local centre near you. There is also online services

[Kkgirl]

hi slayinsummer,

i'm gonna go really deep here, but I too experienced similar when starting out high school, with struggling to feel like I belonged or had a group of friends that valued me. Looking back i realised that people change and groups changed all the time, and it took a couple of years for everyone to settle into their own groups.

By about year 9 I became close to a group of friends where I finally felt I fit in. At the start, i was excluded and left out, but over time we formed bonds and they started to like me. But even since then, throughout the years of high school, there have been fights, hatred, people leaving, new people coming in, and all the stuff which is natural for high school friendship groups. And unfortunately, sometimes you're the target, which is what happened to me, at then very end of high school, where the group of girls I loved so much suddenly turned against me for reasons I still don't know.

You don't deserve the way these friends are treating you. Maybe you could try approaching them about it, without being too pushy? Or try organising some gatherings and see if they're happy to join you? If their response isn't too great, then thats okay, over time you will find a group of people that love you for who you are once everyone matures, and good on you for trying to form friends through out of school activities!

From experience, over the highschool years things change a lot as people mature. You will find friends that you will be happy with, whether that lasts a year, 5 years or forever. Just continue to be yourself, and I hope that what happened to me doesn't happen to you, especially in your senior years, but be prepared that things might change and the unexpected might happen, and the best you can do in those situations is acknowledge and cherish the memories with these friends and look forward to making a new bunch of friends. Don't worry, things WILL eventually fall into place!

Also, if these feelings about what people might be thinking of you are overwhelming, they may be symptoms of anxiety, which sometimes blows things out of proportion, and if you think this is the case, then i echo on MsPurple's words of visiting a headspace centre.

Hope this helped and wishing you all the best !!