Re: Psychological Pressure/Abuse

[lawtonj@project4.computer-science.manchester.ac.uk (Kaleidoscope)]

In <5q0XBB1w164w@bsbbs.UUCP> mdc@bsbbs.UUCP (Melissa D. Caldwell) writes:

>I just don't buy the argument that I can be harmed by someone else 
>exerting this so called psychological pressure on me.  It cannot hurt me 
>if I do not allow it to.  I am nobody's victim.

To which I might point out, you are therefore the victim of your own strength.
I've met many people who refuse to respond to 'pressures' put on them, creating
a strong persona, and removing themselves from things like emotional involvement
for fear of losing `control`. the key words are 'if I do not allow it to'. When
do you choose to turn on & off your filtering, and is it always possible?
While you yourself can distance yourself from such psychological pressures,
there are others who have not developed the strength & self-will that you have,
who have maybe been brought up or conditioned to not resist these pressures.
As an example I can think of people from Catholic & Jehova's Witness families,
where unless you consider hell as 'implicit violence' (I consider it a
psychological threat that you've conditioned someone to believe in) they have
become total victims of psychological pressure, to the extent that I had a close
friend crying to me, because she couldn't have sex with her fiance despite the
fact they'd been in love for nearly a year, and wanting to do so, because she
wasn't married, and her family wouldn't let her get married (even though she
is legally old enough to do so of her own free will, the pressure exists). My
advice was for her to question her religion, and I don't know what's going on,
but I expect she's at least a lapsed Catholic.
The point is she had been conditioned into believing these values, and that to
even question them was wrong.
I have been conditioned into questioning my beliefs, and those of my parents, by
my parents. It makes life easier when you have a head start.

>> IMHO, what Larry said was neither disgusting nor sexist, nor was he wrong.

>Bully for you.  In your mind, and apparently in Larry's, it is possible
>to be psychologically pressured.  I refuse to let anyone pressure me in to
>doing something I don't want to do.  We all have flaws in our character, 
>but giving in to peer/psychological pressure is not one of mine. 

I can certainly filter out pressure from people who obviously hate or dislike me
but pressures from people who I have friendship are another matter. Or are you
totally impossible to get on with?
And are you sure you never give in to peer pressure? I'd like to think that I
don't either, yet if I take a second look at myself, the music I like, the 
clothes I wear, I have to admit the influence of my friends, both positively &
negatively....


> Melissa Caldwell               
> mdc@bsbbs.UUCP

Julian Lawton - "There is no such thing as good music in a vacuum,
                 only good listeners" - Everett True, 1991