The Facts... without the Lecture
B4uDecide.ie is closing down at the end of May 2024.
Alternative sources of relationships and sexuality information and resources:
- For 16-25 year olds: SpunOut.ie is an information provision website, including relationships and sexuality issues.
- For 17+ year olds: Sexualwellbeing.ie is the HSE website that provides information and resources on a wide range of information such as consent, contraception, sexual transmitted infections, vaccinations and unplanned pregnancy
- For parents: The HSE’s ‘Making the ‘Big Talk’ many small talks’ series of booklets to help parents and children talk about relationships and sexuality is available online, and to order free of charge from healthpromotion.ie. HSE funded RSE workshops are available at npc.ie and ifpa.ie
- For teachers: Junior Cycle SPHE Resources are available to support the new 2023 SPHE specification , including the Relationship and Sexuality strand.
- For youthworkers: HSE funded training on relationship and sexuality issues is available at REAL U | Foroige and Tailored Training Courses – National Youth Council of Ireland
Types of Pressure
The first step to dealing with peer pressure is to understand it.
Check out the differences between spoken and unspoken pressures, and learn about How Peer Pressure Works.
Spoken Pressure
These are some things that people say when they are putting pressure on others.
- “What’s wrong with you? Are you stupid or something?” (putting them down)
- “If you don’t do this, we’re not friends anymore” (rejecting them as friends)
- “Everyone else is doing it and they think it’s fun” (giving reasons to do something)
Unspoken Pressure
Sometimes you might feel under pressure to do things even though no-one is telling you what to do.
If everyone in your group of friends is doing something, you might feel under pressure to copy them. This is unspoken pressure.
Stop & Think!
Rather than doing what everyone else is doing, think about if this is something that you want to do. If it’s not, you don’t have to do it. You can get out of there, or change groups. You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.