I’ve had many conversations with friends about how it feels when people in our lives project their opinions onto us and expect us to follow said opinion no matter what. We all have that friend who acts like the mother of the group, the one who tells you not to date that boy, or “are you sure you really want that third slice of pizza?" It takes a lot of guts to say no to that friend and go with your own thoughts. According to Forbes, “Studies have found that the longer people mull over big decisions, the less satisfied they are afterwards then they would have been had they spent less time deciding and simply gone with their gut.” The more people you ask to get opinions from for a big decision you have to make, the worse it is for you because you spend longer time on something that you could have figured out in the span of a few hours or a day.

I can speak from personal experience, as someone who has an anxiety disorder, that my anxiety never seems to pick the best moments to attack my body. This particular flare-up occurred the day that I moved into college for sophomore year this past month. On the outside, I came off as fine to everyone, though inside my body was going into panic and flight mode. It wasn’t until the next day I decided to show the emotion on the outside and seek guidance from close friends of mine. I noticed an interesting trend between these friends that I sought for comfort. The friends of mine who were female were completely sympathetic and telling me that my feelings were valid. While the guy friends that I spoke to were less sympathetic and blatantly told me to get over it and move on and I would be fine. Now I’m not trying to say that my friend’s opinions differed because of their gender because this was only a small percentage of friends I spoke too.

While I said my female friends were sympathetic, they were on the same team as the guy’s when I was trying to decide whether to fly home that weekend to get some clarity. Both groups told me that going home would make everything so much worse and it would be better if I just stuck it out and dealt with the feelings of misery and sadness on my own. This angered me to think that people were telling me that my feelings were invalid and that my mental health was just something that I could easily get over, like a headache or something. Since I was unsatisfied with my friends' opinions, I called home. My mom gave me advice that stuck with me. She said, never let someone else’s opinion on your life decide what you do, you are your own person and you decide what feels good for you no matter what. So I went with my gut, my feelings and her advice, and I flew home that weekend. It was one of the best decisions I have made because I was able to be in a clear and quiet environment where I could decipher my head-space for myself.

So I’ll leave you with this, as millennials whose identities are so defined by our social media accounts, we are constantly caught up with what everyone thinks of us. I feel like we never take the time to think for ourselves. Never stepping away from the group mindset, I mean I’ll admit I'm guilty of texting my best friend whenever I have an important life decision to make, but she’ll bluntly tell me that again it’s my life and my choice and I have to pick for myself. Part of this is definitely a lesson in growing up. Being in college you begin to depart from the mainstream thought process and begin to learn to think for yourself and make your own opinions and decisions for the good of yourself and no one else.