The Outside Voices

The voices, they’re everywhere — even when we don’t hear them, they exist somewhere far away from us with someone lashing out on men or women as a group.

We can’t escape them online or offline. They’ll always be those that’ll speak negatively or character assassinate us. In time, it can get easier to dismiss the outside voices for certain people. For others, it can be a real struggle not to take the negative voices personally.

Young men in particular can have a tough time blocking out the negative outside voices that speak ill will on them once they discover social media. Once the voices infiltrate a young man’s head, the non-stop battle mentally begins.

Even if the voices aren’t talking about him specifically, he begins to believe that they are. In some ways, the internet can be a curse if you end up getting lost in hate land.

Reading that kind of content can do tremendous damage to young men if they aren’t prepared for the harsh words that lurk on various sites.

This is why it’s imperative that young men (young women as well) get as much encouragement from those close to them to have a strong foundation they can turn to when the negative voices become too overwhelming to cope with.

If you’re a man, you had to learn the hard way that society doesn’t show much mercy towards us (besides our loved ones & friends/acquaintances). It can cause you to have a breakdown when that reality sinks in your mind.

This is why you so many angry & depressed young men all over the internet and in real life. The negative voices became too much for them to bear — and completely took over their minds. If they had a strong core group around them, the damage wouldn’t be so deep inside of them because they would have the support that reaffirms the good qualities about themselves.

This isn’t an easy problem to conquer. With so many different access to the voices, it can be tough to escape the negativity from others who have their grievance with one’s gender or race. The best thing we can do is to build a strong inner belief in ourselves and to have people who want nothing but the best for us.

Even with this, the voices will remain all around us. But, it can help make the outside voices have minimum impact on our self-esteem.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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Photo credit: Jason Rosewell on Unsplash