More than ever, the issue of managing emotions is topical. In sport, of course, but also — and above all — in everyday life. As a mental performance coach, I see every day how frustration has become unbearable for many young people.
This observation is chilling: the slightest annoyance, the smallest gap between expectation and reality, can trigger violent, disproportionate, even destructive reactions.
In this first part I will share my observations, give voice to the “ills” to better understand what makes frustration so hard to tolerate today. This awareness is essential, because it underpins any progress. Five major areas structure this diagnosis.
🗣️ The impoverishment of language: S.E.U.M. as a symptom
The word “seum” has replaced a whole lexical field. Sadness, disappointment, anger, distress: all are reduced to this invented, nuance-free catchall. When vocabulary is missing, thought is impoverished. And without words to express feelings, only actions remain to react. An emotional explosion becomes the only pressure-release valve.
This lack of language harms not only communication with others: it also prevents inner dialogue and self-understanding. We no longer understand ourselves, so we endure, we explode, we self-destruct. And without the ability to nuance feelings, everything becomes absolute, everything becomes urgent. Frustration then ceases to be a passage. It becomes a breaking point.
📱 The screen: a deceptive mirror and mental poison
The screen is everywhere. It began as a communication tool. It has become a pause, an activity platform, a relational bubble, an arena for emotional drift. The phone is no longer an object: it's a continuum.
But this world is biased. It offers what the algorithm thinks we want to see, not what a fuller, more complex reality can be. The mind closes, thinking withers, patience dissolves. Endless scrolling sustains stimulation without downtime, killing the boredom that is nevertheless necessary for psychological development.
And more, it trains the mind for immediacy. Everything must arrive instantly, with no waiting, no delay, no effort. The algorithm anticipates our desires before they are even formed. Frustration becomes a bug in an apparently seamless system.
👨👩👧👦 The screen-saturated family: no one looks at each other anymore
If a child spends so much time on their screen, it’s often because the parent is on theirs too. Busy, overwhelmed, also discharging their own frustrations through social media or videos, they are no longer available. Thus, nobody really talks anymore.
It's an explosive mix: without presence, without words, without shared experience, the child is left alone with their emotion. They endure it, they amplify it. And they have no living model to learn how to contain it. The child sees that the adult cannot resist the call of the screen. They don't judge them, but they imitate them.
⚠️ Adult abdication: everyone equal?
Modern society turns every individual into a consumer. The child becomes a client, a mini-adult. Rights are levelled, duties too. Parents no longer dare set boundaries, for fear of seeming authoritarian or being judged.
Yet, it is boundaries that prove love. The absence of boundaries is abandonment. A child without structuring authority feels alone, exposed. They panic. They shout. They lash out. They suffer.
🌳 The collapse of role models
Who today embodies patience? Who shows self-control? Where are the figures of temperance, the mental tutors like the stakes that support young saplings? Our mental ecosystem is fragile. It needs supports, landmarks, stable figures.
Without embodied role models, the child is condemned to raw experience, without transmission. And frustration becomes a wall they keep banging into. The adult is no longer there to protect, to carry, to hold firm.
Fed by the feed, they grow hungry for the real. A book opens and invites escape. A screen reduces the world to the self. One expands, the other confines.
I share this observation as a mental performance professional because it is urgent and essential to help anyone understand the world around them and to better take care of themselves and their mental wellbeing. Raise your awareness.
Very soon I will share practical tips that help our young people, athletes or not, live with and manage this frustration better. I believe it is imperative to relearn that frustration is just one emotion among many.
Living is not following the feed like a sheep… it’s about building your own path, moving forward, thinking, and giving yourself permission to feel.