In the last year since my activity giving talks on Emotional Education, secondary schools have called on me to speak to adolescents in order to provide them with tools to improve emotional skills to feel emotionally good, improve coexistence and find a purpose in life, although these talks are pedagogical triggers of how we work from our thoughts, emotions and how we can establish strategies to live fully. In this task I have been able to share moments with more than five thousand adolescents, in these talks I present a list of forty emotional states and I propose that they choose which one they want to talk about, as a common denominator they always ask to talk about frustration, they ask to talk about this, first and important point and the second point that we adults who live with them also notice that they have little tolerance for frustration.
From what I see, it is imperative to be able to understand these behaviors, which continue to be called to the attention of the adults who have the task of educating and teaching, for which reason it involves parents, teachers, and state agents who have decision-making power in the educational field.
First of all, we must put into context the variety of daily life challenges that adolescents face, such as:
Physical and hormonal changes that can be difficult to manage.
Social pressure to fit in and be accepted by your peers
Concerns about the future, such as choosing a career and college
Not having a life purpose.
Family conflicts and difficulties in communicating with parents.
Family mandates.
Academic stress and the pressure to keep up good grades.
Exposure to technology and social media, which can lead to issues like cyber bullying and screen addiction.
Faced with these challenges that they face in this stage of life, it is necessary to consider that in childhood it is not good to “overprotection” since it leads them not to assume responsibilities, to have low self-esteem, they are not able to act on their own, feel insecure, they run away from problems instead of facing them, they find it difficult to make decisions, lack of autonomy, fear of socializing. Overprotection in childhood would be blocking the necessary frustrations to face adolescence with greater emotional security.
For them, adolescents, frustration is synonymous with failure, that they cannot, they have to abandon; For these biased assessments, it is necessary to know and explain that frustration is part of the emotional pyramid at the same level as the games (when we play and lose we get frustrated, that’s why the game is so necessary) and the boundaries (when we set limits for children we generate frustration, also necessary). Since we are born we have experienced bouts of frustration, which forge our personality. What frustrates us is what keeps us wanting to do things to achieve what we want. The most current example that they know is that “Lionel Messi” lost four World Cups until winning one, where the key was not to give up in the face of so much pressure for “not winning” and like this example taken by the well-known there are thousands where we can see acts of perseverance, not giving up until the goal is achieved, not achieving it puts us in the obligation to change or improve the strategy or simply try again.
“Imagine how good it will be when I achieve it”
Teenage frustration can manifest itself in different ways, such as anger, sadness, irritability, isolation, etc. It can be caused by various factors (in addition to those already mentioned), such as family, school, social or emotional problems, lack of control over your life, difficulty making important decisions, among others. It is important that adolescents have a safe environment, a supportive environment, tools to manage their emotions, good emotional support to deal with these feelings, to overcome frustration and not to give up at the first obstacle.
Frustration and failure are two different but related concepts. Frustration is an emotion that is experienced when facing an obstacle or difficulty that prevents reaching the desired objective, and here the need to have emotional resources appears so that the frustration does not turn into failure. For this reason, we must teach that making a mistake, an error, not reaching an objective is not a failure but a frustration that gives us the energy to try again; frustration is a temporary emotion that can be overcome by trying again, finding new ways to approach the problem; failure can be a permanent experience due to not being emotionally contained and sinking into depressive states.
“The biggest failure is never having tried”
In this brief description of the difficulties that our adolescents face, I have tried to explain the context and origin of adolescent frustration in order to understand the need to provide them with the emotional tools for a happy life, where facing challenges does not prevent them from achieving their life purposes.
Dear Readers, I say goodbye until the next installment.
Embrace of Peace
Mr. Calos Sigvardt
Contacts:
+543434474651
[email protected]
Instagram.com/carlos_sigvardt
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by CEDOC