This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.Jeff Troesch is a mental performance coach who has worked across college sports, with individual athletes and MLB teams. He is the author of the book “One Day Better.”When I first started as a consultant in sport psychology almost 40 years ago, the world of mental performance training was in a nascent state. I encountered a great deal of skepticism from athletes:“I don’t need your help — I’m not crazy.”“That’s all voodoo and snake oil.”“What does this have to do with catching a football?”These days, the general attitude is vastly different. The field of professionals has grown dramatically, and athletes and coaches are openly accepting, seeking and embracing mental skills. But in the last 10 years or so, the effect of social media and smartphones on mental performance has emerged as the most disruptive change I’ve witnessed over my four decades in sports.In my work, I have the opportunity to get the truth from athletes’ experiences. Today I spend an inordinate amount of time in my sessions helping athletes manage the fallout from online trolling, the sense that they have “got to post” regularly to “stay relevant,” and the habits of staying hypervigilant about what their competition might look like, train like or generally experience.A great number of these athletes then translate this information into narratives they find anxiety-inducing:“She looks fitter than me.”“He’s getting the endorsements that I feel I should be getting.”“Maybe I need to change to the equipment she’s using.”“I thought I had done well yesterday, but given what I now see that she did, maybe what I did wasn’t so good.”“So many people were making comments about my body.”All of that stuff used to be behind closed doors; players didn’t have access to it so easily. Now it’s everywhere.