“Anger can destroy marriages, business partnerships and countries,” said Joe Shrand, M.D., an instructor at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the valuable, practical and science-based book Outsmarting Anger: 7 Strategies for Defusing Our Most Dangerous Emotion with Leigh Devine, MS.

Fortunately, each of us holds the power to defuse our own anger and even others,’ Dr. Shrand said. This is especially critical because often it’s not our own fuse that hinders our success; it’s someone else’s, he said.

The key in cooling anger lies in respect. As Dr. Shrand said, when was the last time you got angry with someone who showed you respect?

“Anger is designed to change the behavior of someone else. Being respected feels great, so why would we want to change that?”

Being a highly sensitive person (HSP) can feel overwhelming.

Being an HSP in a big, boisterous city can feel utterly unbearable. That’s because HSPs have a hard time screening out stimuli. Specifically, the problem lies in artificial stimulation, according to Ted Zeff, Ph.D, a psychologist and author of three books on HSPs, including The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide and his newest book Raise an Emotionally Healthy Boy.

All sights, sounds and smells aren’t created equal. Compare a big city’s bright lights, big crowds, honking horns, pollution and bumper-to-bumper traffic with a smaller town’s hiking trails, chirping birds, ocean waves and scents of freshly cut grass.

It’s very hard to function when grating stimuli assault your senses, and you’re in a constant state of overwhelm. One of Zeff’s students told him that at times she felt like she was “walking around with no skin, like a sponge absorbing everything that comes her way.” Over time, this can affect your emotional and physical health, such as spiking your blood pressure, Zeff said.

Your boss calls you in to her office to complain about something you overlooked in a project you just completed. You’re off the project. It feels like all of the hard work and effort evaporated with just that one problem.

Or your professor asks to speak to you after class for a moment. He suggests that maybe you’re not really cut out for the major you’ve chosen in college, and hints that maybe another major would suit you better.

Your boyfriend calls and says that you and he need to talk. He’s breaking up with you, after what you thought were two pretty good years together. Sure, you fought from time to time, but what couple doesn’t argue?

We all have times when we find it difficult to avoid making too much of our mistakes and perceived failures. But how do you not take rejection personally? How do you not feel like your world is crashing down around you?

Below are seven ways to avoid personalizing errors and rejection.

Like the flu, work stress has become epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that up to 40 percent of Americans rate their job stress as extremely high. The damage isn’t just emotional, however. Chronic stress debilitates the body and lowers resistance to disease. Fortunately, you can take simple steps to relax and beat the grind.

When Stress Works Overtime

Physiologically, working under constant stress is like racing your car’s engine with the parking brake on. Parts start wearing out. Integrative medicine expert Dr. Andrew Weil notes that while our minds have embraced modern life, our bodies haven’t changed much in ten thousand years. They are not designed for long, sedentary hours facing chronic anxiety.

A major culprit is the hormone cortisol. Cortisol plays a crucial role in the fight-or-flight response, arming us with short-term energy, enhanced memory and pain tolerance. However, extended stress triggers chronically elevated levels that lead to health problems. Common effects are insomnia, depression, poor memory, and lowered immunity. Longer term, cortisol overload contributes to heart disease, cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Every college student and high school student believes he or she has honed a set of highly effective, useful study skills. I used re-reading, lots of summarizing, note-taking (and outlining), and taking the little tests you would often find at the end of a chapter to help me remember the material I just read.

Nobody taught me how to study this way. It was just something I did through trial and error in trying and discarding multiple techniques. For instance, I tried highlighting, but it did little for me.

Of course, psychologists and other scientists have been testing effective study techniques now for decades. Being far more clever than I, they’ve actually run such techniques through the research ringer, and have come out with some effective study strategies.

Just last month, another group of researchers decided to take a look at all of that research, and boil down what we know about the most effective methods for studying. Here’s what they found.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can take a heavy toll on women’s lives. Everything from the seemingly minute (such as arriving on time) to the very significant (raising kids) becomes more challenging. Add to that a co-occurring disorder, such as depression or anxiety, and just getting through the day is utterly exhausting.

But while ADHD comes with a variety of obstacles, there are just as many solutions to help you manage symptoms and lead a satisfying life.

Terry Matlen, ACSW, is a psychotherapist and author of the book Survival Tips for Women with ADHD.

Matlen also has ADHD. Below, she discusses the most common problems, along with strategies to try.

Even today, between work and home, women have a lot to juggle. “Though in recent years, men have been more hands-on with household and childcare responsibilities, the bulk of the work still, for many, lands on the woman’s shoulders,” said Terry Matlen, ACSW, a psychotherapist and author of Survival Tips for Women with ADHD.

Whether you have kids or not, balancing a slew of commitments can get overwhelming for women with ADHD, said Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D, a psychotherapist and author of several books on ADHD, including 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD. That’s because the nature of ADHD makes it tougher to prioritize and schedule, she said.

And, unfortunately, it’s common for women with ADHD to beat themselves up for not getting things done. Many women feel incapable and struggle with low self-esteem, Matlen said. “Women with ADHD are well aware of their shortcomings, but often they don’t understand [them] in the context of their ADHD brain.”

Here, Matlen and Sarkis, who both have ADHD, offer their tips for coping with overwhelm when you have the disorder.

When someone famous — in this case, a technologist — takes their own life, a lot of hand-wringing and second-guessing occurs. It’s called survivor guilt, and virtually anyone who’s ever known someone who’s died by suicide has gone through it.

“Why didn’t I see the signs?”

“Why didn’t I just listen more?”

“Why didn’t I just reach out and ask him if he needed some help?”

The list of unanswerable questions is never-ending.

But here’s the thing — you can’t always see suicidal intent. You can review all the checklists and warning signs in the world, but if a suicidal person is clever and dedicated enough to his or her goal, you’ll never see it coming.

Because feeling suicidal isn’t the same as when someone cries when they’ve physically hurt themselves. The crying, if done at all, is done on the inside — far removed from everyday life.

As a writer for the web, I’m well acquainted with information overload. One bit of information leads to five facts, which leads to three articles, which leads to an interesting interview you must listen to right now, which leads to 10 pages in your browser.

I’ve always loved the scavenger hunt research requires. Every clue leads to another. Every clue uncovered is a prize in itself: learning something new and interesting and getting one step closer to the carrot (such as the answer to your original question).

But there’s always one more thing to look up, learn and digest.

Whether your livelihood lives online — like mine — or not, you probably use the Web quite a bit. The Internet makes research a breeze. Want to know what triggered the World Wars or how the states got their shapes? Want to know how to bake a tasty tilapia or buy a reliable used car?

Information is merely a click — or, more accurately, a Google search — away. Depending on your query, there’s likely at least a dozen, if not hundreds, of blogs on the topic, a similar number of books and many more articles.

This is a good thing, but it also can overburden our brains.

We all face difficult times at some point in our lives. Sometimes, adversity comes in waves, with one hardship or misfortune following another. These times can change our lives and challenge our beliefs about the world.

What makes for adversity is different for each person. For example, while one person might see the loss of a job as an opportunity, many (if not most) would find it stressful.

These life-changing situations often happen when we experience a death, job loss, serious illness or other traumatic events.

How you act when faced with setbacks and hardships can be as unique as you are.  But according to the American Psychological Association (APA), what you have in common with anyone else facing adversity is “a flood of strong emotions and a sense of uncertainty.”

So how do we overcome adversity?

For most of us the weekend is a respite from our day jobs. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily relaxing. In fact, for many of us, come Monday, we’re fatigued and frustrated — and we’ve yet to enter the office.

As author and blogger Laura Vanderkam writes in her latest e-book What Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off, “These days disappear into chores, errands, inefficient e-mail checking, unconsciously chosen television marathons, or a death march of children’s activities that suck the energy out of chauffeuring adults.”

Sound familiar? All of the above can feel like a litany of non-negotiable activities. Even if TV watching is relaxing to you, hours spent vegging out on the couch is rarely that restorative.

With so many apps on the market, it’s hard to know which are useful.

Many are designed by software developers instead of psychologists, without scientific testing. They range from beneficial, to harmless but useless, to bordering on fraudulent.

The apps selected for this list make no hucksterish claims and are based on established treatments. Progressive Muscle Relaxation, for example, has been used for a century and is likely just as effective in this new medium. Knowledge from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy enrich two apps on this list. Others mix solid information with ingenuity.