When emotions are engaged in a problem it can add too much emphasis to the problem triggering feelings of confusion. Learning to take the significance out can help you get the objectivity you need to get a clear perspective on the problem. 

One way to do this is to imagine for a moment it is someone else's problem. Step back, look at it objectively, and ask yourself what advice you would give to them. Then apply it to yourself.

Manage your frustration and anger:

If you're starting to fume with frustration or anger shift your attention to the feeling of appreciation. Appreciate someone or something in your life that means a lot to you. 

Taking a moment to engage the heart and focus on something you appreciate helps you to realign with a more coherent heart state.

From here you are much more inclined to see things more clearly and make better choices on how to handle a situation.

Remember what is important to you. Focus on your heart and ponder or reflect on what your deeper core values are. What is your aim? 

Each of us can find qualities in ourselves, in our lives, or in others that we admire. Focus on these qualities - follow your heart and stay on track with the things that generate good feelings about ourselves and our choices.

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The marks on the her back.. were caused by an ancient form of alternative medicine called cupping..

a form of acupuncture, [which] involves heated glass jars being placed on the skin to create a vacuum. ...

Miss Paltrow.. is known to be a fan of alternative therapies. ...

She once said that having acupuncture had guided her to a "new level" in life, helping her to find love with [Chris] Martin and giving her the strength to cope with the death of her father last year.

She has also taken up yoga and gave birth at a hospital known for its holistic and natural birthing techniques.

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One bad thing about this tag, this classification of manic depression, is anytime anyone doesn't like how you're coming across, they can just say, "You're taking your meds, right?" It's like constantly saying, "You're having your period, right?" 

I think I'm very sane about how crazy I am.

    [How would you describe your life now?]

[Dryly] Just a cavalcade of fun [laughs]. I'm much more responsible, and I understand something better, which is that after 32 years of off-and-on engaging in what in psychiatry is called "the talking-through," I don't think that's an ideal solution for what I have. I do think being of service is.

The one thing that I wanted to do was write about stuff that is ordinarily painful in a way that's funny. 

Most of the books I read about the mentally ill were very intense, and it is intense. I just wanted to give some of it a lighter thing. 

Being left for a man, that gets to be funny too. The worst thing that ever happened to me was losing my sense of humor in this. 

And the best thing was getting it back.

from article Sex, drugs, gay men, and Carrie Fisher - The unsinkable actress-author, whose gay superagent husband left her for another man, talks about getting it all down on paper in her funny and forgiving new novel - By Dennis Hensley, The Advocate, February 3, 2004

It is more an educational method for outgrowing our self-imposed limitations. Through Moritist methods we learn to accept the naturalness of ourselves.

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This doesn't make sense to her. Like most of us, she's been taught to avoid unpleasant feelings. 

Our culture is extremely pain averse, and we don't look at pain as a necessary part of life.

There is no such thing as a deep emotional attachment in which we don't feel pain or anxiety at one point or another. 

It's part of living. It's part of loving. Remove these emotions and you remove the intimacy.

We only see these feelings as something to be gotten rid of. Since we are never told about the value of pain, we, being human, simply look for ways to avoid or eliminate it.

Yet as we will see, difficult emotions enrich our lives in ways that we can't imagine. The path to getting what we want out of life runs right through all these messy, painful feelings. 

Trying to avoid them actually leads us astray. Feeling anger or rage or hate or frustration doesn't make us abnormal or sick or wrong or broken, it makes us real.

excerpt [from msnbc page] from book Becoming Real : Overcoming the Stories We Tell Ourselves That Hold Us Back - by Gail Saltz

Gail Saltz, M.D. is assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell School of Medicine. She appears every other week on the Today show and has a monthly column in Glamour magazine. Dr. Saltz practices psychiatry in New York City. [Amazon.com bio]

photo of Dr. Saltz from her site drgailsaltz.com

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. 

Mind Reading : Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling : You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or, "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or, "I feel angry. This proves that I'm being treated unfairly." Or, "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second rate person." Or, "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless." 

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

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9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. 

You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. 

When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. 

When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: 

"The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable." Blame usually doesn't work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato--no one wants to get stuck with it. 

I still use humor all the time in my life, but I realize now that I was using it sometimes as a way of dealing with sadness and anger. 

I think actually I was attracted to angry men for a long time because they were acting out the anger that I wished I could. I got to be angry vicariously through them. 

Now I use a lot of physical activity to deal with anger and emotion, some visualization, meditation, walks, all those things. I've certainly dealt with a lot of things over the years, but now I'm using humor more honestly. And I still laugh a lot. Everyday. ...

It turns out that creativity and anxiety travel the same road together. The everyday creative person pays special attention to anxiety. 

She understands that she must write her songs against a backdrop of anxiety, and that because of anxiety she may be tempted by tranquilizing drugs. 

She understands that her inability to write her novel and her anxiety about writing a bad novel are somehow intertwined, and that if she could just calmly say yes to the book it might spill right out. ...

Because he's anxious that his not-yet-written opera will receive hoots and catcalls at its first (and last) performance, he doesn't write it. 

An everyday creative person learns... it's possible to be anxious and calm simultaneously. ... anxiety is very much with us; but so is the calmness that comes with deliberate doing. .Eric Maisel, PhD - from The Creativity Book

You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.

"I was really, really tired, but I couldn't sleep. I was convinced I was having a nervous breakdown, so I checked myself into a hospital," recalls Ryder. ... 

"The public thinks actors aren't allowed to be depressed because we're sickeningly well-paid, get amazing perks and live charmed lives. What the public doesn't see is the ugly side of our lives and that's the stuff that breaks us down. 

"I had broken up with my first real love and there were huge pressures from my career. I needed desperately to take stock of my life and for that I needed to sleep. I thought I could get that at a hospital." 

Ryder lasted five days before she checked herself out. "In the back of my mind I was hoping they could give me a pill that would take all the bad things away. When I realized I was the only person who could do that for me, I left." ... 

"Because life is weird and messy doesn't mean I have to be miserable. Knowing this has gotten me through a lot of demons and darkness that tried to enter my life." ... 

Two years after her ordeal, Ryder's father.. gave her the galleys for a new book called Girl, Interrupted. It was Susan Kaysen's.. recollections of the two years she spent in a mental institution... 

"Susan's book spoke to me on a very personal level," said Ryder. "She articulated feelings I hadn't been able to."

Calgary Sun, January 9, 2000

And yet they belong to a teaching that is as old as Western civilization. I learned them as people have always learned them-as you can, too-not from books or scientific experiments but from a disciplined practice of listening to the soul. 

        Elio Frattaroli, MD