How many times have you, anxious to remedy a perplexing problem, encountered so many obstacles that you threw up your hands in defeat? And when you readied yourself for another chance to resolve it, how did it go?

Sad to say, like everyone else, you will confront situations that bedevil you because they turn out to be more complicated and difficult than you could have imagined.

Even when you believe you understand the matter in question well enough to deal with it successfully, all too often, it will begin to aggravate you.

It hardly matters whether the particular subject is political, cultural, religious, literary, or anything else: like your computer seemingly laughing at you for your futile efforts to implement something that worked just fine when you did it in the past.

Following are 12 methods that people frequently use to cope with adverse circumstances, which, given their assumptions and expectations, cause them considerable frustration.

I’ll start with the least helpful approaches so you can estimate how often you may unwittingly have defaulted to them.

Then, I’ll enumerate more positive ways of dealing with bothersome problems. That is, ways that likely would work better for you, especially because they avoid the various downsides of what in the moment might seem to work but later turn out to hurt you (and your relationships).

1. Anger and Aggression: I list this maladaptive track first because when people are frustrated, they feel out of control. Here, anger is an immediate, ready-made (pseudo-)solution for restoring control. You’re blaming another person for your burdensome feelings.

In so doing, you’re proclaiming that your frustration doesn’t have anything to do with your inadequacy or incompetence but theirs.

Plus, however short-lived, vengefully acting out against others provides you with a handy, self-confirming sense of interpersonal power. But—as in revenge begets revenge—such........

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