As a professional awkward person, you may think that I crumble at the sight of any embarrassing situation. Sometimes, I do, but that’s only because I’m human! Most of the time, however, I am more than experienced when it comes to dealing with embarrassing situations and getting out of them (mainly because I get into them too often). Heck, I might as well have a degree in it. Here are some steps you can take to get out of most awkward situations!

Physically walk away from the awkward situation

So your awkwardness got the best of you and you’ve done something horrendously embarrassing — in public. Oh, the horror! At this point, what do you do? Of course, the only option left at this point is to walk away. There’s no point in crawling up into a ball and questioning about how you’re allowed to be a part of society. Instead, doing something simple like physically walking away from an awkward situation will help you to move past it faster, and it’ll make you feel like you’re not prolonging the whole thing.

Find a place to be alone

Congratulations, you’ve physically walked away from the situation! After leaving the situation, you’re gonna need some time to be alone and think about what happened. With some milder awkward situations (like tripping up the stairs), this step isn’t necessary because you know it’s not gonna mentally scar you, and you can see yourself moving past it. But with some things like fighting with a loved one or sobbing loudly in public, it’s very much needed. You should be alone so then you can try to gather your thoughts in a place where you’re not worried about having another awkward moment.

Inspect the damage done

Now that you’re alone, check for the physical/mental/emotional damage that has been done during this situation. How do you physically look right now? Do you have any cuts or bruises? Are you sweating a lot? Is your hair a mess? Noticing and fixing small problems like this will make you feel like you have control over your situation and it’ll help you to divert your attention away from it. If you physically look ok, use your alone time to think about how you feel. If you just got out of a more serious awkward moment, and now it’s an emotional problem you’re having, think about how you want to address the situation and try to reason out your thinking. Don’t attempt to talk to the person you’re having an issue with. If you feel that you can’t do that, give yourself the time to just veg out and think about nothing. Just sit there and stare. You’d be surprised how much that calms you down.

Get back out there!

Once you feel like a semi-composed human, it’s time to return to the outside world. Sure it’s comfortable just being alone, but there’s no way that you’re gonna function normally if you just continue to sit there. The best way to get past an awkward situation is just to keep moving away from it. Constant movement and activity help you to become distracted from what happened, and it helps the situation to become less scarring. It will feel weird trying to integrate back into society, but it will also help you to regain the sense of being normal again.

Think about the fact that literally everyone has awkward moments

Yes, believe it or not, everyone (including Beyonce!!) has been involved in at least one awkward situation (that whole elevator situation at the Met Gala was pretty unsettling, right?). One thing to think about is that just about everyone will empathize with you whenever they see you having an awkward situation. You may feel that awkward situations happen rarely, but to be quite honest, you’ve probably seen a multitude of awkward situations happening in a span of one day. A lot of people understand how it is to be an embarrassing mess of a human because they’re the exact same way!! There is not one person on the earth who will say that they’ve never experienced an awkward moment (the people who say this are clearly liars — and that’s pretty awkward in itself). Find comfort in the fact that everyone knows the strange, stifling feelings of being trapped in an awkward situation. It makes it just a bit more bearable.

(P.S if Steve Harvey continues to live after the awkwardness of Miss Universe, you can survive too.)