There I was, watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and realizing that not only my two-year old needed to learn how to deal with anger, I did. Yes, I needed to count to four and breathe deeply because the associate in Target could not explain what she meant by “hard or soft item”. And don’t get me started on the lady who was going to charge me $12 so my six-month old could enter a museum, in which she would literally be in a stroller and sucking her toe the whole time.

1…2…3…4. Breathe Jo.

As an adult, no one teaches you how to respond. We all know how to react, but what’s the right way to respond? It’s easy to teach a child how do deal with candy being taken away, but how do you teach a grown woman how to get over someone cutting you off on the freeway, disrespect in your family, sexism at work, ignorance on social media?

I think it involves emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ). Not so basically put, your self awareness and ability to understand others’ emotions navigates your thinking and actions. It’s adapting your responses. It requires you to perceive, use and manage emotions, both yours and others. So…handle your crazy.

For me, it’s almost like I don’t act like myself. You see, acting myself would be to judge, get irritated, become sarcastic and try to hurt the other person with cutting words so they can see the error in their ways. So how is that working for me? Well, it’s not. And it’s probably not working for you too.

So how do we do this? I DON’T KNOW. At least, not exactly for you. For me, it’s:

1. Be quiet, or you’ll say something stupid or something you’ll regret.
2. Notice my own feelings. Do I feel misunderstood? Undervalued? Disrespected?
3. See their point of view. Why are they doing this?
4. Pick a response that you would deem appropriate. I have key phrases that I use, “Agree to disagree?”, “I feel like…”, “Let me make sure I’m understanding you…” “Let’s table this to a better time when we’re both able to talk about it” or sometimes it requires me to say nothing at all and to just give grace. SO. HARD.

Wow, that seems too long. Let me condense it:

1. Stop.
2. Understand yourself and the situation.
3. Respond like Tami Taylor.

And if you happen to screw it up. Apologize. Yep, I walked right back to Target Lady and Museum Lady and apologized. I’ve got to handle my crazy one way or another. And if I can’t handle my crazy, I’ll need to hand over the apology.