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COMIC: Still cringing about that awkward moment? Here’s what to do about it

So you’ve done something absolutely cringey. How do you deal with the embarrassment and stop replaying the awkward moment in your mind?

Psychologist Ty Tashiro; Eric Garcia, author of We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation; Melissa Dahl, author of Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness; and visual artist Pilvi Takala share their advice.

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Navied Mahdavian is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of the graphic memoir This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America.


This comic was edited by Malaka Gharib and Beck Harlan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Andee Tagle (she/her) is a reporter-producer for NPR's Life Kit podcast.

As Life Kit's first staff reporter, she covers all things actionable journalism and is often lucky enough to make podcasts inspired by her own personal misadventures. She's hosted episodes on grappling with likeability, relationship contracts and learning to be a good loser; and has produced episodes on everything from finding the right mentor to listening better to how to find your singing voice.

Tagle is the lead author of the Life Kit newsletter, in which no bad pun is spared to create a bite-size weekly digest of Life Kit's most useful offerings. You might have also seen her and her favorite wall art sitting in for anonymous advice-seekers for the Dear Life Kit video series, or awkwardly testing listener tips for NPR's Instagram. (For this, she apologizes.)

Tagle joined NPR as an intern for the Arts Desk in 2019, where she wrote reviews for movies and books, adapted interviews and shamelessly watched hours upon hours of TV for "research." Originally from Los Angeles, she holds a B.S. in communications from UCLA, and an M.A. in journalism with a concentration in arts and culture from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

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