There's something special about a particularly strong cringe moment. Time appears to slow down, the air thickens, and you begin to feel the gravitational pull of thickly packed cringe. And, no matter how hard you fight it, the inevitable gut-twisting begins.

Worse than pure, unadulterated discomfort is when it's combined with the genuine melancholy of someone who has completely lost touch with reality. Along with the gut-wrenching secondhand embarrassment, there is a depleting sense of complete melancholy. How could somebody be that irrational? What right turn did they take when they should've taken a left to get to this point of untold cringe?

It isn't a pleasant sensation. However, the best approach to protect yourself from such nausea is to expose yourself to little doses of it on a regular basis, building up your immunity in the same way that a snake handler would with rattlesnake venom. Enjoy the painful cringe! There's always more where that came from.