A short spoken monologue (YouTube) by Blair Singer advising how to communicate with people who are emotionally upset: address and acknowledge emotions first (ask and listen) so their tone and reasoning calm, then engage in an intelligent conversation; otherwise both parties become ineffective ('two idiots talking').
Have you ever tried talking to a crazy person? Trying to talk sense to them? Don't waste your time. Why? Because their emotions high and their intelligence is low. This is how your little voice works. And what happens is, if you try to talk sense to them, you upset them, they upset you. Now you got two idiots talking to each other. So what do you got to do? Address the emotion first. Ask them what they're upset about. Just listen. Keep asking questions. Let it settle down. Acknowledge where they're coming from. If they're upset, say, are you upset? They'll go, yes. Already. Their tone will begin to drop. Their intelligence will become high. Sooner or later. Then you can have an intelligent conversation. But two idiots talking to each other? Waste of time. Be awesome.