Sarah Silverman has a bit about: if you want your girlfriend not to overreact, you should treat her pain like it’s a big deal. (It’s a basic human courtesy, anyway.)
Jason Fried has a famous blog post about “the other token.” In customer service, if you act like the customer’s problem doesn’t matter, they scream at you until you pretend like you believe it does. If you act like it does matter, then, well… they act more sanely (usually).
These concepts can be applied to anyone, anytime.