Even if you’ve been expecting it for months, being laid off hurts. When it happens, a mixture of shock, fear and anger may bubble to the surface. But on this worst of all days, it’s important to keep your emotions in check, focus on the events unfolding in front of you, and make wise decisions.

If you’re really wise, you’ve already created a plan to deal with the possibilities of a layoff, so you know what to expect and how to deal with the sudden changes to your financial future. But here are a few more important things to consider the day your supervisor or human resources official tells you your job is gone:

1. Listen, ask polite questions, and don’t sign anything: Depending on the type of job you’re losing, you may or may not be offered a severance package. Unless it was part of a contract or union agreement, companies have no legal obligation to offer severance, yet many large companies do.

Usually, a severance package will include pay for a set number of weeks, often determined by the level of your position and the time you spent with the company. Sometimes they include extended insurance coverage and other benefits. The package will be presented to you in the form of a contract – a severance agreement. This usually means your company wants you to agree not to sue them over your layoff, and they may want you to agree not to write or publicly say anything disparaging about the company for a set period of time. The agreement may even include a non-compete clause, under which you would be expected to agree not to take a job with your company’s competitors, or start a business in the same field.

While it’s not likely, it’s possible that you could be pressured into reading and signing the severance agreement on the spot. If so, politely refuse. Tell them you’re feeling too emotional to read it right now, or come up with another reason, but whatever you do, don’t sign it. Any company that offers a severance package has to give you a reasonable amount of time to take the agreement home and read it, and have an attorney read it, too, if you wish.

Upon taking your severance package home, you may conclude that your company is experiencing hard financial times and has decided to trim its work force by a certain percentage, in a fair and unbiased manner. If that’s the case, then you may logically decide to save the money and not show your agreement to a lawyer. However, If you are over 40 and suspect that most of the people your company just laid off also are over 40, that might be reason enough to show the package to an attorney, in the event the company has taken action that could be construed as illegal discrimination.

Either way, you are within your rights, and probably smart, to take a pen and a pad of paper into any meeting in which you think you’ll be laid off. Even if it seems awkward, write down as exactly as possible everything company officials tell you during the meeting. If they protest, tell them you’re nervous and afraid you’ll forget something important. Keep those notes in the event you decide later that it’s worth speaking to an attorney. They could prove valuable.

2. If you’re offered a severance package, consider asking for more: It’s highly probable that your company decided up front exactly how much money it was willing to spend on severance for laid-off employees. But if your company expects you to pass up a job with a competitor, that’s asking a lot, especially when it might be your best shot at finding work in this recession. It makes sense to ask for a lot in return. If the company flatly refuses to pay you any additional money, ask for several months of extended health care. If your company won’t budge, ask for a little more time before you sign the agreement. At this point, I might be inclined to call my company’s biggest competitors and try to see if they’d hire me. I’d rather take another certain job and turn down a good severance package than take the package and find out I can’t get another job.

3. Get your personal belongings out of your office: Chances are great that you’ll be escorted out of the building, maybe without a chance to access a company computer again. But if they give you time to pack up, try to take the opportunity to transfer any personal computer files to a portable USB flash drive. At the top of your list should be the contact information for anyone who might be able to help you find another job.

4. Take care of yourself emotionally: Even if you’re able to remain calm and under control during the layoff meeting, at some point you may feel overwhelmed by what’s just happened. That’s natural, and it’s probably better not to try to keep your emotions bottled up. Talk to your spouse or partner or, if he or she isn’t available, contact a close friend or relative whom you trust to be supportive.

5. Apply for unemployment insurance benefits right away: Do this the day your layoff is announced. Your tax money has been used to pay for this program; now it’s time to gain back a little of what you’ve already paid for. The reason to apply right now is that there’s always a lag time between when you apply and when you actually see a check. With record numbers of people now applying for these benefits, the lag time is only getting longer.

Use this handy link to find out how to apply for unemployment insurance in your state.

6. Make plans for continued health insurance coverage: This one can be tough. Once your company’s health insurance program ends, you may find that you can obtain continued coverage through the government’s COBRA program. However, COBRA insurance almost always costs significantly more than your old company plan did.

You don’t have to decide whether to use COBRA to continue your health insurance coverage – but you do have to make a decision, usually within 60 days of being laid off. If you elect not to continue coverage under COBRA and have anything that could be construed as a “pre-existing condition” (such as being pregnant) you may have to wait for months before another insurance plan will cover you.

Consider this set of frequently-asked COBRA questions, provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, as you decide how and whether to continue your coverage.

But whatever you do, if you have children, find some way to continue health insurance coverage for them. Every state operates free or low-cost children’s health insurance programs, paid for in part by the federal government. Here’s a web site that provides links to every state’s program, and additional resources.

7. Organize for your job search: This is an entire new topic unto itself, and one on which you should spend a significant amount of time each day. But you can start now, by making a contact list including everyone you can think of who not only might have work for which you qualify, but might know someone else who does. If you think of it in this way, you’ll soon realize that a large number of close and very casual acquaintances should be on this list.

Save yourself time, and create the list using the “contacts” feature of your email program, since it’s likely you’ll be emailing these people eventually.

8. Polish up your resume: You probably should have done this already, but if not, look over your resume and try to improve it. Make sure it includes your career highlights, and those quantifiable things you achieved for companies at which you worked. Make sure every word is spelled correctly and your grammar is is impeccable. Keep it at one page if at all possible, and never more than two. And read up on resume trends and ideas to make sure you aren’t dating yourself.

9. Meet as a family to talk about what just happened: Obviously this might not be a very big meeting if you’re single, although you should strongly consider talking to your parents, close relatives and friends, so that they can help you with a job search and provide support. If you have children, even young children, consider discussing the layoff with them and your spouse, so that they understand as well as possible what has happened and what that might mean for them. Some of these changes may well be positive, in that a laid-off parent might have more time to spend with his or her children after school, for instance.

10. Adjust your family budget to reflect the change in income: With less money coming in each month, you need to work hard to immediately find an equal amount of expenses that you can cut out of the budget.

But first, you have to actually have a budget to work with. If you haven’t done so, here’s a guide for creating a family budget.

Cutting your expenses usually begins with getting your debts under control. Here’s a guide to getting started with that effort.

Finally, here’s what not to do when you get laid off:

1. Don’t fly off the handle when your boss gives you the bad news: Chances are he or she is just following orders, and wishes your job could be spared. Even if that’s not the case, throwing a fit is not a good first move when you may well be negotiating with that same person for a better severance package. Also consider, you may need that boss as a future job reference. For a myriad of reasons, you’ll be far better off going out with class than going down in flames.

2. Don’t take it personally: Consider that nearly 500,000 Americans lost their jobs in August alone, and right now more than 15 million Americans are out of work. And that’s just according to the most widely quoted method of unemployment reporting used by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 9.1 million Americans who would like to have full-time jobs are working part time. And at least another 2.3 million Americans who would like to be working have given up on finding a job.

In truth, according to the bureau’s own calculations, only about 59% of a total American labor force of 154.6 million people was employed as of August.

In short, tens of millions of Americans are facing just what you are facing. You haven’t done anything wrong, and there’s no shame in telling people what has happened. For one thing, it’s already happened to a lot of other people they know. More importantly, no one can help you find work again unless they know you need to.

You are not alone in this.