The Healing Power of Apologies

“Say you’re sorry”

Did your parents force apologies? Many kids will concede to an obligatory apology in order to move on, to get something, or to avoid punishment. Kids are pressured to humble themselves and hate it, sometimes feeling humiliated, or disagreeing that they had done anything wrong.

Some parents may be trying to assuage their own parent-guilt for bringing up a kid who did whatever it was. This can feel like a painful abandonment to a child, like the parent figuratively moving away. This sends a shame message that if you’ve done something that requires an apology, you’re unlovable. Those seeds sink deep and breed perfectionism. Many kids who experience this find it hard to admit wrongdoing, thinking “If people know I’ve done something wrong, I will fall out of favor, be not-good-enough.”

Others may be teaching the child that when you do something that hurts another person, an apology is what you do. It’s the kind thing, and it’s good manners because the feelings of others are important too. To send this message well, parents need to exercise forgiveness for their child, and incredible self-control. We have to center ourselves in unconditional love for our child, soften our voice, draw physically close, and treat the child with the respect that their enduring spirit deserves. As parents, we have a responsibility to teach the future adults we are raising how to live in community while treating our children decent, the way we want them to treat those more vulnerable than them.

“It’s not a big deal”

Sometimes the response to an offense so seemingly small and insignificant leaves us in disbelief and confusion. How can so small a thing have garnered such a reaction? If somebody had done the very same thing to us, we’d have barely noticed.

But they are a different person, with different experiences. We can’t possibly know how badly we’ve hurt them because the injury is invisible. We may have felt that our offense would have just barely bumped them, but they experience it as having been knocked clear off their feet. People who are suspicious of being manipulated will have trouble with this, but in your deep love relationships it requires trust of the injured person. Because of your social location and experiences of past hurts, you too are more vulnerable to some kinds of hurts than others.

To some, when a person is late, it is terribly offensive and a personal slight. Others can easily see in context that there are many things that may have prevented them from being on time. The one who is offended may have had an important figure become absent when they ought to have been there for them. In the culture of their home, it may have been stressed that all must be present and prepared at the table before any can eat, and so one being even a minute late would communicate lower importance of the others. We don’t know completely the internal world of the person sitting across from us, and all their history. A small thing in your book may be incredibly painful in theirs. We do not get to qualify the internal worlds of our loved ones. However big of a deal it is to them, that is its size.

“I didn’t mean to”

Another common scenario is the offending party defending their intent:
“It was an accident. I forgot or made a mistake. Just let it go. Why do you have to rub my nose in it? What do you want from me?”

This is a defensive stance. Defensiveness will suggest the person you’ve hurt is trying to manipulate you to feel guilty or think badly about yourself. Defensiveness is a mask for shame. Shame assumes that to have harmed someone you must have done so maliciously. It also assumes that if you had hurt someone, it would make you a bad person. Shame is condemning, immobilizing. Defensiveness and Shame work together to keep you from moving on to a helpful and active place of guilt and remorse. To get out of it you have to know you are not your offending actions.

The key here is acknowledging that the things you do, I do, we all do, can hurt others, and often do.

Imagine for a moment that you’re walking down a busy street, in a hurry to get someplace, preoccupied. You dodge the edge of a stoop and promptly bump into somebody. This is a mistake. It does not make you evil. Would you ignore that and walk on without a word? What about if you bumped into that person so hard that you knocked them down? They look up at you, shocked expression, a scrape on their hand from having caught themselves on the concrete. The coffee they were holding has spilt all over their clothes. Do you say “sorry” and walk on? Do you also ask whether they’re ok? Say what you did wrong (wasn’t paying attention, moving too quickly)? Help them up? Offer to buy them a fresh cup of coffee? Most of us couldn’t conceive of shouting “What! I didn’t mean to! Let it go!” at a total stranger we’ve injured in this way. Yet, some of us essentially do this to our loved ones when we unintentionally emotionally injure them.

It’s obvious to recognize the pain of having knocked someone down physically, but emotional pain can be harder to recognize or understand. The brain can’t tell the difference between physical and psychological pain because psychological pain is just as harmful. Pain signals tell us that something needs attention. When a loved one, especially your primary attachment figure (like a spouse or parent) does or says something that sends a message of absence or intentional harm, there are special emotion regions in the brain that react with terror and pain. When our important relationships are threatened it’s terrifying, and it hurts. We need each other. As a species, we would not have been able to survive this long without our important relationships. There is something primal about our reaction to a threat to the relationship with the one on whom we have grown to depend.

What? I said “sorry…”

Our poor examples and lacking experiences can lead to a poorly done, or insufficient, apology. You may have learned to resent the expectation of an apology. Even when one wants very much to mend what was hurt, the right words and a repentant attitude are lacking. I’ve often heard, in sessions with families, one say something like “You never even apologized!” and the response: “I did! I said I was SORRY!” (when, of course this insistence helps nothing, and they could just apologize then and there). The offender may have said “sorry,” and even meant it. The injured one did not even hear it because of the lack of evident sincerity and/or acknowledgement of injury.

Occasionally, somebody will say, “I’ve apologized over and over. Why isn’t that enough for you?” This implies that there is something wrong with the injured party that they aren’t healed yet, and can be a very hurtful thing to say. It implies that they are defective or manipulative, and shifts the blame to the injured. It’s unfair to hurt someone and then blame them for the wound not healing fast enough. Probably 2 things are happening here. 1: You don’t have a clear understanding of how badly you hurt the other person (you thought it was just a scrape, but it’s really a broken bone), and 2: Your apology was insufficient (read on to learn the nuts and bolts of a properly done apology).

Sometimes one apology doesn’t cut it. It’s the injured party that gets to determine when the apology is accepted. Why? Because you can’t fully know the impact! Only they can!

Waiting until you feel it

Maybe you don’t want to say you’re sorry because you don’t feel sorry. You’ve said or done something that hurt a loved one because you were angry, and you’re still angry. You feel justified. Perhaps you remember the feeling of being forced to apologize by a parent, embarrassed by having to apologize, or apologizing when you feel you did nothing at all wrong. You may think to yourself “to say sorry and mean it, I have to feel sorry, or it’s a lie, not true remorse, hypocritical.” I’ve got to admit I used to think this myself.

The truth is, feelings are not fact. I’ve learned I don’t have to feel badly about something I’ve done in order to recognize it hurt somebody I care for, or that it goes against my values. I don’t have to wait to feel it before I say it, and waiting may even cause further injury. The injured party experiences being both hurt and abandoned. Now it’s as if you’ve knocked someone down and let them lay there while their things get blown away or rained on. They’ve had to pick themselves up and move on with their day independently, and deal with everything that came with it. If you believe/recognize you did something wrong or harmful, the mature apologize immediately and let their feelings follow after. Sure, it helps if you feel it. Don’t make stuff up about feeling sorry if you don’t. Just say what you did wrong, the harm you see it caused, and that you oughtn’t to have done it. Amazingly, the apology itself can be transformative and bring the feelings.

Are you sorry because of the effect on you (consequences) or the effect on the injured party and your relationship with that person? Either way, if you can recognize where you’re wrong, an apology is in order.

“But they were MORE wrong”

Arguments can get stuck in a gridlock of “but you’s.” Each party thinks the other did the worse wrong and therefore should be the one to apologize, or at least apologize first.

This draws up in my mind an old Dr. Seuss story about the Zax. There’s a North-Going Zax who only goes north and a South-Going Zax who only goes south. They come face-to-face, and being stuck in their ways and culture (not taking into account the needs or wants of the person in front of them) neither will step aside. So, as they stand there obstinately, while a whole city and highways are built up around them. The world moves on and they waste their lives in stubborn refusal to secede from the stare-down.

Each feels justified in their stance. Each feels that the other is wrong, or at least more-wrong, for not stepping aside and making way.

Maybe you are behaving like a Zax in one of your relationships right now.

When you find yourself offended and offending, ask yourself what you want your life to look like? Do you want gridlock? How important is this relationship to you and is this where you want to be stuck? It’s likely that you have done something imperfect in this disagreement, too. You can apologize for your part.

Usually, it’s the more mature who will step aside. The more mature will apologize, even if they believe their part is smaller or came later.