Apologies Aren't Always Nice (Part 2): How to Do Them More Thoughtfully (Hint: Slow Down)
April 01, 2024
Before apologizing, ask yourself: Am I expecting the hurt person to forgive me immediately?
In the previous part of this two-part series, I laid out how some forms of apologizing can put pressure on the hurt party to make the transgressor feel better as soon as possible. But people who struggle with tolerating the discomfort of these circumstances experience an equally difficult time identifying if they are apologizing from a place of understanding or simply trying to calm the waters. It’s helpful to take a moment before instantly apologizing to consider: “I am feeling the urge to apologize right now, how come? Am I trying to apologize just to make this person—and by extension, myself—feel better? Or am I actually sorry and have reflected on why this person feels hurt in the way they do?”
To take it a step further, it’s also worth placing yourself in the hurt person’s shoes. How are they going to receive this apology? Will they feel pressured to make you feel better? Can you tolerate them needing to still take some time before they respond to or accept the apology? Would you be ready to forgive someone or reconnect at this moment if you felt as hurt as they do?
Learning to tolerate the space and time a hurt person needs can be an important step toward reconnection
Even if the answer to the latter question is yes, it’s essential to recognize that it is valid for someone to need time and space to process their hurt. A large part, perhaps even the basis, of feeling connected to someone is a sense of safety. If someone says they can’t forgive you right now or still needs time to process and sit with their emotions, they are stating a boundary that needs to be respected.
For the person who hurt another, it’s important to build the inner resources necessary to learn to tolerate and trust the space and time that the person may need to be able to reconnect and accept an apology or learn to come to accept and grieve that the harm might be too great and the relationship may be irrevocably changed. If one can learn to shift the focus to themselves, that can take the burden off of the hurt person. That time can be used for self-regulation, which can look like going for a walk, listening to music or a podcast, reading, cooking something comforting, writing a journal or diary entry about your feelings, etc. This can also be addressed by going to therapy.
In particular, therapy can help explore and understand when and why an individual is predisposed to try to seek immediate forgiveness/comfort. Perhaps something happened in a relationship in the past (especially if this happened in childhood) where there was a threat (or action) of love or care being taken away because of their actions (which may or may not have been warranted or proportionate to the situation). Therapy can help an individual not only identify when and why these feelings are coming up but also reframe this kind of thinking, as well as learn to tolerate taking a moment to reflect on the desire to immediately repair the situation with an apology. In this way, caring for yourself becomes a form of caring for the other. It makes you take responsibility for your feelings about having harmed someone rather than placing them on the other person.
