Sorry...
The work we do as therapists is not about teaching our clients to avoid conflict but about learning how to negotiate interpersonal conflict with skill, care, and awareness.
When I sit down to work with a family, I often ask how they make repairs when they experience a conflict – or, more simply, how does your family say I’m sorry? The answers are as diverse and varied as the families themselves.
“Conflict in close relationships is not only inevitable, it's essential. Intimacy connects people who are inevitably different.”
- Martha Beck
What is an apology?
A direct and simple apology requires focus, determination and vulnerability. When we go in to make an apology, we often get sidelined by our instinct for self-preservation and defense. Despite our best intentions, we may swerve, explain, blame, or blurt out a canned phrase and hope for the best. It can be helpful to identify what is not an apology or a repair. Simply saying words in the direction of a person does not constitute a repair or an apology. Abandoning personal responsibility and offering an apology based on how the other person feels (“I’m sorry you feel like I…”) is a swerve. Offering up an explanation for our behavior and our true intentions is just that – an explanation, not an apology. Assigning and/or taking blame is another distraction that weakens a solid repair. Before we extend an apology, it’s helpful to slow down and make sure we are aligned with our purpose.
The goal of an apology is to heal a rupture in a relationship and re-establish a baseline of safety, trust and connection.
A clean apology requires taking full responsibility for harming another person. We take responsibility regardless of whether our actions were intentional, accidental or misunderstood. There is no one-size-fits-all approach and I encourage families and couples to figure out ways to meet these criteria that feel compatible with their temperaments and family culture.
An apology is a collaborative experience that requires mutual receptivity and vulnerability. The emphasis here is on the word ‘experience’ – the recipient needs to feel as though they have been apologized to. Non-verbal body language, attention and awareness are vital aspects of the process. When I stage an apology in a session, I place both parties facing one another and ask them to establish a felt connection before we begin. After the apology is offered I ask the recipient to signal when they feel like they have fully received and internalized the repair. If there are stubborn pockets of resistance, we make adjustments and offer a few more attempts. If one (or both) of the parties is too activated, dissociated or defended to do their part, then the process is incomplete and we try again later.
Apologies and Children
Children often have a natural gift for the non-verbal elements of an apology. With younger kids I like to use the phrase ‘say sorry with your eyes’ since it almost always delivers a powerful nonverbal experience and takes the pressure away from being told what to say. This is offered as an invitation and not a command since, for some nervous systems, eye contact can be flooding and overstimulating. If eye contact is not viable then an act of service or a gift can be substituted as a sincere offering of apology.
For children, receiving a sincere apology from a caregiver can be a memorable milestone experience. Children learn through observation. When we model the ability to offer a clear apology we also provide kids with a powerful relational tool. This skill pays itself forward in sibling dynamics and interpersonal dynamics with teachers, peers and future partners. Accepting and owning our own mistakes also helps children learn to accept and integrate their own fallibility.
As a caregiver it can feel risky to ‘one down’ and apologize to your child. It may feel like you are letting go of your parental/caregiving authority or giving in to your own sense of guilt or inadequacy. Although it can feel counterintuitive, apologizing to a little person will increase your credibility and often leaves them grateful and awestruck to see that you are also fallible.
It is not the scale of the conflict that measures the effectiveness of an apology, but the depth of connection and sincerity it brings to the relationship. I encourage caregivers to practice apologizing over small matters in order to normalize the practice and build trust.
Apologies teach children
It is okay to be human and make mistakes,
We take responsibility when we do things that affect another person, and
We get to try again.
Taking responsibility for the relational damage we inflict is a show of strength and not an admission of failure. I feel a sense of privilege when I witness repairs in a therapy session. The process often begins with some fear and hesitation and then transforms into a sense of renewal, spaciousness and connection. Apologies often get a bad rap as an admission of guilt, or an experience of shame and personal surrender. The truth is a strong apology is an act of self-confidence, personal responsibility and deep caring that can up-cycle conflicts and strengthen relationships.
