Ben:
Tic-Tac-Doh!
I have a nervous tic: I
say I’m sorry all the time. I apologize for things and situations that aren’t
my fault or are so minor that no apology is warranted. I can’t remember when I
started doing it so that means I’ve probably been saying it for some time. In
light of some other revelations I’ve had (see the last couple blog posts), I
think I’ve stumbled onto why this happens.
You’re Grounded? (Good
For You!)
All of us need to feel
good about ourselves and the healthy among us are able to meet this need
internally. At some early point in their lives, the self-worth of healthy
people became grounded within and not tethered to people or events around them.
Since they don’t rely on
the outside world to validate them, healthy people use external feedback as
guideposts for their daily behavior. Social cues are meant to fill in the
blanks when we don’t have all the information on how to behave in a situation. For
me, however, social cues carried far more weight. Instead of guideposts and
cues, I used external information to formulate my worth as a person.
Healthy people’s
emotional boats are secured to a dock of internally-driven self-esteem. My boat
wasn’t, and my feelings lifted and sank with the waves of input around me. The
problem with relying so heavily on external information is that people outside
of you have far less information about you than you do. When you make changes
based on this incomplete and often incorrect information, then you’re not being
true to yourself and you wind up living an unfulfilling life. I actually wound
up living a miserable and sometimes traumatic life because I made decisions to
get positive feedback from other people.
Perpetual Apologist
This brings me to my
perpetual apologies. To put it bluntly, I said I was sorry so often because I
wanted to control other people. Since validation was life to me, I tried
putting other people in positions where they had to validate me. Politeness and
civility demand that if someone issues an apology, in most situations,
especially minor ones, the other person must accept it. The acceptance of my
apology translated into acceptance of me. Also, if I thought I’d not lived up
to someone else’s expectations of me, I’d fire off an apology. Better for me to
fall on my sword and be critical of myself rather than receive disapproval from
an outside source. With this in mind, I beat the other person to the imagined punch
and issue my mea culpa.
Neon Sign: “Self Esteem For Sale: 1 Cent!”
Apologies are useful
tools. They can be used to mend relationships, ease tensions, accept
responsibility, and validate another person’s feelings when you’ve hurt them.
However, when overused, apologies send a clear signal that you don’t value
yourself. If you’re lucky, the person on the other end of the apology is
conscientious and will respect your boundaries even if you don’t. However, the
opportunist who hears the perpetual apologies will correctly interpret this as
a sign of weakness and take advantage of you. I used to wonder why I continued
to run afoul of people who treated me poorly. Now I realize my constant
apologies were blood in the water to relational predators.
Batten Down the Hatches!
So what do you do? How
do you put a stop to apologizing so much? I believe the first and most
important step you can take is finding a way to tie your emotional boat to your
internal pier. Do some soul searching and ask the tough questions.
Do you like yourself?
If the answer is “no” or
“I’m not sure”...why?
Like my pastor says,
this preaches easy but is hard to do. Talk about this with someone you trust,
or go my route and find a professional. Saying “I’m sorry” so often could be a
sign you’re struggling with your value as a person, and that can lead to much
more serious problems than having a nervous tic.
Esther:
Ben’s had his half of
this post ready to go for some time, by the way, but I will not be apologizing
for my lateness. For obvious reasons.
I do want to tell you
about a recent apology of mine, though. I caught myself telling Ben I was sorry
for something. Saying it didn’t quite hit my gut the right way, and after a
moment’s investigation I realized I didn’t even believe I’d done anything wrong.
The apology was insecure and self-deprecating, and I’d offered what amounted to
a lie without any conscious thought. What would cause such a knee-jerk reaction
to the fear of potential conflict?
If you think like prey,
it’s not hard to figure out.
Ben and I visited an
aviary a few days ago. We’d love to have our own parrot one day and it’s fun to
handle the parrots at this aviary, but we have to adjust our behavior and
expectations of them when we do because they think quite differently from dogs
and cats, which are predators, not prey.
One surprising bit of
information about parrots is one of the reasons they bite. When a predator is
nearby, flight is obviously a bird’s first response. But if that parrot is next
to its mate or favorite human, it’s not uncommon for it to bite them as a way
to get them to also flee to safety. The bite is meant to save, not to harm.
This sounds a lot like
what I did with Ben when, sensing conflict might be imminent, I reverted to a childhood
behavior. Why would false apology and self-criticism have ever been my survival
strategy? Maybe to appease the anger of a predatory adult. Maybe to pretend we
were on the same side so as to defuse the situation (“See? I think you’re right
- I AM worthless.”). Maybe the self-criticism started out as pretended
agreement and turned to preemptive self-talk (“if you do that, they’re going to
say THIS about you, and you don’t want that, so don’t do it”). Maybe over time
I forgot the reason I was doing all that preempting and started to believe my
own lies.
And there you have the
birth of an inner critic. It was trying to help, not harm, but such a survival
strategy wasn’t meant to be a long-term solution. I’m no longer prey and I need
to stop thinking like prey.
In the adult food chain,
it’s true I still have the potential to be prey or predator on any given day.
But, as a healthy adult, I’m not limited to those two options. Instead, when I
feel the urgent “sorry” rising in my throat, I’m learning to breathe it back
down and try peacefully coexisting with the other animals in my flock.
