I’m Sorry

“I’m sorry.”  These words flow out almost with no thought. For those of us with self-esteem issues it seems to be our favorite phrase. We accidentally burn the pizza. The first thing out of our mouth is “I’m sorry”. We forget the milk when we go shopping.  Oops.  I parked the truck without getting gas first.  Uh-oh.  I didn’t see the red sock disappear into the load of white laundry and everything turns pink. Once more an apology slips out.

Why do we do this? It’s an automatic reaction to prevent ourselves from being unloved.  We learned that we have to be perfect to be loved. When we make mistakes we are not perfect, therefore we can’t be loved. We have to make up for those mistakes in any way we can. The first step is to apologize. And so we say “I’m sorry.”

Suddenly we are apologizing for things there is no need to apologize for. It rains on a day we planned to go fishing. “I’m sorry.” A train goes past when we are in a hurry.  The roof leaks during a heavy rainstorm. “I’m sorry.”

I did this more and more. And it wasn’t just at home. When something went wrong at work right away I was the first to apologize even though it had nothing to do with me. I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

One day someone asked me, “What are you sorry for?” At that moment I realized what I was doing. My reply was that I was sorry that things weren’t going right. “It’s not your fault,” he said. And I knew it wasn’t my fault. I had no control over the problem that had cropped up. From then on I paid attention to how often I was apologizing and how little I had reason to apologize. It surprised me how often those words slipped out of my mouth.

There’s nothing wrong with apologizing when there is a need for an apology. Apologizing when you have no reason ends up driving your self-esteem even lower than it already is. It serves to reinforce that you aren’t good enough. That you need to earn the respect and love of others . You are your own critic.

We can’t stop things from going wrong. It’s a part of life. We will always make mistakes. It is a part of being human. However, we can control our reactions to these things. Instead of instantly apologizing now, I stop and ask what I could have done to prevent it from happening, and if it really was my fault. Most of the time I find there wasn’t anything I could have done to stop it without knowing ahead of time it would happen. Since I don’t have the gift of precognition I can only roll with the punches as they appear.

Being more aware of what I’m doing has served to help me work on my self-esteem. I don’t instantly feel like I’m unlovable. I don’t feel the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’m no longer perfect and not worthy of love yet again. I’m working on remembering that mistakes happen to all of us. We each get to take a turn at being the one who owns the mistake.

It hasn’t stopped me from apologizing when I deserve to apologize to someone else. I just don’t apologize for things I’ve not done anymore.