know that
Grace for the Good Girl should not be abbreviated GftGG. It makes
a portion of me scream in fury to purposefully abbreviate the book
title “wrong”, but GGG looks terrible. I just can’t bring myself to use
it.
“In
a way, obsessively apologizing is part of the hiding. We sorry our way
right out of our own personalities. We apologize for not being
fine. We apologize for needing help. We apologize for being emotional,
inarticulate, not having answers.
Sometimes we even apologize for apologizing.”
I
do this and I hate it. HB hates it (and tells me to stop when I’m wound
up and start apologizing for being wound up). My parent’s
probably don’t like it either.
If
someone handed me a list at the end of the day of everything I’d
apologized for it would be shocking. The hotel my supervisor wants
is unavailable, I apologize when I relay this information. The server
is down and a co-worker can’t get to the information they need, I
apologize. My mother is cleaning the refrigerator shelf and it shatters
while we are on the phone together, I apologize.
Friends come over to spend time with me and we discover that between
the time I vacuumed the basement and the time they showed up (12 hours?)
a pet got sick on the carpet, I apologize. We’re at a restaurant and
there are no gluten free options for HB, I apologize.
Do you see a trend here? None of that is actually my fault. Then there are the things I apologize for that are “my fault.”
I’m
overtired and hungry so I snap at HB when he asks me for help. I’m
stressed out about an intimidating phone call so I’m anxious
all day and a downer to be around. I’m holed up in my room working on
an important project and haven’t spent any time with my family. All of
this happened over the course of one day so I selfishly don’t want to
answer the phone when a friend calls and them
I’m in a rush to get off the phone because really I just want to go to
bed and end the day.
As Emily points out every time I apologize it’s like I’m saying,
“Attention everyone! I have a very important announcement to make – I am a human being and I am ever so sorry about that.”
I’m
not certain what I’m going to do about this. What I’d like to do is
give myself an apology budget. I get 5
to spend a day so I’d better save them up for when I really need them.
You know for times when I’ve inflicted real wounds or when I’m
empathizing with deep sorrow.
Has anyone successfully kicked the “I’m sorry,” habit? Care to share some strategies?
I, too, apologize. People have even said, "Don't apologize. You didn't do anything wrong." It is the first thing that rolls off of my tongue. Let me know if anyone else has solved it. Or is that just me trying to fix it again?
ReplyDeleteI certainly haven't solved it (obviously), but what started as a joke (a budget of 5 I'm sorrys per day) has turned into a real effort. Let's just say that I run out of "I'm sorry"s pretty quickly - and I stopped counting the ones I say when I accidentally run into people.
DeleteGood luck!