You Don't Always Have To Apologize. Here's When You Should — And When You Shouldn't

Growing up, my mother was frequently angry. I never actually knew what she was angry about, but when she was, I learned to just apologize. Apologies, at least from what I observed, seemed to placate the situation. Over time, I began internalizing a belief that my parents' feelings were essentially my fault. It took me many years to learn that I didn't always have to apologize, and that, in fact, there is a big difference between saying sorry for doing something hurtful to someone and saying sorry just because another person is upset and blaming me for it.

We're in the midst of a movement against "overapologizing"—especially for women, who tend to apologize more often than men because they have a lower threshold1 for what counts as offensive behavior. To be clear, caring about how your actions affect others is rarely a bad thing. But the deeper problem seems to stem from the lack of understanding around why we apologize. Sometimes it's just a reflex. And sometimes, it's not coming from a place of concern at all.

I used to consistently apologize out of fear, hoping that if I was contrite enough, my husband, parents, children, and friends would "forgive" me for whatever they believed I did wrong. I was willing to accept the blame, even when I had no idea what I had done that they were so upset about.

It took me years to understand that I had been deeply programmed to believe that if someone blamed me for their feelings, then I must have done something wrong and needed to apologize. The more I did my inner work, the more I understood that I was not responsible for another person's upset feelings unless I purposely did something hurtful to them—and to be frank, purposefully hurting someone is incredibly out of character for me.

Nowadays, I might express sadness that they are feeling hurt and offer to help them in exploring their feelings, but I no longer apologize to them when I know in my heart that I did nothing hurtful. I do, however, say to myself the short Ho'oponopono prayer:

I'm sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you

The time to apologize is when we are genuinely sorry for our behavior, and we plan on doing whatever inner work we need to do to not repeat whatever we did that was hurtful. Genuine apologies are loving to the other person, but they're also loving to ourselves—in fact, they are actually more for our own benefit, as they are good for the soul. We are here on the planet to evolve in our ability to love, and since a sincere apology is loving, it makes us feel full and peaceful inside. A sincere apology is soul food.

Because we all have a tendency to apologize as a form of control and to avoid another's anger, we need to be very conscious of whether the other person is projecting their own behavior onto us or whether we've genuinely done something hurtful. I've learned to go inside and trust my feelings and my higher self regarding the truth, and that allows me to be very honest with myself and the effects of my actions.

Even if you have inadvertently (or purposefully) hurt someone, an apology is not a Band-Aid. Apologizing just to make a problem go away or when you don't really mean it just ends up being unloving to the person you wronged and unloving to yourself.