Amending Our Process: Crafting Apologies that Heal
ruthcohnmft.com
ruthcohnmft.com
I've beaten this drum here before[1], but Dialectical Behavior Therapy, an evidence-based therapy program, has a framework for making requests of people with the acronym DEAR that can also be used for apologies. I think a good DEAR-apology would hit most of the techniques in this article:
* Describe the situation: "Accept responsibility".
"I didn't do X that you asked me to do, even though I knew I should have."
* Express feelings: "Express regret"
"I feel bad about it because I promised I would, and I had time to do it, I just didn't, and I don't have an excuse."
* Ask: "Ask for forgiveness"
"I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"
* Reinforce: This could be restitution or repentance. I'd argue it's situational depending on whether it's a recurring thing (I'll do it in the future!) or in the past (I didn't defrost the chicken and ruined your dinner party, so I'll cook for the next one!)
Anyways, DBT has a few gems[2], and DEAR is one of them. I use it all the time for both asking people for things and apologies.
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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31859266
[2] Another one: panic attack or extremely anxious? Get a bowl of cold water and stick your head in it for around 30 seconds. Make sure your whole face, especially your cheeks, are submerged. You can use ice water or just cool water. Take a breath, and repeat until calm. It's based on the dive reflex and is a biological function, it will always work.
Mostly because I get a lot of practice. :P
When I worked for a Japanese company, my ability to apologize, sincerely, and politely, was good for my career.
The Japanese respect and work with apologies. They accept it, and then expect you to help make it right. It is usually not brought up again.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.
The worst ones will detect that same apology and crowd that person out of their own mind with unresolved guilt, completely disabling them with their own emotions. Give them long enough and they can create monsters out of the nicest men.
After about a decade I got wise to this pattern. Their first reply would be passive-aggressive: "What are you going to do about this?" (Why just me? Are we not a team?) The old me would be unnecessarily courageous: "Get it done, of course!" If I had anything less enthusiastic to say they might follow with, "What do you want me to do about it?" This is a very different question from, "What can I do to help?" I was emotionally exhausted.
Of course when I alone couldn't mitigate the risks and things went south it was my responsibility and my apology was expected.
Once I realized these managers were a one-way street I started simply telling them, "You're the manager. You manage it." Good managers get more from me, but good managers usually are actively ahead of things previously raised and the need to occasionally pull things over the line occurs with lower frequency. Who doesn't want higher throughput with lower stress?
For this reason, sincere apologies can probably only work in very private situations, with those rare people who are overly generous and forgiving and won't take it as an invitation (if not a moral imperative) for endless retribution, bullying, and public shaming.
It’s wrong to tell lies designed to manipulate people. An apology should never be a lie. So, someone being asked or expected to apologize must not turn it into an empty ritual. Doing so lights a fuse that will blow up the whole relationship.
I have apologized for being a source of pain or irritation, for instance, without claiming that my behavior was actually wrong. Sometimes that’s all I can do.
There are probably ways to phrase "repentance" that are less religiously charged but it is a moral issue so this language works fine for me.
Once I arrive at that moment, though, OP feels like it might be priceless.
I bet the OP is sorry about that.
aaannd scene!
Do you see what I did, there? I am demonstrating the dynamic. I don’t really think you owe me an apology. But surely you have noticed that there is very frequently a disagreement among people about who owes who an apology and for what reasons.
So the first thing in any article about apology should be what it means and why give one. A much lesser priority is how to give one.
the feeling that I’ve done nothing to apologize
for [...] It’s wrong to tell lies designed to
manipulate people.
It’s possible I misread it, of course. On the other hand, perhaps you did.
A good exercise might be to practice apologizing without using the word "sorry", unless it's a truly trivial matter.
People use the word "sorry" all the time in fake, shallow ways. As if it's some kind of magic word. People don't want to hear a magic word. Like the article says, they mostly want to know:
1. That you know what you did
2. That you know why it hurt them
3. That you're not going to do it again
4. That you're going to fix things (when it's possible. sometimes it can't be fixed)
5. They want to know that you care
Of course, don't say any of the above unless you are being honest.
Usually impossible to know a priori.
How about "tbh something similar is probably going to happen repeatedly, but perhaps with diminishing frequency."
I'd hoped it would have been obvious that yes, it's not realistic to flawlessly predict the future, and that "That you're not going to do it again" meant "They would like some level of confidence that you're not doing to do it again" and not "Assure them that you are a god-level creature with the ability to make definitive statements about the future."
I'll try and be 100x more verbose next time to see if I can't close up some of those loopholes.
>I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings.
Please, do not say this. This comes off as dismissive and puts blame on the listener for being offended.
So, like every other thing in life having power, use carefully.