een trying to teach my daughters how to apologize, mostly by example. I mess up this parenting thing often enough that my kids are used to me apologizing. I get angry, frustrated, or despondent, when they don’t respond the way a good rational adult should. Then I spend the next bit of time, once I’ve reflected a bit, apologizing. I’m seeking absolution, forgiveness through a word restitution.
Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.
Tryon Edwards
Can people change? Can we be different? Can I do something new?
They’re fair questions, hard questions, but fair ones, nonetheless. The entire profession of counseling, therapy, and coaching is predicated on the idea that we are unfinished. Without the undercurrent of change guiding us, we may consider our work futile, useless, or meaningless.
Believing that people can change, can adapt, can learn matters.
But, let’s back up a moment to talk about one particular area of change, apologies. Simply stated, I’ve had to learn to apologize a lot in the last few years. I’m okay at it. I get the words right. I understand the why and the how. Most of the time, I can hear the criticism and accept responsibility. I’m not always good at the final step, doing something different.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t try or that I don’t succeed from time to time. I do get better at responding differently and learning from my mistakes. It’s when I repeat the same mistakes, knowing better, intending better, but unable to respond in a way I hoped.
It makes my apologies feel a little hollow at times. Those moments when I know and intend better, and yet get stuck in old habits that inflame an internal critic. In turn, that internal critic connects me to every past failure, overwhelming me with data about my inability to change for the better.
Even small successes, like when I realize my errors and apologize promptly, or when I am able to arrest the cascade of old habits, it’s hard to give myself credit.
For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?
bell hooks
Could putting forgiveness, compassion, and change in tension with one another give us a chance at making our apologies matter?
In fact, these three ideas may form the roots of a good apology.
Using our picture from above, believing we all can change creates the ground upon which a good apology is formed. Not only believing that we can do better, but that we will do better matters. To do that, we have to pay attention; we have to understand our motivations, our fears, our desires for safety, and how they direct our attention.
Habits stick around because we get pleasure from them; even the bad ones have their protective features. But, just as we created one habit, another can replace it over time. It takes intentional work though.
Compassion forms the trunk. Solid, rooted, and standing tall against the elements. Compassion provides a way of seeing the world around us and all our relationships. It also provides a way of seeing our own place in it. Being compassionate is not just an outward stance.
Directing compassion inward also matters. We have to find a way to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt from time to time; understanding that even our best can fail; or, developing the perspective that we will not always get it right, but we can always do better. Self-compassion is the key to staving off the cynicism that develops after repeated failure.
Forgiveness is perhaps the prickliest part of this equation. Like the conifer trees in our picture, forgiveness shows us there is life, and at the same time, those markers of life are sharp and sticky to the touch.
Forgiveness is uncomfortable and difficult, both when we seek it and attempt to offer it. It is fraught with intellectual and emotional components. Questions of worthiness and authenticity arise when an apology is made and forgiveness requested. We may run through a mental and empathic checklist to see if we are ready or they seem sincere.
Sometimes the power of forgiving someone else makes us uncomfortable, so we quickly accept an apology. We don’t want to extend their discomfort, so we accept without asking questions or wondering what will be different or even helping them understand how and why what they did mattered.
Getting these three held in the right tension with one another is a complex dynamic. It’s even more complex when these conversations and apologies happen inside our heads.
We have to find ways to give ourselves the permission to change and be something different. We need to find ways to be self-compassionate when we struggle with new and old habits. We must forgive ourselves when mistakes happen, without diving deep in the rabbit hole of depair.
Change is hard enough when we’re firing on all cylinders. Putting ourselves behing the eight-ball when we are authentically trying doesn’t help. More so, change, compassion, and forgiveness are all relational actions. They require us to get out of our heads enough to know what is going on inside them.