We tend to view apologies as a sign of weak character. But in fact,
they require great strength. And we better learn how to get them right,
because it's increasingly hard to live in the global village without
them.
A genuine apology offered and accepted is one of the most profound
interactions of civilized people. It has the power to restore damaged
relationships, be they on a small scale, between two people, such as
intimates, or on a grand scale, between groups of people, even nations.
If done correctly, an apology can heal humiliation and generate
forgiveness.
Yet, even though it's such a powerful social skill, we give
precious little thought to teaching our children how to apologize. Most
of us never learned very well ourselves.
Despite its importance, apologizing is antithetical to the
ever-pervasive values of winning, success, and perfection. The successful
apology requires empathy and the security and strength to admit fault,
failure, and weakness. But we are so busy winning that we can't concede
our own mistakes.
The botched apology--the apology intended but not delivered, or
delivered but not accepted--has serious social consequences. Failed
apologies can strain relationships beyond repair or, worse, create
life-long grudges and bitter vengeance.
As a psychiatrist who has studied shame and humiliation for eight
years, I became interested in apology for its healing nature. I am
perpetually amazed by how many of my friends and patients--regardless of
ethnicity or social class--have long-standing grudges that have cut a
destructive swath through their own lives and the lives of family and
friends. So many of their grudges could have been avoided altogether or
been reconciled with a genuine apology.
In my search to learn more about apologies, I have found
surprisingly little in the professional literature. The scant research
I've unearthed is mostly in linguistics and sociology, but little or
nothing touches on the expectations or need for apologies, their meaning
to the offender and offended, and the implications of their
failure.
Religious writings, however, in both Christian and Jewish
traditions, are a rich source of wisdom on the subject, under such
headings as absolution, atonement, forgiveness, penance, and repentance.
The Talmud, in fact, declares that God created repentance before he
created the universe. He wisely knew humans would make a lot of mistakes
and have a lot of apologizing to do along the way.
No doubt the most compelling and common reason to apologize is over
a personal offense. Whether we've ignored, belittled, betrayed, or
publicly humiliated someone, the common denominator of any personal
offense is that we've diminished or injured a person's self-concept. The
self-concept is our story about ourselves. It's our thoughts and feelings
about who we are, how we would like to be, and how we would like to be
perceived by others.
If you think of yourself first and foremost as a competent, highly
valued professional and are asked tomorrow by your boss to move into a
cramped windowless office, you would likely be personally offended. You
might be insulted and feel hurt or humiliated. No matter whether the
interpersonal wound is delivered in a professional, family, or social
setting, its depth is determined by the meaning the event carries to the
offended party, the relationship between offender and offended, and the
vulnerability of the offended to take things personally.
No-shows at family funerals, disputes over wills, betrayals of
trust--whether in love or friendship--are situations ripe for wounds to
the self-concept. Events of that magnitude put our self-worth on the
line, more so for the thin-skinned. Other events people experience as
personal offenses include being ignored, treated unfairly, embarrassed by
someone else's behavior, publicly humiliated, and having one's cherished
beliefs denigrated.
So the personal offense has been made, the blow to the self-concept
landed, and an apology is demanded or expected. Why bother? I count four
basic motives for apologizing:
o The first is to salvage or restore the relationship. Whether
you've hurt someone you love, enjoy, or just plain need as your ally in
an office situation, an apology may well rekindle the troubled
relationship.
o You may have purely empathic reasons for apologizing. You regret
that you have caused someone to suffer and you apologize to diminish or
end their pain.
The last two motives are not so lofty:
o Some people apologize simply to escape punishment, such as the
criminal who apologizes to his victim in exchange for a lesser
plea.
o Others apologize simply to relieve themselves of a guilty
conscience. They feel so ashamed of what they did that, even though it
may not have bothered you that much, they apologize profusely. A long
letter explaining why the offender was a half hour late to dinner would
be such an occasion. And in so doing, they are trying to maintain some
self-respect, because they are nurturing an image of themselves in which
the offense, lack of promptness, violates some basic self-concept.
