Compulsive apologies,

Remember Uraih Heep from David Copperfield how he and his mother kept apologizing and mother constantly apoligized and affirmed their humbleness and god knows what.  Somewhere this scepticism towards people who declare their humbleness and constantly apologize stayed with me, I concluded that “ati vinayam durtalakshanam”  until I regressed one client to deal with some issue.

This client lets call her Maya  to honour the illusions of life, came to me with some issues, and what I observed about was her tendency to constantly apologize rest assured my antenna shot up, but as we worked towards the core issue what I realized that the issue was more about having low self worth.

As I looked back on all those compulsive apologizers I realized that was a chronic and almost unconscious habit.  Of course on one level it is a social conventions and keeps interactions between people polite, and can be helpful, but somewhere when we say say sorry we are taking responsibility for something that has gone wrong in the situation. Whether its negotiating a parking spot or moving through the supermarket aisles, or reaching for what we want sometimes saying sorry is the right thing to say, but many atimes an excuse me would be more appropriate.

We tend to use the word sorry to defuse tension, but then what we land up conveying is that the person has more right to be there than we do.  When this happens too often then its  the red flag to see where in our psyche is this coming from? It could be a pattern that needs to be broken.

The first step to any healing is being aware of the situation without really beating ourself about it.  noticing our usage of the word sorry for a day or two we might realize how often we use it.

The next step would be to acknowledge what exactly we feel just before we use it. it could be a sense of being threatened, embarrassed, intensely anxious or any other feeling.

It could be an unhealed inner child asking for attention. Once we get there then resolution is easy. It would also render us free apologize only when we mean it.