How to apologize more effectively and truthfully/wholeheartedly

It’s never easy to recognize when one is wrong. Our society prioritizes and rewards us when we’re right making it that much harder for us to accept when we are wrong. But we can and are often wrong, and we can’t ignore that. When you say or do something that offends or hurts someone, you are in the wrong. You should apologize and open up that discussion of what’s really going on. It can be terrifying to accept or face someone when you’ve wronged them. From personal experience, I avoid and run away from someone when I think they’re mad at me or upset with me for something I did because I fear the confrontation and eventual fall out. But avoiding the problem only makes it worse. So to help myself and others in learning how to apologize more effectively and truthfully/wholeheartedly,  here are some rules to help guide you when you’ve wronged someone and are trying to work towards reparations or amending that relationship:

• Don’t make excuses. Own up to what you did and its impact even if that was not your intention.
• Don’t try to rationalize or argue your way out of this. Truly listen to what the other person is saying without arguing back or commenting.
• Do not gaslight people! Value and legitimize what the other person is saying without trying to convince them that they are wrong and misunderstood the situation. Their perspective matters and is valid, so respect it and do not try to rewrite their experience. If you think something else went down, speak from your perspective not from a factual standpoint or a “right” standpoint.  
• APOLOGIZE! You hurt someone and you need to acknowledge that.
• Do not expect an apology will make everything better. This is just the first step.
• Work to think of changes you can do to avoid hurting people again.
• Set up a call out method or system in place for calling people (including yourself) out when they (and/or you) say or do something hurtful and problematic.
• Really try to minimize the time between when something hurtful takes place and when you talk to someone about it (whether it’s calling them out or apologizing for the act). The shorter that time lapse, the stronger the cognitive association between act and impact. The more time that passes, the less clear and less relative the two become.
• Begin to plan how to repair this relationship: have to regain trust, solidify connection, and work through truly understanding one’s actions and their impact.
• Reflect on your own dealing with the situation and separate your acts from your sense of self. You are not inherently a bad person for saying or doing something that hurt someone else. Your actions or words need to be addressed and adjusted but your worth as a person should not fluctuate because of this. Do not correlate criticism or feedback of your actions or words with your self worth.

Personally, this is last one is always hard for me because I jump to think “I am bad”,” I am a screw up”, and ” I continuously let people down because there’s something wrong with me”. This makes it hard for me to recognize when I’ve wronged someone else because then I feel like have to defend my self worth by defending my actions or reasoning behind my actions even when I know I’m wrong. Recently, my sister called me out on a string of events where I let her down. I knew I’d let her down and should have done better, but I avoided her for months because I feared her words and my reaction to them. Additionally, I fear what this means and where to go from here. When I wrong others, I assume that I am wrong as a person and that others should not and will not want to engage with me anymore. So, rather than face and accept that I’ve wronged them and need to work to repair this damage done, I run away and hope to never have to deal with my wrongful doing.

Regardless though, when you wrong someone it does not have to be the end of the road. People mess up, people let each other down, and people also grow and learn from their actions. When you wrong another that does not have to end there, you can and should apologize then work to change and grow from that. You are malleable and ever changing, so learn to accept when you’re wrong and be prepared to do some critical work to change your behavior.

Dear my hurt,

You might not understand or fully be able to unpack everything, but please know that you are of utmost important to me, (pain). You get me to move and not move, you look out for me, and you scare me. As a result, you have left a lasting impact on me that I’m still experiencing. I see the epigenetic legacy of pain and violence that liter my family’s past and seep into my own life, and I work to unpack, heal, and unlearn those patterns. I recognize that this is a work in process that requires a lot of time, effort, and work, but I also refuse to let it “be okay” because violence should never be okay. Yes, I’ve been hurt and my ancestors and friends have been hurt, but reciprocating pain and violence is not challenging or changing anything. Just because someone else hurts you or acts violently towards you does not justify you to enact violence and cause them pain. If someone punches you does not give you the right and justification to punch them right back. It’s not an issue of being moral, it’s a fundamental understanding, empathy, and love for a fellow beings life and quality of life.

Recently, I’ve come to realized how troubling violence is for me. I strive not to enact it on others or myself, but two recent events have made me realize I still need to grow in this aspect a lot. After being with the someone for some time now, I’ve recently realized how normalized violence is in our relationship when they hit me a little harder than usual, and they didn’t apologize immediately. The hit was not terribly painful, but it’s blow left a deep sense of hurt at my core.They tried to reason that I was going to hurt them or that I had in the past, and I found myself looking more and more like my parents, my grand father who beat my grandmother, and the countless others in my life and in the lives of my loved ones that have accepted and internalized violence. Have I truly taken up my oppressors’ tools to continue the cycle? Fundamentally, the answer is yes, and that reality greatly disturbs me.

The truth is that I’ve internalized my own pain, so much so, that I’m replicating my oppressors’ cycle of violence. I normalize in how my friends and I “drag” each other around, in how I play fight with my boo thang of the moment, in how I say something hurtful without thinking it through, and in how I am violent towards myself. And while all these have varying degrees of severity and impact, none of them are all that great and are definitely not okay. All of these acts normalize pain and undermine the shared life essence of each one of us. It decenters and corrupts the essence of life by commodifying and devaluing life itself. It’s okay if your best friend says mean things to you because they still love you, it’s okay that your partner digs their nails into your skin sometimes because they don’t mean to hurt you only “play”, it’s okay if you harm yourself because you aren’t dying or trying to kill yourself. None of these are okay, and in no way is violence ever okay. So, I’m going to stop play fighting, verbally dragging friends, and saying harmful things without thinking of their true impact. I am done inviting others to hurt me and done hurting others because this is still participation in a cycle of violence. I refuse to let my trauma and legacy of pain harden me, therefore, I will continue to love and give myself fully to those I love and care for. It may be hard to do so since violence is so second nature to me now, but putting in that extra effort and strain to do so is worth destroying and unlearning a harmful cycle of behavior. I strive to celebrate and center the life that flows through me, my family, my friends, and my fellow beings. Here’s a short poem that further defines and celebrates the Mayan’s conceptions of the significance of life (essence), community, and humanity as a whole.

IN LAK’ECH

Tú eres mi otro yo.

You are my other me.

Si te hago daño a ti,

If I do harm to you,

Me hago daño a mi mismo.

I do harm to myself.

Si te amo y respeto,

If I love and respect you,

Me amo y respeto yo.

I love and respect myself.

(“Pensamiento Serpentino”, Luis Alvarez)

Thank you for reading,

❤ life as an agoraphobe

Dear the boy who knew nothing,

Yesterday, I met you, and you thought you knew me. Yes, I’m open and  generally unapologetic about who I am and what I’ve been through, but I hadn’t talked to you for more than an hour and you thought you knew me and my circumstance. Well let me remind you that you don’t. You don’t know me, and therefore, you have no right to tell me what to do or use what little you think you know to hurt me.

Yes, I struggle with self harm. Yes, I have visible faint scars, and you noticed. But you don’t know the half of it nor should you tell me self harming is not the solution. I understand you’re trying to be helpful or nice or whatever you think you were trying to be, but you don’t know me. And what you said came off really hurtful and demeaning. Yes, self harm is not good. It is something I am trying to get past, but it is not something you just quit and walk away from. Trust me, I’ve tried many times. The thing you don’t know about cutting is how addicting and powerful it can be for handling emotional overflows. It’s super relaxing and effective, and after a while, your body craves it. Your arms shake and itch with a need to feel that sudden chilling slowing down of space and time, that absolute serenity, and that tangible feeling of physical pain. I don’t mean to romanticize something that is harmful and violent, but I want to remind you that I’m not ignorant of the drawbacks and real harm self harm causes.

Sometimes for crisis moments, I do cut to regain control and to avoid letting my emotions ride higher and less controllable. I cut to avoid disassociating from my body and putting myself in a possibly more vulnerable and dangerous situation. Though self harm is not a long term solution, if it might stop the inflow of suicidal ideation or impending disassociation, I do cut. Ideally, I should try other methods of self coping before allowing my emotions to escalate, I know this, but it’s a work in progress. I will get past this with time and practice, but your negative words and judgment aren’t helpful. Telling me just not to cut because it’s not a solution and will only bring more problems is harmful. You don’t know enough about me to try to weigh into my life’s decisions, and you shouldn’t tell someone to just quit self harm as if it were that easy. In doing so, you’re undermining all my efforts and stripping my agency by assuming I don’t know and need reminding to take care of myself. So, next time you are thinking of being nice or helpful or whatever, please rethink it and try to think of a way to be helpful that centers the person’s agency and efforts. Don’t assume you know anything, and don’t try to “save” anyone. Because no one can save anyone but themselves.

Sincerely,

the person who doesn’t need saving

-life as an agoraphobe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/why-bernie-sanders-mental-health-joke_b_9412124.html

❤ lifeasanagoraphobe