I spent a long stretch of my own life apologizing badly.
Not insincerely – badly. I meant every word of it and I still wanted the conversation to end, and those two things were doing battle in the same sentence. It took me years to notice the second one was winning.
So when a parent tells me they’ve apologized to their adult child over and over and nothing has changed, I don’t think they’re lying and I don’t think their child is being unreasonable. I think something is missing from the apology that neither of them can name.
What is an apology actually for?
Most of us would say it’s for the person who got hurt. But watch what happens in real time and you’ll see that it often isn’t.
“I’m sorry.” Let’s move past this. Let’s forgive and forget. Let’s just move on.
Now, wanting that is natural. Guilt is painful to carry, and we were simply never taught what to do with it. But every one of those statements asks the other person to hold something so that you don’t have to.
In other words, the apology becomes a way to unburden yourself of a difficult emotion. And on the receiving end, that lands as being “managed” rather than being met.
The one that doesn’t land
You can usually hear it in the shape of the sentence. It moves fast. It reaches for the resolution before it has sat in the damage. And it often has a justification attached – a reason, an explanation, a context that quietly does the work of making it smaller.
There’s nothing cruel in that. It’s what most of us do when we can’t tolerate our own guilt.
But the person receiving it doesn’t experience a repair. They experience being asked to close the file.
The one that does
The second kind sounds different, and it is slower.
“What I did must have really hurt. Help me understand what that was like for you.”
Then staying in the moment with that person, instead of explaining or defending why you did it.
That’s the whole difference. Not better wording — a willingness to stay in someone else’s experience without steering it toward your relief. Most of us were simply never taught the second kind, because nobody offered it to us either.
Why “how much more can I apologize” is the wrong question
If you’ve asked yourself that, chances are the apology was never the sticking point.
They likely don’t believe you understood the full impact of what happened. And there’s a fear underneath that — because if you had understood it, you’d be treating it differently. So some part of them stays braced for it happening again.
That’s a different problem than the one you think you’re solving with an apology.
It’s also a more workable one. You cannot apologize your way out of not being understood. You can, however, learn to understand.
This is learnable
It’s a skill, not a personality trait, and it’s most of what becoming Trigger Proof asks of a parent – because the first kind of apology can be repeated for years without anything changing.
If you were a parent with a strained relationship with your adult child, and you have the willingness to look at this with curiosity instead of defensiveness, there’s a version of this conversation that goes differently than the last one did.
This work isn’t for those who need to be right. But if you’re ready to lean in, the next step is a pattern clarity call, where we look at what’s been missed and what it would take to be received differently.
Your guide on the side,
Nima
