“Stop saying sorry too much.”

“…Sorry.”

You either opened to read this article because you say sorry too much or because you know someone who says sorry too much. If you are the person who says sorry too much, then I want to say that I feel where you are coming from. As one of the people who is guilty of saying sorry or apologizing more than the average person, I would like to give some tips to you so we can kind of break the habit of apologizing so much. If you are a person that knows someone who apologizes often, give this article a read anyway and try to see where we are coming from. It’ll be interesting.

I think that it is safe to say that we’ve all had a moment where someone has said something really sad to you and all you can think to say is “Oh man, I’m so sorry to hear that” and the person replies back “It’s not your fault, don’t be sorry.” Even though you just said sorry, you’re not sorry because you think that it’s your fault, you say sorry because that really stinks what happened and you don’t know what else to say to be sincere besides that it’s a really poopy situation and you feel sorry for them. Sometimes people get that you mean that you feel sorry for them and others think that you somehow worked yourself into being at fault for the situation.

Your friend could say, “My grandma sprained her ankle in Oregon.” And you could reply back with, “Oh dude, I’m sorry to hear that.” And they’ll still say, “Dude don’t say sorry, it’s not your fault.” But the thing is that you already know that it’s not your fault. How could that be your fault? If someone says that to you after you’re done saying sorry that their grandma sprained her ankle, then it’s easy to say, “Oh no, I know that it’s not my fault, I’m just trying to say that I feel your pain and that really stinks.” If you want to try to stop apologizing so much, try to think before you reply and say, “oh my bad” instead of sorry. If you pass by someone and have to maneuver around them, say “pardon me” instead of apologizing. I remember once in school, this one dude bumped into me and he was so used to me saying sorry that he looked at me and waited for me to apologize when he was the one who bumped into me. I was feeling super confident that day so I waited for him in return. Eventually he shook it off and said, “Oh sorry about that.” Me: 1. Classmate: 0.

Something that I always point out to people is that saying sorry is more a habit than anything for me personally. Most of the time I say sorry, I don’t realize that I even said it. The only thing that I’m very sorry for is how many times I’ve said sorry today. Besides that, I will let you know if I’m truly sorry, but otherwise, it’s not because I’m constantly dreading over what I did, especially if it’s not something I should be sorry for. Something that I have been trying to do instead of saying sorry is saying thank you instead. For example, instead of saying "Sorry I didn't know the answer to the question," you could say "Thanks for teaching me/being patient with me, I didn't know the answer to that question." It is an alternative way of expressing what you feel and it's been working really well for me. Give it a try!

If you feel bad or annoying for saying sorry so often, please understand that you are neither of those for saying sorry so often. You are just very empathetic. If you have any friends that actually yell at you for feeling so much, perhaps they aren’t really your true friends. If you have friends that will make you feel dumb or stupid for how you always say sorry, then they are not your friends. A true friend will understand that you are just a person that has the habit of saying sorry and they will be patient with you and try to help you break it if it gets to the point where you lead every sentence with apologizing. Remember that you don’t owe anybody anything, but you do owe it to yourself to remember that you are just a person. If people don’t understand, don’t worry, because you do, and that is all that matters.