Why Won’t He Apologize?
People take in very little information when they are on the defensive. This means apologies are an art of delicate relationship repair. Dr Harriet Lerner brilliantly shares the secret sauce and offers a courageous six sentence guide to reaching the one who hurt you.
Here is the sauce: in order to apologize a person needs a strong sturdy platform of self-worth on which to stand and from that expansive vantage point look at their bad behaviour. They can apologize because they can see their mistakes from a much bigger picture of who they are as a human being. However, the non-apologizer stands on such a small rickety platform of self worth that to apologize could flip them from their tightrope of defensiveness into a huge canyon of shame and low self-esteem.
So how do you apologize? Internalize the six-sentence script and put it into your own wording. Focus on how you feel – not the other person’s crime sheet. Keep it short. Don’t overload the circuits with your intensity. If you are the one who needs to apologize, drop the defensiveness. Listen carefully to the hurt person’s pain even if you think it is exaggerated and apologize for the piece you can agree to with all your heart. If you can get both sides of the equation right all your relationships will benefit.
