A lot of people have been asking about the tricks I alluded to, so I figured I’d go over my favourite.
It’s amazing how often people apologise to express a sentiment of gratitude. It could be for myriad reasons, habit, not knowing other ways to express themselves, being afraid grace will be taken away for not making themselves small enough. This leads to difficult situations as receiving those apologies can be very awkward, and that awkwardness can get in the way of being an effective help to them.
My favourite way around this isn’t a flat “it’s alright” or “you dont need to apologise”. Them struggling to believe it’s alright is why we’re here and they’re apologising because they’re making an earnest attempt to communicate something, so in a sense they do need to.
What I do is look at what they’re apologising for (“I’m sorry for wasting so much of your time”) and look at what’s being communicated here that could be phrased as gratitude instead. Then I’ll gently offer an alternative such as “Do you mean to say, ‘Thank you for spending so much time with me’?”
When these feelings are expressed in the form of gratitude, it’s a far less internally damaging train of thought and a more comfortable and useful thing to hear on the outside.
Often I find this is a relief to them because for many people, the apologies were never meaningless patter. They were an earnest attempt to convey information and pain, and finally it’s being treated as something worth listening to instead of a detriment to be sat through or corrected.
It’s important to remember the following details.
- Sometimes sorry means sorry. This isn’t a blanket find and replace. It won’t be every single instance of the word sorry, but it will work for a lot of them.
- Explain what you’re doing. Explain to them how often these sentiments can be interchanged. If you start doing this without communicating you’re very likely to be met with confusion and shrinking and misinterpretation of your goals.
- Build their confidence through this. The goal is that eventually they will one day express gratitude by default in place of the apologising. Sometimes point out that they apologised and let them rework it themselves. Take note of where they succeed at this and congratulate them. It’s genuinely such a big step.
- Be careful of putting words in their mouth. You want to be wary of yourself, and be sure that the replacements you offer are an accurate interpretation of what they mean to say. In many cases, they won’t have the confidence to correct you, or lack sometimes the clarity to know if you’re right or not. Their ability to correct you will grow with their confidence and trust in you, but never declare that “This is what you’re feeling.” You’re not the expert here. Offer everything more as “could this be what you’re feeling?” Give them as much space to speak up for themselves as you can.
That’s the basics of it all. It will take to some slower than others, maybe it won’t take to others at all. But I’ve seen efforts to improve that *day* from some of the people I love the most. No one wants to be seen as a burden, but for people like this, their attempts to escape being seen that way push them deeper. Giving them tools, teaching them how to use them and being patient while they learn will be more effective than being chastised. Every Time (in my humble experience.)
Go forth and make that poor thing say thank you.
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