Episode 40: The Apology Loop

In this episode, Katie Murray explores the habit of apologising excessively and how it reflects deeper beliefs about self-worth and safety. Discover how this unconscious behaviour can undermine your confidence and authenticity, and learn practical tools to break free from the apology loop.

 Key Topics:

• The story of apologising to inanimate objects and what it reveals about self-perception
• The difference between genuine accountability and automatic, reflexive apologies
• The origins of the apology habit in childhood and early conditioning
• Four common flavours of chronic apologising and how to identify your pattern
• The hidden costs of frequent apologies on self-worth, boundaries, energy, and authenticity
• Simple tools to interrupt the apology reflex: pause and replace, effect labelling, reparenting beliefs, and language auditing
• The importance of connecting with your core identity and expanding beyond conditioned patterns

Resources & Links:

• For support around issues just like this, visit KMC - Work With Me
• Episode 4: The Reason You Keep Beating Yourself Up (Instead of Moving Forward) 

Connect with Katie Murray:

• Instagram
• Website

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome. This is to Our Core with Katie Murray, and this is the place where we peel back our layers to uncover who we really are at our centre. At our core. And think of it as a chat with your bestie, the one who can make you laugh until your belly hurts, who is ridiculously unfiltered, and will lovingly call you forward to help you cut through the noise and get real with yourself. Around here, nothing is off limits. And we are mixing this up with equal parts of humour and heart, so let's dive right in. Okay, I need to start today's episode with a confession. I want to tell you a true story. It occurred not that long ago. I was walking through a supermarket and I bumped into a display stand. Uh, like genuinely walked straight into it, knocked a few things off, made a bit of a scene. Very graceful, I know, and very on brand for me. And do you know what I said? Oh, sorry. To the display stand. I apologized to an to an object that, as far as I'm aware, does not have feelings. I apologize to the stand. And here's the thing: you know, that wasn't even the most embarrassing part. The most embarrassing part is that I actually meant it. Like on some level, some deeply conditioned part of my nervous system genuinely felt responsible for that shelf's feelings. Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, oh, you know, that's just a funny little habit. Everyone does that. Hold that thought, please. Because today we are going to unpack why the habit, that habit of apologizing to all things, not just shelves in supermarkets, is actually anything but harmless. And I'm also going to explain what it is telling you about the relationship that you have with yourself. So welcome back to To Our Core. I'm Katie Murray, your life and mindset coach that's in your pocket and in your eardrums, and the person who also apparently apologizes to the entire confectionery Isle of Woolworths. So let's get into this because today's episode is called The Apology Loop. And why you say sorry when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. Okay, so I'm gonna start by acknowledging something. Apologizing in its truest form is actually a really beautiful human act. Genuine accountability, owning your impact, preparing a relationship, acknowledging harm. That stuff is very important. It matters. I've done a whole episode on accountability without shame. Episode four, if you want to go back and have a little listen, and I stand fully behind the importance of owning your own actions. This episode, though, is about something different. This episode is about the sorry that comes out before you've even processed what happened. It's the reflex, the automatic, almost physical sorry, the sorry that you say when someone bumps into you. Someone bumps into you. The sorry that you say before you ask a question in a meeting, the sorry that prefaces a completely reasonable request, the sorry that lands in your text messages as a kind of emotional cushioning before you say anything of substance. You know, it sounds a little bit like, sorry to bother you, but dot, dot, dot, or sorry, uh, this is probably a silly question. Or sorry, I know you're busy and dot, dot, dot, or sorry, I just wanted to check in. Does this sound familiar? And look, I'm gonna say this with all the love in the world. If you are someone who identifies with any of those examples, those phrases, you are in good company. The majority of my clients who are all very smart, very capable, very self-aware human beings, come to me with some version of this pattern. And a significant portion of them haven't even noticed it yet because it is so automatic. It's so ingrained, it's so normal to them that it doesn't even register as a behavior. It just feels like being polite. And here's what I want you to sit with today Politeness and chronic apologizing are not the same thing. And the difference between the two actually tells you a lot about where you currently stand in relationship with yourself. So let's go there. Let's talk about where the apology loop actually starts because it did not start in the supermarket. It didn't start last week or even a month ago. It started often a very long, long, long time ago. So I invite you to think back. And if you're somewhere that you can close your eyes for a moment, feel free to do that too. Do not do that if you're driving a vehicle. Disclaimer, this is not one to do while you're on the move. However, if you're just chilling at home or listening to this on a plane, shut your eyes down. I want you to think about what it felt like to take up space as a child. Were you the kind of kid who was encouraged to speak up, ask questions, disagree, take up room, take up space, or were you the kind of kid who learned pretty early on that it was safer or easier or more comfortable for everyone involved if you made yourself uh a little bit smaller? Maybe you grew up in a household where conflict felt dangerous, where raised voices meant something was about to go very wrong. And so you learned to preemptively smooth things over, to apologize before anyone had a chance to get upset. Because keeping the peace may have felt like your job. Or maybe you grew up being told that you're just too much, like too loud, be quiet, too sensitive, too intense, too full of energy, too emotional. And so you learn to qualify everything that you said with an apology. Like a kind of disclaimer that said, you know, I'm gnome a lot, I'm sorry, please still like me, please. Maybe you had a parent or a caregiver who, when they were in a bad mood, would become really cold or critical or withdrawing, and you would spend the whole time trying to figure out what the hell you'd done wrong. What you needed to fix exactly, and what you needed to apologize for, even when the answer was nothing. Or maybe, and this one that I see that's incredibly common is that you grew up in a culture, a family or a community or a gender role that told you in a hundred different ways that your needs, your preferences, and your presence was something that required justification. That you taking up space was an inconvenience to others unless you apologized for it first. And I want to be really clear here. None of these early experiences make your parents bad people. Most of the time, they were doing exactly what they were taught. They were working from their own nervous system patterns, their own unprocessed shit. That's what humans do. And those experiences still shaped you. They created a belief somewhere deep in your body that says the way I keep myself safe is by staying small or staying agreeable, you know what, and saying sorry a lot. That belief, when it was formed, was incredibly clever. It was protective. And you know what? I'm gonna have a guess, that it helped you navigate your environment very effectively. The issue is that you're still running it as an adult in contexts where it no longer serves you, where in fact it's actively working against you. And the apology, that reflexive kind of reflex sorry, it's not just a word. It's a signal, it's your nervous system saying, I need to shrink here. I need to preemptively manage how other people feel about me because their comfort, it matters more than my truth right now. So that's what I'm gonna be unpacking here, like a little suitcase. And I want to take you a little deeper here because I think that there are a few different flavors of chronic apologizing, and they're worth distinguishing apart because not all sorries are created equal. The reflex ones. They come from different places, and understanding what your flavor is actually can really matter and can be helpful. So let's start with flavor one. I want you to imagine like I'm serving up ice cream, and this particular flavor of ice cream is called the apologetic preface. I know I wouldn't probably sell very well in an ice cream shop, but stay with me because you're gonna get what I mean. I know you are. This is the sorry that comes before you say what you actually want to say, before you make a request, before you ask a question, before you send an email, you're not sure we'll be well received. It can sound something like, sorry to bother you, but the is there any chance you could? Dot dot dot What this sorry is saying is I'm not sure I'm allowed to want this. I'm not sure my needs are valid. I'm going to apologize for having them before you have a chance to tell me that I shouldn't have them. And this one is rooted in a belief that your needs are a burden. Flavor two at the ice cream shop, this one's called the conflict absorbing sorry. Also, probably not going to be a bestseller in terms of title. And stay with me, because this is the sorry that you say when someone else is upset. Even when you had nothing to do with why they're upset. Your partner might come home stressed about work and something in you immediately wants to apologize or fix it, as though you're the cause. Your colleague snaps at you in a meeting, and your first instinct is to wonder what you did wrong. What this sorry is saying underneath is that other people's emotional states are my responsibility here. If someone near me is dysregulated, I need to fix it. And the fastest way to fix it is to take the blame for it. This one is rooted deeply in hypervigilance. It's a nervous system that has learned to scan for other people's moods and treat them as information about your own safety. Flavor number three, the ice cream shop, this is the self-erasing sorry. This is the sorry that follows you sharing an opinion or taking a strong position on something, or simply existing in a way that, you know, maybe someone else just didn't quite love. You say something real and true for you, and then immediately follow it with sorry, like I probably shouldn't have said that, or sorry, just ignore me. Don't worry about me, or sorry, I know that that's a lot. And what this sorry is saying underneath is that my authentic self is too much. The real version of me needs to be softened or qualified and apologized for. This flavor is rooted in a belief that who you actually are, the unfiltered, the honest, the fully present you is not safe to show. So I'm gonna ask you something. And I genuinely want you to sit with this rather than just moving on. Which flavor resonates most with you? Because the awareness of which pattern is running is where you can actually start to make real change. It is so easy to look at something like chronic apologizing and think, oh, you know, it's just a habit, as though habits are somehow separate from identity. Newsflash, they are not. Our habits are expressions of our beliefs. And our beliefs are expressions of what we decided at some point in our lives that we needed to believe in order to stay safe, to be accepted, to belong, to be loved. All right, so now you understand where it comes from and what it's expressing. Let's talk about what it actually costs you. Chronic apologizing has a price tag, and I am gonna itemize it for you. Think cash register, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching as it's going through. I'm gonna itemize the cost for you. See how many you relate to. Cost number one, price check, it erodes your own sense of self-worth. Every time you say sorry for taking up space, for having a need, for sharing an opinion, you are in a very small yet very real way confirming to yourself that you needed to apologize. You are reinforcing the belief that your presence requires an apology. And over time, that compounds. It becomes background noise of how you see yourself as someone who is fundamentally a little too much or a little too needy, a little too inconvenient. How's that for a cost? Cost number two, price check, it trains the people around you on how to receive you. So this is gonna be one that probably uh might cause a little bit of a fire in your belly because this is gonna require you to pull back the finger pointing at other people, blaming them for how they're treating you and stepping into cause of realizing that you have actually created this. Because this is one that people don't see coming. When you constantly apologize before expressing a need or a boundary or an opinion, you are signaling to the people in your life that your needs and your opinions are negotiable, that you're not entirely sure of them yourself. And you know what? Other people start to treat them that way too. They start to push back more easily, they override your preferences more readily, they take your boundaries less seriously. And it's not because they're a bad person or they're a collective group of bad people. It's because you taught them. You taught them that your yes is soft and your sorry is an invitation to negotiate. Hmm, how you're feeling with the cost of that one and the responsibility that it requires you to step into. Cost number three, price check, it keeps you in a constant state of low anxiety. The apology loop is exhausting. When your nervous system is always scanning for what might need softening, who might be upset, what you might have done wrong, you are living in a state of vigilance that your body was not designed to sustain definitely. And because of that, it is very drainy. It is depleting, and over time, it contributes to that bone-tired feeling that so many of my clients describe, where they can't quite pinpoint why they feel so flat, so stretched, so like they have nothing left for themselves or in the tank. Can you relate to that one? Or maybe you'll resonate with cost number four. It keeps you, the real you, hidden. And this one really matters to me. Every sorry that prefaces your truth is a moment where your authentic self took a step back and let your conditioned self go first. And the world, your people, your community, the people who are out there waiting to find you, they never get to meet the real you. Instead, you dish up the apologized for version. The one who already decided she's too much before anyone else even has a chance to decide that she's exactly enough. Can we sit with that for a second? The version of you that the world is seeing, is it the real one? Or is it the one that learned to apologize first? Now I want to take you on a quick detour here because I know some of you are listening to this and your brain is doing the thing, the thing, where it swings to the opposite extreme. And so I'm going to head it off at the pass. This episode is not a case for becoming someone who never apologizes. It is also not a case for bulldozing through situations without care for the people around you. It is not permission to be abrasive or dismissive or oblivious to your impact. Real apologies, they truly matter. They are one of the most powerful repair tools in human relationships. The ability to say, I got that wrong. I am truly sorry. Here's what I'm going to do differently. That is a sign of genuine emotional intelligence and self-awareness. What we're talking about today is about dismantling the reflex, unconscious, self-erasing sorry, the one that has nothing to do with actual wrongdoing and everything to do with managing other people's perceptions of you. And there is a really simple question that you can use to tell the difference. And I want you to write this down if you're somewhere that you can do that. Or timestamp, just make a note of the time in the podcast episode to come back to. And the question is did I actually do something that caused harm? Or am I apologizing for existing? That's it. That's the question. Did I cause harm or am I apologizing for existing? And if the answer is the former, apologize fully, by all means, genuinely. Own your impact, make your repair, and then move forward. Yet if the answer is the latter, stay with me because the very next section of this episode is for you, my friend. Because we've established so far in this conversation, yeah, we might have a clearer picture of where this comes from, this behavior, this habit. We know what it costs us now. We know the difference between a genuine apology and a nervous system habit. Now, What do we actually do about it? You might be screaming toward the speaker that's pumping my voice into your ears. What do I do about it, Katie? Well, I'm going to give you some really practical tools because you know I love things that are tangible, because while I acknowledge that awareness is great, it's a brilliant starting point. It is rarely enough to shift deeply ingrained pattern on its own. So the first tool that I'm going to invite you to, and how common is this theme in the strategies that I offer you in other episodes, it is the pause and replace. So that's tool number one: pause and replace. Because the apology loop, it's fast. It happens before your conscious brain has even caught up. So the first skill to build is simply creating a micro pause between the impulse and the word. So when you feel the sorry rising, and you will start to feel it now that you're paying attention, instead of suppressing it or pushing through it, just pause. Take one breath and then ask yourself, does a sorry actually belong here? If the answer is yes, lovely, apologize genuinely. If the answer is no, try replacing it with something that is equally warm yet does not contain an apology for your own existence. So instead of leading in with, sorry to bother you, but could you help me with this? Try instead, hey, I've got a question for you. Do you have a couple of minutes? Or instead of sorry, this might be a silly thing to ask, what about you ask? Hey, I've been thinking about something. Can I have your take on it? See the difference in the power of the delivery? You're not extinguishing your existence. Instead of saying something like, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, what about you actually lean in with gratitude and say, Thank you so much for your patience? Here's actually what I've been working on. Can you have a look at it? Notice that none of the alternative replacements that I'm offering you here are cold or rude or demanding. They are warm and they're very human and they're very relational. The only thing missing is the unnecessary apology for taking up space. Tool number two, name it to tame it. And this one comes straight out of neuroscience. Specifically, the work on effect labeling. So when you notice the apology impulse arising within you, instead of just acting on it, try naming what's underneath it, even if it's just to yourself. Something like, I notice I want to say sorry here. Hmm, what's actually going on? Am I feeling anxious about how this will land? Am I worried I'm asking for too much? Am I actually scared of this person's reaction here? Because naming the feeling, even like super briefly in your own head, activates the prefrontal cortex in your brain and gently takes the foot off the panic break of the amygdala, your threat center. It is one of the fastest ways to interrupt an automatic pattern because it brings consciousness to something that was operating entirely below the surface. Tool number three, reparent the original belief. And this one is slower work, and it's the kind of work that I do deeply with clients, and sometimes you absolutely do need a guide in that. However, I just want to plant a seed here today. Remember those earlier experiences we talked about, the ones that taught you that your presence required an apology. Those experiences created a belief, and beliefs, unlike facts, you know what? Good news, they are changeable. So when you notice the sorry coming up, see if you can trace it back. Where did you first learn this? This request, this need, this opinion, this version of you. When did you learn that you needed to soften that? How old does it feel? How old do you feel? And what does that younger part of you need to hear right now? Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply say to yourself, I am allowed to be here. I am allowed to want this. I am allowed to ask. And it's not just this affirmation that you slap on like a band-aid, episode five of this podcast, if you want to know why I feel strongly about that. It is instead a genuine felt embodied permission slip that you offer to the part of you that's still waiting for someone to tell her that she's safe. Tool number four. Here's a challenge for you. A week-long experiment, shall we say. Just one week, though, and it's really simple. I invite you to notice every time you say sorry. That's it. Not asking you to judge it, not asking you to analyze it, not even asking you to change it. Certainly not asking you to beat yourself up about it. I just want you to notice. Even keeping like a note on your phone, like in your notes section, if that helps, tally up those sorries. Start to build a picture of when it happens, who it happens with, what context it arises in most. Because awareness does precede change every single time. And the data that you can actually gather about your own pattern in just one week will be more useful to you than anything that I could tell you today, because it will be specific to you, to your life, to your nervous system. Now, I want to bring back in a theme that I talked about very early in this episode, and that is identity. Because you know that that's where we always end up on this podcast. It is about identity and who you are to your core. And the apology loop is not just a communication habit, it is an identity statement. And when you consistently apologize for your presence or your needs or your truth, you are communicating to yourself and to the world something about who you believe you are. You are saying, I am someone who needs, whose needs require justification. I need to explain myself and why what I need is warranted. It is telling the world that I am someone who needs to soften myself before I step forward. And the version of yourself that you're living into, the one shaped by all of those sorries, it's not the whole you. It is a part of you, a part that developed in response to very specific conditions, specific relationships, and specific moments in time. And it is not the you. And she deserves some compassion, not criticism. What I do want to invite you into is a space about expanding. It's about saying, you know what, I see you. I understand why you're here, and there is more of me available now. There is a version of me that knows that she's allowed to take up space, that knows that her needs are valid, that knows her presence is not an inconvenience. That version of you is not something you have to build from scratch. She's already there, in there. She's in you. She's just been waiting quietly, like underneath, buried underneath all of those sorries. What would it feel like to let her speak first? And I want to share something with you that happened in a coaching context. I won't use names, and it's really relevant and stayed with me. I had a client, incredibly capable woman, successful career, people who loved her, who started almost every single thing she said in our sessions with an apology. Sorry, this might sound stupid, or sorry, I don't know if this makes sense, or sorry, I just keep going back to the same thing. A couple of sessions in, I gently reflected it back to her. I said, I noticed that you apologize before almost every sentence. For what purpose do you do that? What do you think that's about? And she went quiet for quite a long time. And then she said, I think I've spent my whole life worried that what I think isn't worth saying. And I just need to paint the picture here. This was a woman with a master's degree, a woman who ran a team, a woman whose friends would describe her as one of the wisest people they knew. And yet, somewhere underneath all of that, there was still a version of her that genuinely believed that her thoughts needed an apology before they were allowed to enter a room. That's the apology loop. That's what it costs. And that's why I'm talking about it today. So here's what I want you to take from this episode. The sorry you say when you've done nothing wrong is not just a word. It is a window. A window into a belief you formed about yourself a long time ago in conditions, you know what, that probably no longer apply to your situation. About a version of you that needed to shrink in order to stay safe, either emotionally or physically, and a version of you that did an incredible job. She kept you safe. She navigated probably what was some genuinely difficult terrain. She just needs to be reminded that she doesn't need to lead every conversation anymore. If you need to hear this, down tools, my friend. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to make requests without a disclaimer. You are allowed to share your opinion without an apology. You are allowed to exist fully and presently without preemptively softening yourself for other people's comfort. That is not arrogance. That is not rudeness. That is not you being difficult. That is knowing who you are and deciding, you know what? She's fucking worth showing up as. And I think if you have made it to this point in this episode, some part of you already knows that. Some part of you is ready. So this week, I invite you, try the pause, notice the sorry. Ask yourself, did I cause harm or am I apologizing for existing? And then see what's possible when you let the real answer guide what comes out of your mouth next. And you know what? I'm gonna be back next week with another episode. And in the meantime, if today resonated with you, I have linked in the show notes both my group program and one-to-one coaching offerings to offer you support around this. If this is something that you are like, whoo, goodness, it's like you read my mind. And until then, take care of yourselves. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for spending time with me today on To Al Core. If something landed in your heart or gave you a much needed giggle, consider sharing it with a friend who also may need this as a timely reminder. And go on. You know you want to. Give me a five-star review so that this podcast can land in the ears of many, many more people. Because remember that life is too short to stay on the surface. Keep living, loving, and laughing all the way to your core. Go make life great. And if you want support around this, go to the show notes to find out more. Until next time, I'll meet you back here with more truth, laughter, and a whole lot of heart.