I Used to Apologize for Existing. Here's What I Say Instead.
"Sorry, quick question."
"Sorry, I know you're busy."
"Sorry, this is probably a dumb thing to ask."
Sorry, sorry, sorry…at times this is hands down my most overused word, the same way people use “um” during their Public Speaking 101 class or valley girls used “like totally.” I use “sorry”. Let’s be clear, I am ALL about taking accountability and apologizing when you have done something harmful to someone else, but that’s not the case here. My guess is you said at least one of these in the last 24 hours, and you probably said it to someone whose job it is to answer your questions. You may have even apologized to an inanimate object this week too. The stranger who stepped on your foot in the checkout line got a sorry as well, and it came from you. Of course it did.
Some of us have turned sorry into punctuation instead of an apology. It opens sentences. It closes emails. It slides in front of every request like a little cushion, so softly that most of us never hear ourselves doing it. I could have competed at a national level. It wasn’t all the time, but when I was in the sorry zone, there was no stopping me. I was saying "sorry to bother you" to people who were not bothered.
If you just felt a little called out, no need to apologize. Sit tight, there is good news. The research offers more than "just stop saying it," and I know firsthand that when sorry is part of your everyday vocabulary, it takes more than a command to quit.
Two records, same life
In 2010, psychologists Karina Schumann and Michael Ross published a study in Psychological Science called "Why Women Apologize More Than Men." One part was a diary study, where volunteers wrote down the offenses they committed each day and whether they apologized. Another part had volunteers rate imaginary and remembered offenses.
Women did apologize more. They also reported committing more offenses. And the men rated offenses as less severe than the women did. The researchers' explanation is that men apologize less often because their threshold for what counts as an offense sits higher.
Think about how this plays out in the real world. As we move through our days in the same spaces, the way we record events is vastly different. The study cannot tell us whose records are accurate (it was volunteers reporting on themselves, so it captures what people noticed and wrote down, not a camera-footage tally of everything anyone did wrong). It did make me wonder how many of my entries were real debts and how many were typos.
The twist: some sorries are good for you
Like I said above, I am a firm believer in apologizing and taking accountability, so this isn’t a "sorry is bad" blog. Research has actually shown that a well-placed and well-intended sorry conveys warmth and can build connection. Alison Wood Brooks, Hengchen Dai, and Maurice Schweitzer, researchers at Harvard and Wharton, tested what they called superfluous apologies. The paper is titled "I'm Sorry About the Rain!" (best title I have read all year).
In one experiment, a researcher stood in a train station on a rainy day and asked strangers if he could borrow a phone. When he opened with "I'm sorry about the rain!", 47 percent of strangers handed over the phone. When he just asked, 9 percent did. In their other experiments, people who apologized for something they obviously did not cause came across as more trustworthy and more empathic.
Grain of salt. The train station comparison was against a cold open, so any friendly opener might have helped, and several of the other experiments used imagined scenarios or scripted partners. Still, the pattern makes sense to me. "I'm sorry about the rain" says "I see you, and I wish this were easier for you." That is warmth, and warmth works.
So here is how I sort them now. There are three kinds of sorry.
The real one. You did something, and it affected someone. This one deserves to be said cleanly: "I got that wrong. I'm sorry. Here's what I'm going to do." No "but," no backstory, no paragraph of context. A real apology with the excuses removed is rare, and people remember it.
The warm one. "I'm sorry that happened." "I'm sorry you're dealing with this." Keep every one of these. They are the rain apologies, and they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
The toll. This is sorry for asking, sorry for needing, sorry for taking up the space you are already standing in. You pay it at the door of every conversation before you have said what you came to say. This is the one I am working on retiring.
Who was I apologizing to?
One of my favorite things about having adult children is the conversations we get to have. I have a standing directive with my kids: "Feel free to call me out." I tell them this because I trust them to be kind and to keep me in check as I age. My daughter has begun practicing and has called me out for apologizing for things I am not responsible for or that are out of my control. A few months ago, my son got a little practice too.
Over the summer, my son was visiting and we had a few glorious days where we were all together bopping around and visiting some of our favorite places. One of those places was one of the last un-remodeled Barnes & Noble bookstores in central Florida. It's central Florida, so parking was a nightmare. As I worked my way into a spot, I needed to reverse and pull forward a few times to readjust. Each time came with an "I'm sorry." After the second or third apology, my son asked, "Why are you apologizing?" There it was, creeping in again. I didn't know. I honestly wasn't sure who I was apologizing to or for what. It was almost like a reflex.
Each one of those sorries that day was a toll. No one in my car cared that it was taking a little longer to park. No one was waiting to pass by. I was the one who felt an apology needed to be said, then repeated over and over. To no one in particular except maybe my car or a parking space.
What I say instead
You do not need to swap every sorry for a speech. Most of the time you can delete it, or trade it for something that means what you actually meant.
"Sorry I'm late" becomes "Thank you for waiting." A 2023 study by Tatsuya Imai in PsyCh Journal tested a close cousin of this swap. About 670 Japanese university students read a friend's reply to their feedback, and the reply was randomly given a thank-you, a "sorry to bother you," both, or neither. The thank-you made the friend feel closer than no thanks. The "sorry to bother you" version did not differ significantly from neither. Adding an apology on top of the thanks gave no extra boost. That was one imaginary scenario, one country, and a roomful of university students, so treat it as a hint.
"Sorry to bother you" becomes "Do you have a minute?" Or just the question.
"Sorry, this is probably a dumb question" becomes "Can you walk me through this part?" Imagine that, a question that sounds like a question.
"Sorry for the long email" becomes "Thanks for reading all of this." Or you cut the line and send it.
"Sorry, I just wanted to check" becomes "Checking on this." Delete the "just" while you are at it. Used this way, "just" does the same job as "sorry."
"Sorry, can I say something?" becomes the thing you were going to say.
And when you do want a sorry, the warm kind, keep it. "I'm sorry that happened" is not on this list.
Count them
Before you try to fix anything, count. Pick one day, put a sticky note next to your phone or laptop, and make a tick mark every time you say or type sorry. No grading, no fixing, just collecting the data. (I would bet actual money that the number surprises you.)
At the end of the day, look at the tally and sort the marks into the three piles: real, warm, toll. I would not be shocked if the toll pile wins by a mile.
You do not have to quit all of it. Keep the real ones and the warm ones. Start by noticing the rest.
If you want somewhere gentle to practice, start with the free Radiant Day Starter Kit. It's a sample morning page and a five-day guide, five minutes a day, built around a few small things you do on purpose. Start here: [link]. It's free, and grabbing it takes two minutes.
So tell me. What is the last sorry you said this week that did not need to be said? Drop it in the comments. I will go first if you need me to.
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