When "I'm Sorry" Doesn't Feel Like a Real Apology

When you grow up with a narcissistic parent or a parent with unmanaged borderline personality disorder, apologies often function as a way to end the conversation, avoid accountability, or label you as the problem.

And like many aspects of these types of family dynamics, apologies can be confusing and leave you replaying the conversation, wondering if you're being unreasonable by not fully accepting them.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What a healthy apology actually looks like
• Why "I'm sorry" can be a completely reasonable apology in one relationship and feel hollow in another
• The reason your gut flags an apology as insincere, and what your brain is actually tracking
• How the gap between what you experienced and what you're told to feel about it erodes self-trust over time
• Why not accepting an apology, or accepting it cautiously, can be a reasonable response

Ready to go deeper?

The Cycle Breaker's Vault is Torie's self-guided course for the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic traits. It covers dysfunctional family dynamics, boundaries, manipulation, grief, and reconnecting with yourself.

Learn more and get started: confidentboundaries.com/vault

Want ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and the full archive? Join the private feed: confidentboundaries.com/private

Follow Torie on Instagram: instagram.com/cyclebreakertherapist

Follow Torie on TikTok: tiktok.com/@cyclebreakertherapist

Free guide: 10 Boundary Mistakes That Keep You Stuck

If your boundaries keep blowing up or leaving you drowning in guilt, it's usually not you. Learn what problems actually get in the way of setting successful boundaries with toxic parents by downloading my free guide: confidentboundaries.com/opt-in

Transcript

Copy

0:05

Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with narcissistic and unmanaged borderline personality disorder. I'm your host, Torie Wixell, a therapist with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happened to grow up with a narcissist mom who had a lot of BPD traits, and I know a thing or two about how crazy-making these types of relationships can be. I'm so excited to show you what it actually means to break the cycle of dysfunction that we grew up in and help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for joining me. Now let's jump into the show. Welcome back to this week's episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. Thank you once again for joining me for another week talking about surviving and healing from very complicated and dysfunctional family dynamics No major updates from me today other than I am happily settling back into my normal routine, happy to see August And still working on getting the guide out to you I did over the weekend, last week, sometime recently. Life sometimes blurs together I did recently paint my office green, so I'm loving that. If you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you can check it out. But that's about the biggest update I have for you right now. Just trying to get back into a normal routine And starting to catch up on a bunch of life and work that got put on the back burner last month That includes the guide. So hopefully next week I'll have a more in-depth update for you Today I wanna talk about apologies and why the apologies that you may receive from your narcissistic parent or a parent with unmanaged borderline personality disorder don't always feel great, and oftentimes feel pretty freaking awful. Apologies are so interesting In theory, they're great and important, right? Someone hurts someone else they care about in some way, and they apologize in order to show that they understand the hurt that they've caused and to attempt to repair the relationship. A good thing. Very positive social engagement But in reality, when you're dealing with a dysfunctional family dynamic, apologies often, like many things in these types of family dynamics, get very distorted and manipulated And this can be really confusing because you might have a situation where you find that your parent is apologizing to you for their actions, and you're either not buying it, you feel that it's very insincere, or you might hope it's sincere, but then they just go and do the same thing over and over again In these types of family dynamics, when you're dealing with a parent who has narcissistic personality disorder or unmanaged BPD You're dealing with adults who don't frequently take accountability for behaviors that cause harm to the people that they care about These types of parents don't often, if ever, take ownership and accountability when they've acted out, when they've lashed out in some way and caused emotional harm to their relationship and to you personally But that doesn't mean that they don't ever apologize. Some parents don't ever apologize, but some do. And for those that do, it can feel really complicated and confusing, and it can feel like you might be the unreasonable one. If your parent's apologizing, why aren't you accepting that apology and just getting over it, right? At this point, you should let things go and allow them to move on if they are giving you an apology. And this gets really complicated and layered, which is why I thought we would break it down. So going back to apologies are a great thing theoretically. Someone messes up, they cause harm to the person that they care about, and they recognize that, they take ownership, and they apologize and try to repair the relationship. But when you're dealing with these types of parents You're often dealing with Being on the receiving end of words that align with an apology, right?" I'm sorry." Now, that I'm sorry might be a standalone I'm sorry, or it might be an I'm sorry that's also blaming you. I'm sorry I lashed out, but you made me so mad, that's not a, that's not a genuine apology. That's not a healthy apology. Let's say healthy apology, okay? A healthy apology is when someone sees the error in their ways. They see the hurt that they've caused. They might not even fully understand why their behavior caused hurt, but they see that their behavior has caused hurt, and they feel regretful about that. They feel badly about that. In a healthy apology, people apologize because they don't want to hurt you, and they see that their behavior has hurt you. Now, in manipulative and dysfunctional apologies, that's not what happens. What happens is People apologize for various reasons, but not to take accountability or to repair the relationship. Oftentimes, apologies serve as a way to avoid accountability. You can't be mad at me because I've apologized, because I've said I'm sorry, and that's not how apologies work. Apologies don't erase pain. They're an effort, they're an olive branch in an attempt to try to repair if they're a healthy apology, but they don't erase pain. It's not like you get to say, "I'm sorry," and then the pain just dissipates and whatever happened didn't happen. That's not how it works. But there's oftentimes this expectation in these types of families. I apologized, so therefore you need to forgive me. And if you don't forgive me, this is a you problem and you're unreasonable," and the attacking. Or it can be the blaming apology, I'm sorry, but you made me do it," essentially." I did that because of you This is also not a healthy apology. This is also not taking accountability. This is a big deflecting of responsibility And there can be the just like blanket surface level, " I'm sorry," apology. " I'm sorry." It could even be, " I'm sorry I upset you. I'm sorry I made you cry. I'm sorry what I said hurt you." And these types of apologies are a little trickier because in a healthy relationship, in an emotionally healthy relationship, that's a super reasonable apology." I'm so sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry what I said upset you. That wasn't my intention, and I'm sorry it did." Or maybe, " I'm sorry I was feeling really upset and I said something mean, and I'm very sorry that I did that." Those are healthy apologies But when you're dealing with a dysfunctional family dynamic and you get a blank, " I'm sorry," or, "I'm sorry that I hurt you," that I'm sorry may not always feel sincere. It might feel pretty superficial And that might be because of your parents' body language, the way their tone is. It can be for a variety of reasons, right? But it also might be because Although they're saying, "I'm sorry," You might not be confident that they actually grasp that what they did was hurtful. And you also might be doubting their ability to not do it again in the future. Because if someone doesn't really understand why what they did hurt you Unless they seek out support and knowledge trying to understand why that is, either from you by asking questions and being curious, going to therapy, trying to process and explore this, unless they're seeking out knowledge around why this hurt you, and unless they have a plan for what's going to go differently next time, how to avoid repeating this, it's likely to repeat. And so oftentimes you might find yourself feeling like this apology is insincere because I don't think that you're capable of not repeating this behavior. I don't think you even understand or even grasp why this happened in the first place or what was wrong with this, and therefore this feels really insincere. This doesn't carry a lot of weight for me. It's not helping me to feel better I think talking through and understanding some of the reasons why apologies in these types of family dynamics are so layered and complicated and tricky and hard can help you understand the different emotional experiences and reactions that you're having when you're on the receiving end of these types of apologies. So much of our lack of self-trust growing up in these types of family dynamics comes from this incongruence between what we've experienced and what we perceive to be true and real, and what we're being told we should think, feel, and believe about what we're experiencing. And so understanding why even if you get an I'm sorry from your parent, if you still feel the ick around it, there might be really valid reasons for that can help you develop a bit more trust in yourself and your ability to read the situation. And it can help you to see that you might not be unreasonable in not fully accepting the apology or being very suspicious around it or cautious of moving forward, that there might be actual reasons why you feel those things, and those feelings might be incredibly valid in this dynamic So on that note, we'll wrap things up for today. Thank you again for joining me for another week of the You're Not Crazy podcast. I so appreciate you being here, and an extra thank you to everyone who's taken the time to leave a five-star review, share the podcast with a friend, or leave a kind comment. I really appreciate it, and it really helps other people find our little show that could. So until ne- so until next week, take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you again soon. Bye. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. If you like the show, please leave a five-star review to help other cycle breakers find it, and make sure to check the show notes for other ways I can help. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you next week