How to Forgive and Accept an Apology

Doug Downs (00:09):

In March, 2015, Renee Napier and Eric Smallridge spoke to a small school group of about 60 students at Barron Collier High School in Naples, Florida. It was an emotional discussion. Smallridge shared that back in May, 2002. At about 2:30 in the morning, he decided to drive home. He was drunk. With Renee seated beside him, Eric described to the students how he caused a crash with another vehicle that night and killed 20-year-old Lisa Jo Dickson, and 20-year-old Meaghan Napier, Renee's daughter. In court he was sentenced to two counts of DUI manslaughter, 22 years, 11 for each life lost. Renee recalls she was excited about that sentencing. At first for a while it felt to her that justice had been served, but later as she thought about it, she realized she was not okay because no one had won. Smallridge apologized in court and then again from prison. He sent both families a note to tell them how sorry he was. Napier says that's when her healing began. In 2006, Napier and the Dicksons persuaded a judge to reduce Smallridge's sentence partly so he could give speaking engagements with Renee at various schools. In 2012, musician Matthew West read this story and wrote this song

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Today on stories and strategies. Can forgiveness set us free?

(02:19):

My name is Doug Downs. Music Off the top, Matthew West, Forgiveness, written by Matthew on the Sparrow label. Just a quick note off the top, we have a newly designed website for this podcast. The link is in the show notes, but if you just Google Stories and Strategies will come up. The first page is our business webpage. I'd love it if you check that out, but really, I know you want the podcast tab. Click the tab. Top right, the new podcast website has all of our episodes, our YouTube videos or blog posts, four episodes, feedback channels if you wanted to apply to be a guest on the podcast. It's a cornucopia of stuff and I'd be pretty thrilled if you followed us on the website and sent a note to us there. We always respond. The team has worked hard to build this website, so thanks to Emily and to Neil and to Doug One at Communicatto for helping us with that. My guests this week are Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy. Susan, you are joining us from San Francisco. How are things there?

Susan McCarthy (03:23):

Pretty good. It's a cool gray day

Doug Downs (03:25):

As it should be right in winter, just a little bit of gray.

Susan McCarthy (03:29):

Yes, it may have dropped down to the forties last night, but it was bearable.

Doug Downs (03:34):

That is weather. Weather. Susan. I just hope you'll be okay. Thank you. Marjorie, you're in New York. Probably a little warmer than me in Canada's Rocky Mountains, but maybe not a whole lot. How's New York today?

Marjorie Ingalls (03:46):

New York is good. Also a little gray and wet, and I am going to see Sweeney Todd tonight on Broadway.

Doug Downs (03:52):

Sweet. You are both former journalists who've been studying and analyzing apologies in the news, pop culture, literature, politics at sorrywatch.com since 2012. Great website by the way. Enjoy. I got to laugh out of it. Is that the wrong, is that approach? Should I not be laughing at that when I go through it? Should I be? Thank

Marjorie Ingalls (04:13):

God we're doing something right.

Doug Downs (04:15):

Oh, good, good.

Susan McCarthy (04:16):

We were trying to make you laugh. Oh,

Doug Downs (04:18):

Perfect. You're both authors, including your new book, Getting to Sorry, the Art of Apology at Work and at Home. There's a link to it in the show notes. It brought me to you, Susan. You normally write about wildlife and animal behavior, including co-authoring when elephants weep the emotional life of animals. You've also written for Discover the Guardian Parade, Smithsonian Institute, and Wired. Marjorie. You're previously a writer for Tablet magazine and contribute to articles and reviews of children's and young adult books for the New York Times. Your last book, Mamala Knows Best sounds like a good one. Last week we talked about how to say, I'm sorry, how to make the best apology. This week's I think is even more profound and even tougher in a lot of ways. How to accept, genuinely accept an apology. So first off, do I have to, am I obliged even if someone's made a very real apology, am I obliged to accept that?

Susan McCarthy (05:22):

No, you're not.

Marjorie Ingalls (05:23):

We like to say apologies are mandatory. Forgiveness is not. You can't control whether someone else forgives you. You can control how you apologize. And when it comes to your decision to forgive or not, there are acts that are unforgivable and a lot of times people pressure you to forgive because of their discomfort, because they want harmony in the house. They want relationships between family members to be easier. They want relationships in a workplace to be easier rather than actually deal with the underlying issues that made the apology have to happen in the first place.

Susan McCarthy (06:07):

If you're not inclined to accept an apology, you can say, I need to think about that. You can say, thank you for apologizing. I need to think about whether I can accept that. I need to sit with this. Whatever your phrasing is. There are some people who never accept an apology grudge holders, and I advise not being in a relationship with them.

Marjorie Ingalls (06:33):

Yeah, the medieval philosopher Maimonides said that someone who's done something wrong is obligated to apologize three times, and if after the third apology, the person still will not forgive them. It's as if the sin has sort of bounced from the sinner to the person who won't forgive. And while we wouldn't go that far, I think it's interesting to note that when there is a good and authentic apology, when there is perhaps hope for a relationship, it's worth thinking about what steps could you take to make it easier for you to accept this apology? Sometimes it's that the person's intentions are good, but their words aren't. And in that case you can say, thank you for this. What I need to hear you say is, or I appreciate that you feel bad about X, but I need you to apologize for Y.

Doug Downs (07:29):

I like that. Let me bounce something off both of you and give me your feedback. To me, it feels like if a person makes a genuine apology, what I do owe is an effort to try to accept it. And the reason I'm saying that before you tell me no, Doug, the reason I'm saying that is we began the last episode by saying part of what makes society an interwoven fabric is the apology. And there are two sides to that. One is making it, the other is accepting it. And do I not at least owe a bit of effort and recognition to a real apology as part of that fabric of society?

Marjorie Ingalls (08:13):

I really liked how in the last episode Susan pointed out that we often forget that apologies can be really good for the apologizer as well as the person who hears the apology. And I do think it's worth noting that forgiveness can be really good for the person who forgives. It can be good for your immune system, your blood pressure, your heart rate, your sleep, but only if forgiveness is your choice and doing it works for you. And there are certainly ways you can get to the place where you can forgive without that spiritual bypassing, without demanding forgiveness, without either the person who's asking for forgiveness or people around that person demanding that everyone skip all the hard work of it, dealing with anger and sorrow and repress the bad feelings. We have a society that really loves forgiveness stories and doesn't tend to really care how we get there and doesn't really tend to care or sometimes deliberately doesn't care about. We like stories in which people with less power forgive people with more power. When victims of a church shooting forgive the shooter when victims of the Holocaust forgive Nazis. And I think that's worth looking at our societal love of those kinds of stories. But I also think that if you are capable of this act of forgiveness, it'd be a beautiful, powerful, potent thing for both the asker and the giver.

Doug Downs (09:46):

We have a tendency to brush off, apologies quickly. Someone makes an apology, even if it's a very sincere, very delicate issue, we tend to say, no worries, no dramas. Don't sweat it. It's all good. I see this all the time. A, we're brushing it off. Secondly, that can actually be a mistake if we're genuinely hurt.

Susan McCarthy (10:10):

If someone went to a great deal of effort and soul searching to apologize to you, it's not appropriate to say whatever happens that should be acknowledged. And I think one simple problem here is that we don't have very many models. We don't see how apologies are accepted. I know that growing up I didn't see many apologies, and I don't remember seeing any apology acceptances and just knowing the simple phrases like, I accept your apology. Thank you. I know that was hard for you. I appreciate it.

Marjorie Ingalls (10:48):

Yeah. A lot of us had parents and teachers who didn't really model what to do, and there are often a lot of cliches around, I'm sorry, I accept your apology. I forgive you, do you forgive me? And that kind of reductiveness isn't really helpful and doesn't really deal with the big emotions that go with both apologies and forgiving. Yeah,

Doug Downs (11:14):

It's not a couple of boxes to be checked.

Marjorie Ingalls (11:16):

Exactly. So if you are a parent, it is a great thing to model that you and your spouse or partner can have a fight. And if it happens in front of your kids, it does because we're human. But then seeing how you process, the regret that you have for what happened and how you say you're sorry and how you forgive are huge lessons to give a kid.

Doug Downs (11:40):

What does the research say about how forgiveness helps the receiver? You mentioned this Marjorie, that our mental health, our physical wellbeing, can be improved by reaching the point of forgiveness. Does forgiving actually help me forget?

Marjorie Ingalls (11:59):

Yes, there is research showing, Susan, do you want to do this renick effect? You're so good at talking about it.

Susan McCarthy (12:06):

Oh, sure. Yeah. This was this interesting thing we came across, which basically a completed action is forgettable, but something that is an action that is open, that is pending, that is unfinished, is memorable. And the way this often plays out in real life is four in the morning you wake up and you think I said the stupidest thing. Oh, I'm just such a jerk. Oh. But if you actually get a chance to go to the person and say, I am so sorry, I said that stupid thing to you, that isn't how I think of you. Or whatever the nature of the apology is, and they accept the apology, it is, it just goes away. You're going to have to think about something else to beat yourself up for at four in the morning, but that particular thing goes away. And I noticed this when we were writing the book. I had a couple of great examples of instances where I had messed up and apologized, and I thought, oh, that would be perfect for the book. What was it that I said anyway? Oh, that bothered me for a long time. What was it?

Doug Downs (13:15):

You can't remember.

Susan McCarthy (13:17):

I cannot remember. So the book is missing a couple of really good stories because I apologized and it's a finished action and I've forgotten it.

Marjorie Ingalls (13:25):

Another story that happened after the book came out was a friend of mine from college who I hadn't talked to in years, reached out to apologize for an incident freshman year, and I don't know if your viewers can see me, but I got gray hair. Freshman year was a long time ago, and he and I had forgotten it until he apologized for it. He wanted to borrow my notes right before an exam, and I didn't want to give it to him. It was the day before the exam, and he ended up throwing the notebook at me and the wire cut my lip a little bit, but it was a stupid tantrum that a 17 or an 18-year-old had. He had been carrying that for years. And he reached out to apologize, and I was able to say, oh my God, that is so brave of you after so many years of thinking about this to apologize for it. I completely forgive you. I hadn't thought about it in a million years. Thank you. And it was something that was so gratifying for both of us.

Susan McCarthy (14:33):

I've noticed that when we do events, sometimes people in the q and a will say, they'll say something that they're clearly have something very specific in mind. They'll say, when is it too late to apologize? Is four weeks and two days too long?

Doug Downs (14:50):

No.

Susan McCarthy (14:51):

And we say, no, not too late. That's awesome.

Marjorie Ingalls (14:54):

It's never too late to apologize. You just have to be careful about how you approach someone who might not be expecting to hear from you and who might be distressed to hear from

Doug Downs (15:03):

You. How about forgiving myself?

Marjorie Ingalls (15:09):

It's so hard for us. On the one hand, we are defensive creatures who want to always see ourselves as the hero of our own story, who want to always see ourselves as basically good people who are correct. But on the other hand, we also know that everyone screws up and self-Forgiveness is so important because if you are capable of self-forgiveness, you are capable of doing the act of expecting others to be able to forgive, to be able. It's again, it's part of this. What are the steps that we can all take to make the world a place we want to live in? We can acknowledge that we live in a screwed up world where there are all kinds of biases, but anything I can do to say, you know what? I marinate in the world that we live in, and I have internalized some of its flaws, and it's my job to try to better myself. It's my job to forgive myself when I screw up and know, you know what? I screwed up. It means I try harder next time. Nobody is perfect. Nobody

Susan McCarthy (16:12):

Is perfect. And we have these inner critics that often expect perfection from ourselves where we expect it from no one else. We say things to ourselves that are so mean and so sweeping and so false. And if you ask yourself, would I ever say that to anyone else? Would I ever say to anyone else and think it that they are a useless piece of garbage? No, don't say that to yourself. Don't treat yourself that badly. So I think it's useful to remind yourself when you're trying to forgive yourself, how you would behave towards another person that you respected.

Marjorie Ingalls (16:49):

Yeah. I think one of the great philosophical texts of our age has been the TV show, the Good Place, and Michael, this Bad Angel character says, and he's learning how to be a good, I guess being because he's not human. But what matters isn't if people are good or bad, what matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday, and that is something that human angel demon, we could all bear that in mind.

Doug Downs (17:19):

That's good. Sometimes I wonder if we beat ourselves up because as you say in the book, I am the hero of my own story. There is a part of my brain that thinks that way, and yet I'm coming face to face with I'm wrong here. I'm not a hero. And therefore, to balance the scales in my brain, I tear myself down, you're crap. You're terrible. You're worthless because another part of the scale is saying you are a hero.

Susan McCarthy (17:49):

It's interesting how primitive some of these mental gymnastics we go through, if you were trying to motivate another person, you wouldn't find that helpful. But we use it to motivate ourselves. Doesn't work.

Doug Downs (18:05):

No. What advice would you give someone listening right now who's holding a grudge and may have every reason and right to do so?

Susan McCarthy (18:16):

I would suggest that they ask themselves what the effect of the grudge is on themselves like this. They were mistreated in some way that's real and legitimate. How is it affecting them to hold onto that thought? Is it occupying too much space in their brain? Is it hurting them and upsetting them? What value are they getting from keeping that grudge?

Marjorie Ingalls (18:46):

I think again, we have said that not everything is forgivable. And I think it is worth examining yourself to see whether you're grudge holding or whether you are angry at something that you are legitimately entitled to be angry for. I mean, one of the things that we've looked at in the book is research on apologies in medicine and why bad medical apologies make people so vindictive and make juries vindictive. There tends to be this shorthand saying, oh, you shouldn't apologize because that opens you up to liability. And if you actually look at the research and the Harvard Hospital system looked at the research that is extremely reductive and not true, which is, you can read more about that in the book, but what I would just say now is that people want their pain to mean something. People want their pain to not be for no reason. So if you can't forgive a thing that was done to you, is there a way that you can put something else back out in the world to prevent that pain from happening to somebody else? And that can be a really good way to affect healing both in yourself and in the world at large.

Doug Downs (19:55):

I find it hard to believe that lawyers advising don't apologize and say I regret are not masters of communication at $700 an hour.

Marjorie Ingalls (20:03):

Hour. Astonishing.

Doug Downs (20:05):

It's amazing. Last question. Any notable stories about forgiveness that stand out to either of you?

Susan McCarthy (20:12):

There's a story that I just ran across. It's told by Claude Steiner in a book about emotional literacy. And it's about a guy who, his first child was born, he was absolutely thrilled. He was exuberant. He went out to a bar and got drunk and picked up a girl and went home with her and had sex with her. And then the next day he was like, oh, what have I done? And he rushed to the hospital and he told his wife this being at a time when you stayed in the hospital a few days, and she of course was devastated. And that had happened some 30, 40 years before. And he said he had apologized to her many, many times and she kept bringing it up. She'd say, what about that time when you did this? And this was not something that he did again, he returned to being a faithful spouse.

Doug Downs (21:12):

They stayed together, but she brought it up a lot.

Susan McCarthy (21:15):

Yes. And in this emotional literacy workshop, they were talking about apologies. And he listened for a while and he said, can I apologize again? And he apologized to his wife and he said, I've apologized to you many times before, but I never thought about how I made you feel. I never apologized for the impact that I had on you. I just, I didn't understand that and I'm really sorry. And he just talked about how he made her feel and he said, I'm so sorry. I hope you can accept the apology. And she said she did. And then about a year or so later, the guy who ran the workshop ran him on the street and he said, how's it going? And he said, it's great. And I want to tell you she's never brought it up again because I finally made a good apology and she was finally able to accept it, and it's not an issue anymore.

Doug Downs (22:10):

Powerful. I thank you both again for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us, Doug.

Susan McCarthy (22:17):

Thank you.

Doug Downs (22:19):

If you'd like to send a message to my guests, Marjorie Ingle and Susan McCarthy, we've got their contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you could please leave a rating and a review for this podcast, those help convince people to give the podcast a try. Lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.