What hurts is that people treat it like I am doing this obsessive, unnecessary thing when in reality the amount I say sorry is perfectly tailored to the amount that I am randomly (random only from my perspective of course) pissing people off all the time around me with my actions. Which in practice means I say sorry all the fucking time.
Those same people that tell me not to say sorry I have pushed to the edge of their tolerance of me many times, and the ONLY thing I can do in those situations is say sorry in a genuine way. People really dont fucking understand having an intimate familiarity with those moments where someone is seriously pissed off at you and not only wants a practical explanation for why you fucked up but more importantly they need an emotional explanation that squares your apparent desire to be a good person/worker with the fact that you just massively fucked up something in a way that sure makes you look like a lazy, uncaring person. I have no agency in those moments, I am basically an 18 wheeler smashing through someone else’s life but I have no brakes and LITERALLY the only thing I can do in that moment to make the situation better is apologize simply but genuinely in a way that conveys how hurt I am by own actions too.
Of course, the ones that love me always return to their more patient selves and apologize for getting frustrated with me, but apologies mean nothing to the memory in my body of feeling like I am always sliding towards seriously aggravating someone and hurting my relationship with them. Further it is only a learned, constant input of willpower and constant attentiveness that keeps me from constantly blowing past people’s threshold of patience for me in moment to moment interaction and also in broader life contexts. An absolutely necessary survival strategy for me has been learning to constantly “manually breath” with my experience of reality so that I don’t slip back into autonomic behaviors that immediately cause friction with the environment and people around me.
Saying sorry a lot is my way of double checking my social awareness and making sure I am not missing the fact that now I am just yelling at everybody for no reason because I am excited about the conversation or something. When people react with “hey, stop saying sorry!” the consequences are they are mildly annoyed at being asked the question, but when it opens up a conversation about something I have been doing that is genuinely annoying people around me it can often be the ONLY thing that saves me and others from a lot of unnecessary suffering. It also, and I can’t stress the importance of this enough, is often the only thing that can halt someone from developing a narrative about who I am that is wildly inaccurate (I don’t care, I am lazy, I don’t like working).
The world is going to have to become a hell of a lot more accommodating and accepting of ADHD before I stop saying “sorry!” all the time and it is frustrating that people get upset at me for using a perfectly rational coping strategy in a society extremely hostile to my disability. Its like, people don’t want to see the amount of effort I have to put into not being a burden on others because it stresses them out and feels like a broken record… and sometimes I just get so angry and sad feeling like… yes that is exactly what it is like to be in my head 24/7, I am sorry you had to briefly experience that?
Try to slow down and think about it from your bosses view. Assuming they are a reasonable person, they don’t WANT you to be sorry. What they WANT is you to not make those mistakes. So instead of saying sorry, consider doing a “retrospective”. Consider what went well and what could have gone better. What lead to mistakes? Can we take steps to avoid or mitigate those mistakes in the future? I don’t know what kind of job you have and it may be impossible to do that on work time. But if you come to them with and understanding of what lead to mistakes and a plan to improve, they will be more interested in that than you says sorry 50 times.
Please note, I understand this is a challenging ask. But making significant improvements in life usually are. Also results are not instant or permanent. It’s a process you keep working at, but get better at over time.
I appreciate the desire to help but I promise I already understand what you are saying and have thought a lot about it.
Precisely the reason I am talking about how vital the skill of saying sorry for me is that in these situations I fundamentally cannot ensure I won’t make those mistakes again. Of course there are organizational strategies, time management techniques, proactive structuring of my work environment etc… that help and have helped me be a better person but ultimately there is a truth in that moment that all I can really do is say sorry.
This mismatch between the other person just getting “sorry” when what they really want is the thing to have not happened or happen again is precisely the reason I have to be so skilled at saying sorry.
If you can’t avoid making the mistake again in the future, your boss wants to know that, and saying sorry doesn’t help with that. If it’s a mistake that needs to be avoided, some combination of you and your boss need to take actions to prevent it happening, like creating automation to handle it or making it someone else’s responsibility.
I understand this is a common way to talk about professional relationships, and in a limited way is a useful lens to view the professional world through, but it just isn’t even remotely true. Saying sorry doesn’t help anywhere as much as Just Not Being A Fuckup, but it is often the only thing I have agency over in a situation and knowing the right way to say sorry in a situation has played a critical role in success and survival in my life. I am sure it has played a critical role in everybody else’s lives too.