Languages of Apology

Outline:

• Definition of Apology
• The Analogy of the Two Blindfolds
• Apology of Impact Vs Intent
• Five Languages of Apology
• Expressive vs Receptive Apology Languages
• How to Encourage Apology from Others
• Forgiveness is Not Necessarily Forgetfulness
• Set Realistic Expectations of Apology from Others
• Speak Others’ Languages of Apology

Definition of Apology 

• Acknowledgement and expression of regret, repentance or remorse for having caused someone’s hurt or harm.
• “Hurting people hurt people:” When we’ve been hurt, we end up hurting others through the Defense Mechanism of Displacement - Redirecting one’s hurt from a person and “taking it out” on another person. 
• This can be done intentionally or unconsciously.

The Analogy of the Two Blindfolds

• Two people were told by a facilitator to take turn going into a room while blindfolded and feel what’s in the middle of the room. 
• The first person went in and felt what was in the room and said it was a tree trunk, because the object was cylindrical, rough and vertical. 
• The second person did the same exercise and announced that it was a cobra, because it was cylindrical, rough and spiral. 
• They both were invited back into the room now without the blindfolds. They saw that an elephant was standing in the middle of the room.
• The person who said it was a tree trunk was holding on to the leg of the elephant, while the person said it was a cobra was holding on to the trunk of the elephant.
• Both of their experiences were real to them, but neither got the full picture of the elephant.
• Similarly, our experiences are all parts of the elephant, and none of see the full elephant/picture in situations.
• Every person’s experience of a situation is real and legitimate to them.
• However, our experience is not the whole picture, and is not the objective truth.
• In order for us to be good teammates, we need to be willing to walk from our experience of the part of the elephant and go to our teammate’s experience and feel their feelings.
• We acknowledge the other’s experience and feelings are valid to them and validate their feelings.
• We acknowledge that only God sees the entire elephant – the entire picture, as only God is totally objective.
• There is room for everyone to have their own experience, feelings and reactions to their part of the same situation/circumstance that we have experienced.

Apology of Impact vs of Intent

• Sometimes out of our own hurt by others, we intent on getting back to others by hurting them.
• Sometimes out of our own hurt, we do not care what we say or do in the moment, and end up hurting the other.
• Most times, we do not intent on hurting others. Nonetheless, others can feel/experience hurt/harm by our actions or inactions.
• When we apologize out of our intention, the recipient can experience our apology as dismissive, as they were hurt by us while hearing us saying that since we didn’t mean to hurt them, they shouldn’t feel hurt.
• We would do well to apologize for the impact we made on others. “I see that I disappointed you greatly, and I am sorry for disappointing you;” “I see that you felt really dismissed by my flippant comment, and I am sorry for making you feel that I didn’t care about you or your feelings;” “I am sorry for hurting you.”

Five Languages of Apology

• Gary Chapman who wrote The Five Languages of Love, co-wrote The Five Languages of Apology: https://a.co/d/8r4WxtP
• Emotional Contrition: The apologizer feels strong sense of regret and hurt for having hurt the other person.
• Ownership: The apologizer takes full responsibility for their action - The person apologizes for having slapped the person without saying the reason that she slapped the apologizer was in response to the fact that the person had first fist punched them. Ones take full ownership for one’s actions: No excuses given; Neither do we then ask the other person to also apologize to us.
• Restitution: The apologizer makes up for what they had done, i.e.: If one stole $100 from the other, one repays the money stolen; If one had to bail on getting together with the other person due to schedule conflict, one remakes an appointment to get together. In relationships, one might speak their love language – the parent who cooks our favorite dish or grants us special privilege after they regretted something they did in interaction with us.
• True Repentance: Having a concrete plan to not repeat the same mistake.
• Asking for Forgiveness: Some people need to hear the words like, “Will you forgive me?” before they are willing to forgive.

Expressive vs Receptive Apology Languages

• Similar to the Five Languages of Love, how we express apology versus how we need apology expressed to us might not be the same.
• Just because we don’t speak the same language of apology as our receptive language of apology does not make us hypocrites.

How to Encourage Apology from Others 

• How we accept/receive other’s apology can help us to obtain more apologies from them in the future.
• If we are gracious, we will obtain more honesty and sincere apologies.
• Forgiveness is a choice, and the feelings can follow.
• When a person apologizes to us, we would do well to choose to forgive them even when we don’t feel it.
• “Honey attracts bees, while vinegar sours the teeth” – Be gracious to others and others will give us more of what we’d like. If we are demanding or unrelenting toward others when they’ve hurt or wronged us, the other person could become more entrenched in their negative stance toward us, causing us to have a broken relationship while still not being able to get the apology we would like from them.

Forgiveness is Not Necessarily Forgetfulness

• We covered this more thoroughly in Lesson 2.
• We choose to forgive the other person in order to free us from our own prison of hurt.
• Forgiveness is about us, not about the offender.
• When we forgive the offender, we gain back our peace, and we stop the offense from continuing to hurt or impact us.
• However, when we choose to forgive, we would do well to remember how the offender is and adjust our expectations accordingly, so we don’t continue to put ourselves in the same situation and continually get hurt.
• Forgiveness does not necessarily mean restoration of relationship to the previous state, as the person might not be a safe person for us to be in close relationship with.
• We can hold nothing against the offender and love them from a distance.

Set Realistic Expectations of Apology from Others

• Only we have the power/control to set our own expectations: toward ourselves, and toward others.
• When the apologizer does not speak our language of apology, we can do well to do our own “translation” when they apologize from their expressive language of apology, so we can “hear” their intended apology.
• Knowing that all humans will continue to make mistakes and hurt others - We hurt others and others hurt us - it behooves us to “expect the worst while hoping for the best” and not set ourselves up for never getting/feeling hurt again, while not becoming fatalistic or totally pessimistic toward others or about life.

Speak Others’ Languages of Apology

• If we want our apology to be better accepted from the other person, study them and find out what languages of apology they need and speak their language.
• When we are willing to love others when it’s inconvenient for us, we can choose to speak the “foreign” language in order to speak their language.