Do you have a habit of apologizing after every perceived feeling of slight leveled at you by another person? You know when you speak your mind and someone looks at you like they don’t understand and you go, “I’m sorry”. Really? Do you even know what you are apologizing for? When you leave the situation are you stuck wondering about all the things you could have said, instead of sounding like a mindless drone. Frankly, you didn’t even do anything, you are just feeling someone else’s unease and jump in with your ‘sorry about that’ just to make them feel better, but it is only making you feel worse. You start feeling like you can’t do anything right, you have nothing valid to say and that others are plotting ways to not deal with you all because you have been lulled into the dangerous trap of the Chronic Sorry.
Chronic Sorry builds up the little people who only feel good when they are on a pedestal of their own making. They are always in charge of PTA and bake sales and fundraisers and dance decorations. If they aren’t they try to find ways to undermine your ideas because really, they should be in charge then everything would be perfect. I mean, just because your little Johnny wasn’t at Plaid Prep with their little Richard, you can’t possibly understand the importance of running a 5th grade dance! Now, yes, I certainly know this doesn’t apply to every person you meet. I know plenty of very personable PTA presidents who could crowd source rings around me and always has great ideas about dance decorations without making me feel inferior. So please take the sarcasm as it is intended, to make you smirk because you probably have encountered at least one of these people who lead you to offer the Chronic Sorry in their space.
I have a terrible case of Chronic Sorry. I am forever apologizing for not getting to that rewrite, or sweeping the classroom/playroom, or even for ordering pizza when I was supposed to cook. Often I am not getting around to something because I did 50 other items on my to-do list and put out 20 spontaneous fires that popped up and the thought of standing at the stove for another hour is more than I can handle. And really, once I am on the other side, I realize that this is realistic and my husband isn’t actually asking me to do more or even really upset about the idea of pizza. But in the moment I feel the unrelenting weight of guilt at not being all things to all people at all times. And how in the world did I learn that this was a thing to aspire to anyway. Not all women grew up with this idea, but many of us did and it inevitably leads to anxiety, depression, and Chronic Sorry. Those who find a way to break this cycle are doing a grand service to the next generation and not just females either. Males have their own weight of unrealistic expectations. If we could teach them that sharing responsibility when sharing a life is the ideal, that happiness, healthiness, and fun are just as important as the bottom line, we could all shake the dust of Chronic Sorry off our proverbial shoulders.
I am still working on it, it helps to have people in your world who call you on it. I do and thank goodness they help me see the error of my ways, but also that they don’t give up in exasperation when I continue because it just hasn’t become second nature yet. But I am optimistic that with prayer for a mind filled with pleasing thoughts, work on feeding my mind with pleasing things, and the determination to remember that I don’t have to fix all the problems alone, I too can be free of the Chronic Sorry and enable the next generation too!