Why Saying Sorry All the Time Isn’t Actually Polite

Notice how many times today you said sorry for something that wasn’t your fault. Sorry for asking a question. Sorry for needing a minute. Sorry for taking up space in a conversation. If you’re like most women, the number might surprise you.

We were taught that apologizing is a sign of humility and consideration. And sometimes it is. But when sorry becomes a reflex — something that slips out before you’ve even thought about whether you actually did anything wrong — it stops being an apology and starts being something else entirely. It becomes a habit of making yourself smaller so other people feel more comfortable.

The thing is, every unnecessary sorry sends a quiet message to your own brain: I was wrong to need that. I was wrong to ask. I was wrong to exist in that moment the way I did. And over time, those messages add up. They shape the way you see yourself. They make it harder to speak up, to ask for things, to trust your own instincts.

You don’t have to go to the other extreme and become someone who never takes accountability. That’s not the point. The point is to start noticing the difference between a genuine apology — which is meaningful and important — and an automatic one that’s really just a way of shrinking yourself.

Try this for one day: before you say sorry, ask yourself if you actually did something wrong. If the answer is no, see what happens when you just… don’t say it. It will feel strange at first. That strangeness is information. It means you’ve been apologizing for being yourself for a long time. And you don’t have to keep doing that.

Sara Miriam Perlmutter is a holistic healer and author of Am I Broken? A Guide to Reclaiming Your Worth. She works 1:1 at saramiriamhealing.com.