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A Case for Not Saying Sorry

Apologizing too often eventually erases the sincerity behind it

Lindsey Carson
3 min readOct 2, 2019
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

The other day, I was having a conversation with a new friend that I had just met when we got into chatting about our Myers-Briggs results. Then, the topic of strengths and weaknesses came up. When I started sharing my weaknesses, she noticed the fact that I’m too apologetic. In response, I ironically apologized by saying, “Sorry I say sorry too much!”

I already know that I have a bit of a bad habit with saying sorry too often because, well, I hear myself say it out loud all the time. It’s sometimes even one of my opening lines when responding to a work e-mail. It’s one of those filler words that you frantically insert into a sentence such as “um” or “like”. But, words like “um” and “like” aren’t as big of a deal because there’s no real meaning behind it.

As for the word sorry, there’s a time and place for when and why you should say it — you should say it when you actually have something to be sorry about and you actually do mean it.

So, why do we abuse this word so much? What profound sense of unconscious guilt do we have that makes us say sorry after even the most insignificant events? And why do we use say…

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Lindsey Carson
Lindsey Carson

Written by Lindsey Carson

Writer, Runner, and Mother working in Ad Tech. Trying to navigate my identity as a new parent. I write about work, relationships, culture, and life in general.

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