If you have ever wondered why do I apologise so much, start here: count every apology you say aloud for one single day.
Sorry for asking. Sorry for the delay. Sorry for stepping into a doorway at the same time as someone else. Sorry for sending a message. Sorry for having a question. Sorry for needing a moment to think. Tally each one without stopping to decide whether it was the right call.
Most people who try this come back surprised. The number is larger than they expected, and when they look at the list, a lot of those apologies had nothing to do with a mistake. No harm was done. Nobody was wronged. The apology just happened anyway.
That gap, between apologizing and having done anything wrong, is what this post is about. What the habit tends to be doing, and what interrupting it actually involves.
Try Counting Them for One Day
The counting exercise is a useful place to start because the habit is usually invisible while it is running. You are not deciding to apologize. You are already saying it before any decision is possible.
Pick any ordinary day. Keep a note on your phone or a folded piece of paper nearby. Every time you say sorry, make a mark. Do not stop to assess the apology or decide whether it was warranted. Just count.
At the end of the day, look at the total. Then go through the list and mark the apologies that were in response to something you actually did that hurt or inconvenienced another person. Those are one kind of apology. The rest are something different, and that difference matters a lot more than the total number does.
The One Pattern That Shows Up Most Often
Among people who apologise frequently, one pattern tends to be the most visible: the apology for taking up space.
It shows up when you ask a question and say sorry before you ask it. When you open an email with sorry for bothering you. When you need to get past someone in a hallway and say sorry as if you have committed an error. When you disagree with something and lead with I am sorry but.
This is the version of the habit that is most useful to notice first, because it fires in situations where nothing has actually gone wrong. That makes it easier to see as a pattern rather than a reasonable response to something. When you apologise for asking a normal question or for standing in a doorway, there is no repair needed. The apology is doing something else entirely.
Why the Brain Keeps the Habit Going
An apology does something fast and reliable in a social moment. It drops the tension quickly. If there is awkwardness, uncertainty, or any sign that someone might be uncomfortable, saying sorry tends to smooth it over right away.
The brain notices what works. When something relieves discomfort consistently, the brain is motivated to use it again. Over time, the reflex gets faster than the thought. You are not choosing to apologize because you have assessed the situation and concluded you did something wrong. The apology comes out because your nervous system has learned that it ends the tension fast, and that learning happened long before this particular moment.
Researchers Schumann and Ross, writing in Psychological Science, found that people who apologize more frequently are not more willing to apologize than others. The difference was in the threshold for what counted as an offence in the first place. People who apologise often tend to categorise a wider range of situations as ones that require an apology, including situations where no harm was done to anyone.
That finding is useful because it shifts the question. The question is not why am I so apologetic, as if that were a permanent character trait. The question is what is my threshold for what counts as a situation that needs addressing, and how did that threshold get set where it is? Thresholds can be examined. Patterns can be looked at. That is a more workable place to be.
A Repair and a Reflex Are Not the Same Thing
A repair is an apology that addresses something real. You said something that landed badly. You cancelled plans at short notice. You forgot something that mattered to someone. Acknowledging that directly is valuable. It addresses real impact and helps a relationship move forward.
A reflex is different. It fires in response to tension or discomfort, not harm. It shows up when you ask a question, when you take up space, when you have a need, when you step through a door at the same moment as someone else. A reflex apology can sound identical to a repair from the outside, but it is doing a different job. It is managing the discomfort of a moment rather than acknowledging anything that actually happened.
The cost of using reflex apologies to manage discomfort is that they work in the short term and create problems in the long term. When you apologise for ordinary things like asking questions or having needs, you are also sending yourself a message: that your presence and your voice require justification before anyone has had a chance to react. Do that often enough, and speaking up when something genuinely matters starts to feel much harder.
If you recognize this wider pattern, the post How to Stop Being a People-Pleaser: 7 Steps to Start With looks at where people-pleasing tends to come from and where to start with it.
Using a CBT Frame to See the Pattern
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, offers a practical way to slow the habit down enough to examine it. "CBT helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings, and actions are connected, then gives you practical tools to change the patterns that keep you stuck."
One of the basic moves in CBT is separating three things that usually blur together: the situation, the automatic thought, and the behaviour.
The situation is what is actually happening. You sent a colleague an email with a work question.
The automatic thought is what the mind says about that, before you have had a chance to examine it. Something like: this is bothering them. I am taking up their time. I should not have sent that.
The behaviour is what follows from the thought. You open your next message with sorry for bothering you, even though asking a normal work question is an ordinary part of working with other people.
When those three things happen at full speed, the apology is out before you have had time to ask whether the automatic thought is accurate. Separating them creates a moment of choice. You can look at the situation clearly: did I actually do something that needs addressing here? If the answer is no, you can try a different response.
This is not about deciding to never apologize again. It is about creating enough of a pause to tell the difference between a repair and a reflex, and then deciding what to do with that information.
The Canadian Psychological Association's Psychology Works resources cover the evidence base for CBT and explain how the approach works: https://cpa.ca/psychology-works-fact-sheets.
For what CBT sessions actually look like from the inside, CBT Therapy Edmonton: What Actually Happens in a Session walks through it directly.
What Assertiveness Has to Do With It
"Assertiveness isn't about being pushy or rude. It's having the confidence to say what you feel and need, clearly, calmly, and without apologizing for existing."
The reflex apology and difficulty with assertiveness tend to show up together, because they are doing similar things for similar reasons. Both are responses to the discomfort of taking up space, having a need, or saying something that might not land well. Reflexive apologising is one way of softening your presence in advance, before anyone has had a chance to react.
Building assertiveness is not about becoming a different person. It means getting more accurate at reading which situations actually call for an apology and which ones are just ordinary moments of needing something, setting a boundary, or speaking up. The difference between those two kinds of moment is the same difference as between a repair and a reflex.
What This Post Will Not Promise
The habit of apologising frequently, especially in its reflex form, does not shift quickly. It has usually been running for a long time, and the situations that trigger it come up constantly.
This post will not tell you that counting your apologies for a day will stop them, that understanding the mechanism will change the behaviour on its own, or that any particular number of sessions will resolve the pattern completely. Those would not be honest things to say.
What is true is that looking at a habit clearly, and having a frame for what it is doing, gives you more to work with than you had before. More information is a better starting place than none.
Where to Go From Here
If you recognize this pattern and want support working through it, a free 15-minute consultation is available. You describe what is going on; Carly states honestly whether she can help. No commitment either way.
CBT Therapy Edmonton: What Actually Happens in a Session is a good place to read more about what that kind of work looks like before you decide anything.
You deserve to hear your own voice again.