Read your last few messages back. Count how many start with sorry, just, quick question or no worries if not.
If you're like most of the women I work with, it's a lot. And it isn't because you're polite. Polite is saying thank you. This is something else.
What the apology is doing
When you apologise before you ask, you're trying to get ahead of a reaction. If you make yourself small first, nobody can make you small. If you say it isn't important, nobody can tell you it isn't.
It's protection. Somewhere along the way you learned that taking up space came with a cost, so you started paying in advance.
The problem is that it works on you too. Every time you shrink a request, you practise believing that what you need is a bit too much. Do that a hundred times a week and it stops feeling like a habit. It feels like who you are.
The pattern behind it
Over-apologising rarely travels alone. Usually it comes with:
- explaining yourself long after the other person has understood
- saying yes, then resenting it all evening
- re-reading a message five times to check you didn't sound like too much
- a voice in your head that's harder on you than you'd ever be on a friend
These all come from the same place: a quiet belief that you have to earn your place in the room. That's the belief worth working on. The apologies are just where it shows.
A small experiment for this week
You don't have to fix this in one go. Try this instead:
- Catch one. Before you send a message, look for the softener. Sorry, just, only, if it's okay.
- Delete it. Read the message again without it. Notice that it's still kind.
- Notice what you feel when you press send. It might be a little tight in your chest. That's the old rule being broken. It passes.
- Write it down. One line in a journal: what you asked for, what you were afraid would happen, and what actually happened.
Most of the time, nothing happens. Nobody is offended. The world doesn't punish you for asking clearly. That's the evidence your nervous system needs, one message at a time.
If this feels familiar
This is the work I do in Becoming Her: recognising the patterns that keep you small, learning to talk to yourself differently and holding boundaries that fit your real life. It's 96 short lessons you go through at your own pace, and you keep what you discover in a private jewellery box you can come back to.
Start with one message. You're allowed to ask.