Sorry is a Sometimes Word

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about apologising in relation to my illnesses, the unintentional emotional manipulation that can accompany apologies, and why often, thanking people for their support is a much more appropriate response. In the time since then, I have gotten a lot better at saying “thank you” rather than “sorry” when someone helps me … but I still apologise a lot in other circumstances.

Recently, someone told me off for this. His reasoning – if you are apologising constantly, letting it become nothing more than a habit, then it loses authenticity. He asked what I would then do if I’d really done something wrong, and needed to give a genuine apology?

Cue moment of existential crisis as I tried to work out whether apologising to someone who’s visibly annoyed at you for apologising will make the situation better or worse and vaguely considered option three – just slowly sliding under the table while humming Tracy Chapman.

Now to be fair, I had just issued about fifteen apologies in the space of a few minutes, and once I managed to stifle my automatic need to give fifteen more for the awkwardness, I could see where he was coming from. This wasn’t a perspective I had considered before, but I’ve certainly had my share of relationships and friendships in the past where the apologies were frequent, but the changes of behaviour were notably absent, until the word “sorry” started to leave a pit in my stomach.

I am genuinely feeling guilt when I’m saying I’m sorry, and there is an authentic desire to make the other person feel better, including examining and changing my own behaviour where needed. However, I’m often apologising in situations where my guilt is unwarranted, or the perceived slight exists only in my mind.

So that leaves me with two questions:

Why am I apologising so much, and is it a problem?

At the time, the reason I gave is that I’m tending to take responsibility for things which aren’t my fault, including other people’s feelings or discomfort. Illness and disability do make a lot of people uncomfortable, and I know my tendency to start stories with things like “So this one time part of my back died for no reason… it’s okay, it grew back eventually…” do not help with this. While my twisted sense of humour, and ability to find the funny side of everything, is something I love about myself, it is also something I feel the need to apologise for when I see it make people squirm.

When I stop to consider it, I think there are also a few other contributing factors here. Of course, anxiety and depression probably play a part, particularly in the instance above as I had been going through an unusually bad mental health patch at the time, after being really well on that front since I got Bindi.

I do notice that when I’m in a good place, the apologies are noticeably reduced, or at the very least, the reasons behind them are more logical. But when I’m not sleeping and therefore slipping into a darker headspace, it can start to feel like I need to apologise for my very existence, let alone anything else. The nervous energy and overthinking aspect of anxiety doesn’t help with this either, as if you think about anything for too long you can convince yourself it’s 1) a problem and 2) your fault. There can also be an element of “duck and cover” to interacting with new people when you have PTSD (or other forms of anxiety) until you figure out whether they are safe, and you can relax with them. Even mild irritation from a stranger can feel like it could be a threat, and so appeasing the person with pre-emptive apologies becomes a part of self-preservation.

Which leads into the question of whether it’s a problem.

Sociologist, Maja Jovanovic, believes that unnecessary apologies hurt us, making us smaller and weakening what we have to say. I have started to notice there is a level of self-fulfilling prophecy to this, as rather than appeasing my guilt, apologising lots makes me feel even more like there is something wrong with me that I must apologise for. I notice my body language changing when I say “I’m sorry”, shrinking in, as if I am diminished by my mistakes, illnesses and flaws – something I whole-heartedly do not believe.

What I like to call the “Labyrinth Effect” also starts to come into play. If you treat someone or something as if they are a threat, you associate them with that fear and they ultimately become more intimidating to you. In the words of David Bowie’s Jareth:

“You have cowered before me, and I was frightening.”

Breaking the Habit

All of this has made me question the effect apologies are having on my own self-esteem, the people around me, and the way I interact with both. So, I have been trying to break my apology habit, but it has led to a strange development and the discovery of one more possible reason why I apologise so much.

I decided to start small, addressing one particular form of apologies. I made a point of not apologising if someone bumped into me, or in some other way caused a disruption, instead simply accepting their apology and moving on with my day. I figured this would be an easy one to address, as I know I’m not actually at fault in these situations; I’m just apologising because… New Zealand.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

On multiple occasions, a stranger bumped into me and, when I said nothing, they came out with comments along the lines of “Oh, that’s okay, love”. I had kept my pledge to myself not to apologise, but despite this, strangers were accepting apologies I hadn’t given and didn’t owe. And not just one or two people, this happened on multiple occasions.

Now, I don’t entirely understand what’s happening here, but my best guess is that people are seeing Bindi and my dark sunglasses, assuming I’m blind and therefore deciding the accident must be my fault, despite evidence to the contrary.

I have to admit, after the first few times this happened, I did start to wonder if I was somehow causing these accidents, and you may well be wondering why so many people bump into me. I guess the truth lies somewhere in between. If someone is looking at their phone or walking backwards away from a conversation still focused on their companion, an able-bodied person may be able to quickly dodge out of the way, but it’s trickier for me when I’m sometimes a little unsteady on my feet and have a dog (and sometimes walking stick) to negotiate. But regardless of my speed, if you’re not looking, it’s not the responsibility of anyone else on the street to get out of your way, and certainly not their fault if you crash into them. In fact, in many of these instances, I was standing completely still, to the side of the pavement out of the way, when the person walked into me.

Expectation

This did make me consider the role expectation plays in excessive apologies. In these instances, it was very clear an apology was expected from me, whether or not I genuinely owed one. But I think it extends beyond this. Not to turn this into an norms vs crips argument, but I do think there is a level of expectation that disabled and chronically ill people will behave in certain ways, one of those being apologising for the impact on able-bodied people’s desire to do things in inaccessible ways.

Asking for any kind of access assistance – even if it’s a legal right – sometimes leads you to being made to feel like an inconvenience, as if your presence is only allowed by obligation, but that really you are not wanted or welcome. Apologising can appease some of this, allowing for a more friendly and less awkward environment for all. For example, you learn very quickly that the best way to ensure your food is actually gluten free when you’re coeliac is to start your order with an apology for being annoying, and end it with a self-deprecating joke. Otherwise, you risk an eye roll, a comment about pretentious hipsters, and a guessing game as to whether your food is actually safe to eat.

Even if the words “I’m sorry” don’t cross my lips, I’ve learnt to present certain pieces of information about my health with an apology in my voice. Not because I’m really ashamed of them, but because I am consciously crossing the taboo of discussing illness, mortality and admitting to weaknesses rather than just “being positive”. To not apologise in these circumstances, usually leads to questions of whether it’s really that bad if I’m not miserable, and difficulty getting access needs acknowledged or met.

In a confusing contradiction, I find I must also apologise if I DON’T want to talk about my health, as it’s seen as entirely unreasonable to have an assistance dog, mobility aid, or other visible sign of disability in public, but not be willing to satiate the curiosity of every tom, dick and harry as to why. People often ask invasive questions and then are horribly uncomfortable with the answers, yet take no responsibility for the situation, laying all of that at my feet instead. This isn’t just a disability thing, of course. This is something many of us experience, for example, with the question “when are you going to have babies” and the answer “I can’t/don’t want to/have just recently spawned a half alien half human hybrid”. Somehow it becomes the place of the answerer to apologise for the discomfort, rather than the invasive-question-asker to acknowledge they were over-stepping.

The undercurrent of all of this seems to be that warranted or not – I feel I am expected to apologise frequently, and simultaneously to feel bad about how often I apologise.

Refuting the Expectation

But this is not to let myself off the hook. Just because the world potentially expects something from me, it doesn’t mean I have to give it. The world has a lot of expectations of what disability looks like – most of them negative – and I do not meet many of them. Continuing to apologise in this way is reinforcing the belief that it’s valid to expect apologies, and while it’s currently socially acceptable to feel discomfort around disability and illness, or irritated at having to accommodate differences, that doesn’t have to be the way it will be in the future. Not apologising may be one way to allow people to acknowledge their own discomfort, examine it and maybe even address and eradicate it.

While exploring all of this has made me realise the apology habit is going to be harder than I thought to break, it’s made me more determined to do it. Whether it’s not apologising for someone bumping into me, not taking responsibility for anyone’s discomfort with my answers to invasive health or baby questions, or simply asking for gluten free food without calling myself annoying, I strongly suspect each small step will make a difference.

Thanks for reading,

Little Miss Autoimmune

Gluten-Free is Not a Personality Type

The other day I came across this article. It annoys me so much. For so many reasons.

Feel free to head on over and read it for yourself, as I'm quite aware my interpretation of this is more than likely biased, but the TL;DR is the author of this piece feels that "ordinary" eaters like herself are being squeezed out by people with allergies and fad dieters.

Okay, so firstly let's go hang out in the supermarket where there is less than quarter of an aisle dedicated to gluten-free food (which, by the way, does not in any way exclude ordinary eaters as you can safely eat all of it) and the REST OF THE FRICKEN' SUPERMARKET filled with almost all gluten-populated foods, and tell me again how you're being marginalised.

This idea seems borderline delusional to me, but it's not what annoys me about this article. It annoys me because it feeds into the wide-spread idea that people who go gluten-free or try other diets are only doing it because they are following the latest "fad." Yes, I'm sure there are some people who are elitist about diet, and are doing whatever health craze is currently most popular. I've heard about these people. I've seen them in movies, and parodies and I've certainly heard "ordinary eaters" complain about them.... but I've never actually met anyone like this.

The people I know who have special dietary requirements are all incredibly lovely, genuine people. They realise that their diet can be inconvenient, and do what they can to minimize its impact on other people. NONE of them think that having an allergy is a "badge of honour"; they perhaps just don't feel as ashamed of their affliction as some ordinary eaters like the author of this article seem to feel they should be.

I assume the type of people described in the article do exist, but my guess is that their behaviour has less to do with diet itself and more to do with the type of people they are. If it wasn't about a diet they would be behaving in the same way about some other topic-de-jour. You can't really blame diet for that and quite frankly, if your friends really are behaving in this elitist way then maybe it's time to take a good look at who you are choosing to associate yourself with, because I think that may say more about you than it does about anything else.

This article also implies that any diet is nothing more than a whim that can easily be changed. To be fair, the author of the article does state:

 "I'm certainly not inferring that food allergies and intolerances are made up, or that those who suffer desperately from them are all fussy malingerers."

But whether or not it is your intention, writing an article like this tars us all with the same brush. The comments are littered with people saying things along the lines of: I have a friend who has a REAL food allergy, and she almost never talks about it. And then I have this other friend who claims she has an allergy, but I saw her eat gluten once, and she just goes on and on about it. I think she's making it up. If you've ever found yourself thinking something like this, has it ever occurred to you that your friend talks about her food issues a lot because you don't believe she has a real allergy, and she's scared you'll put gluten in her food if she doesn't go on about it?!

I do get that sometimes it might seem like food intolerances aren't a big deal, especially if on occasion you see someone who is gluten-free eating something containing gluten. Sometimes humans do things that aren't good for us and sometimes we eat things we're not supposed to. This may lead you to believe that people's difficulties with food aren't real... or you could have a bit more compassion and come to the conclusion that eating a restricted diet is hard. People don't always have the will power to give up immediate gratification just because it's going to make us sick later. If this is difficult for you to understand, think about the last time you or someone you know got really drunk. You probably knew, as you were drinking, that it wasn't good for you, and was potentially going to make you vomit (or at least have a hang-over the next day) but you did it anyway.

Even if a person's diet is not about an allergy or intolerance, and just about "wellness" - just take the time to consider the fact that people don't generally go on a quest for "wellness" if they are already healthy. Whether the problem is a physical illness, wanting to lose weight, or just general unhappiness with their life, having a bit of compassion and support for what someone is going through and their attempts to help themselves would go a lot further than getting irritated because they occasionally post about it on social media. After all, the stuff you like to post on social media is probably irritating to at least a few people as well.

I'm still struggling to understand how exactly it impacts on so-called "ordinary eaters" that other people eat differently to you. Did we at some point infer that we care what you eat, or feel that you need to eat identically to us? Because I'm going to let you in on a little secret: we really don't. Eat nothing but chocolate all day if you want - it makes absolutely no difference to me.

The author of the article claims that her problem with diets is that we should be focusing on bigger issues:

"I'd much rather they focused on meatier problems, like how we tackle food insecurity (that's not knowing where your next meal is coming from, not worrying if your buns look big enough) in Kiwi families."

Reality check: you're writing an article about how other people's diets annoy you. Don't try to claim the moral high ground about focusing on bigger issues.

For the last few months I've been thinking about trying dietary approaches to get better control over my diseases. I'm not doing this because I want to go off my medications; this is not a case of me rejecting medical science or being "chemophobic". I'm thinking about trying to heal myself with food, because there are no more medical options for me. If I want to be healthier, I am going to have to figure out how to do it myself.

Initially I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was contemplating doing this, because I thought the reactions would be ones of derision, just like the attitudes displayed in this article. But the reality is, I'm tired of being exhausted and in bad pain all the time, and it's really distressing to have to deal with the potenital for falls or loss of function on a daily basis. I'm willing to try drastically altering my diet, because I'm not ready to give up and simply watch as my health and ability to function deteriorate. It may not help, but sitting on my ass doing nothing certainly isn't going to help either, and this at least has a chance.

Now, I've sure my friends have gotten sick of hearing me talk about vegetables over the last few weeks, but they also get that doing this is important for me, and they're being supportive of that, because that's what friends do.

Being an ordinary eater is not a problem, it's a privilege. Enjoy it, but please try and take the time to be grateful for it too.

Thanks for reading,
Little Miss Autoimmune.