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Fawning and groveling, i have a hard time over-apologizing

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mumstheword

MyPTSD Pro
I annoy my partner when I apologize to my kids for things I shouldn't. Sometimes he gets mad at me and tells me off about it in front of them and then I feel like apologizing for apologizing and so on.

It comes from shame and bad treatment from my mum and my long-term partner and father of my children. They would both constantly belittle me, shame me, undermine me, criticize me, blame me and gaslight me. I used to cut myself when I lived with my mum because of it, and became a groveler with my ex.

Now, after so much verbal and emotional abuse, I let my children get away with too much and apologize to them for stupid stuff. It's a catch-22, as I feel shame so I apologize and then feel shame for apologizing. Hard habit to break. I would love some feedback on how to break it.
 
I am pretty lucky. I have friends who remind me that I do this apologizing thing too much.

What I have learned to do is to say 'I apologize for..... XYZ' rather than a blanket 'Sorry'. It is a mindful way of recognizing that in order to be sorry, I need to be aware of WHY I am apologizing. If I don't know why, then it sure as heck would be annoying for the person saying 'that's okay' to figure out why they are being forced to respond to something vague and repetitive that truly, holds little meaning if it appears to be a habit.

I say this, because this is the place I got to when dealing with my excessive sorry-ing. I was dragging people into my own internal drama.
 
There are four kinds of trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Fawning is appeasement if the feared threat. It seems like you learned to try to appease others as a way to survive.

I’d suggest trying to exchange the “I’m sorry” for “thank you.”

I used to apologize for everything, including my existence. It actually drive the people around me nuts, enabled bad behavior of others, and it didn’t actually improve anything that I felt sorry about.

One day, a friend told me to say “thank you” every time I want to say sorry. For me, saying “I’m sorry” in an overly-apologetic way actually was about my anxiety, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was me trying to get others to reassure me, and avoid feeling anxiety. It actually kind of makes it about me too much.

So I tried my friend’s suggestion.

Instead of, “I’m sorry I’m late,” I would say “thank you so much for being patient.” And sometimes I’d follow it with a change, if and only if that was really warranted. - “I’ll do my best to not be late next time.” Doing this also weeded out excessive thanking people. Generally though, being overly grateful of good things helped me set boundaries about things that were not ok to have in my life.
 
Wow. Thank you @shimmerz, @SpacemanSpiff and @Justmehere .

Yes it is definitely a fawning habit and I'm pleased to report I'm getting a handle on it more and more.
I like the suggestion to say "thank you" instead, I already do thank people a lot but your suggestion @Justmehere takes it to the next level and I love it!

Yes redirecting the thought processes is a wise suggestion and something I'm going to employ too. Thanks :-) @SpacemanSpiff

@shimmerz , I guess it is just my internal, learnt sense of inadequacy, from the oppressor/abusers who engrained that into me for so many years. I'm not there now so I don't need to be like that. I can't stand it about myself, so I have been practising mindful refrain, or curbing of the habit. Plus for me, it's not automatic and all of time with no frame of reference, it's just a habit of putting myself in a subordinate servant role, mostly with my children. Not helpful for them or me.

Thank you all.for taking the time to respond!
I haven't been back and responding in a timely fashion, @shimmerz and @SpacemanSpiff so, thank you for your patience! :-)
 
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