Don’t apologize for your feelings. Work on more effective responses to them.

Recently a patient was telling me that she “lost it” on her husband, who failed to empty the dishwasher after she had asked him to do it several times. She screamed, cursed a little, and sent a kitchen towel flying in his general direction. When she started to calm down, she was upset by her behavior, and apologized to her husband for “getting so frustrated.”

I’ve heard patients apologize for their feelings a million times, sometimes even apologizing to me for, say, starting to cry in session (I mean, what better place to cry than in a therapist’s office? But I digress). Whenever I hear someone apologize for their feelings, I always tell them: “Don’t apologize for your feelings.” They can (and at times should) apologize for what they did in response to their feelings. But their feelings are valid, and never require an apology.

None of us can control our feelings. We feel what we feel. I’ve had so many patients set “controlling [insert negative emotion]” as a therapeutic goal, and I always correct them. It’s not about them controlling the negative emotion, it’s about controlling their response to that negative emotion.

Take anxiety, for example. Here are three responses guaranteed to maintain your anxiety:

1. Avoiding what is making you anxious
2. Obsessively checking on what is making you anxious (e.g. using AI to check whether you have a certain disease)
3. Obsessively seeking reassurance about what is making you anxious (e.g. asking a loved one to reassure you that you didn’t “say something stupid” at a party)

And here are three responses guaranteed to make your anxiety better (or at least keep it from getting worse):

1. Challenging your anxious thoughts using cognitive reappraisal
2. Exposing yourself to things that make you anxious
3. Taking a mindfulness approach to your anxiety

The bottom line: don’t apologize for your feelings. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is all about changing responses to (perfectly valid) feelings, so that you can cope with these feelings more effectively.

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