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By Dara Chadwick

March 2026

We all make mistakes in our relationships. Whether our mistakes are small grievances or major betrayals, it’s often the quality of the repair that follows that makes or breaks a relationship. Typically, the repair process begins with a critical first step: an apology.

“Apologies are the most powerful and effective tool we have in our relationship repair toolkit,” says Mark Verber, LPC, owner of Epic Counseling Solutions in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Yet, not all clients know how to deliver an apology or how to move forward when they don’t receive an apology they believe they deserve.

Stephen Ratcliff, LPC, CCST, a mental health and sex therapist in Portland, Oregon, helps his clients understand what apologies are and what they aren’t. “An apology’s purpose is to recognize the harm that was done, have empathy for the person harmed and do something to rectify or prevent that harm from happening again,” he says. “It’s not just the simple words ‘I’m sorry’ because those words alone are not beneficial. Even after an apology has been given and received, there can still be emotional work to be done.” 

Erika Labuzan-Lopez, LMFT-S, LPC-S, owner of the Center for Couples Counseling in Kemah, Texas, calls apologies a bridge back to connection. “They’re a mechanism to feel reconnected when conflict causes disconnection between us,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to show the person we understand and for us to begin to repair the relationship.” 

Owning Mistakes Without Shame

It’s not uncommon for clients to experience feelings of guilt and shame when they’ve hurt someone. The challenge is that guilt and shame often feel the same, according to Verber.

“It’s important to highlight the difference through psychoeducation,” he says. “I tell clients they have a right to feel guilt about hurting someone. Guilt’s purpose is to make you pay attention to something you can change. We can use that feeling as a lesson and move on.”

Once a person has taken the lesson, it’s important to let guilt go. “When we let it linger, it’s no longer teaching us; it’s punishing us,” Verber says. “That’s shame.” 

Shame may develop when clients lack self-compassion or don’t recognize that mistakes are part of growth. Labuzan-Lopez says she frames mistakes as data points.

“Mistakes aren’t a character indictment that mean you’re a bad person,” she says. “I tell clients that mistakes usually come from a skills gap — something they haven’t learned yet. But they can learn and change their behavior.”

Building skills such as attunement to a partner and overcoming defensiveness can help clients engage in relationship repair. “Guilt helps people own their behavior and their accountability,” Labuzan-Lopez says. “Shame says, ‘I am the problem’ and paralyzes repair. I try to normalize mistakes with clients so they can say, ‘I’m a good partner who handled this thing poorly.’” 

Ratcliff says the “shame barrier” can be an obstacle for clients in offering apologies. “Whether it’s cultural, a result of trauma or the way they were raised, some clients are prone to go to a place of shame when they’re trying to apologize,” he says. “It can be difficult for them to access an apology and participate in repair. Normalizing that we all make mistakes can help soothe some of those negative beliefs.”

Verber uses selective self-disclosure with clients when appropriate. “I might say, ‘If it’s OK with you, I’d like to share a mistake I made recently,’” he says. “In the right circumstances, humanizing ourselves helps make a connection.” 

Another helpful technique is to have clients engage in the third-person perspective, according to Verber. Ask your client what they would think if a friend made this mistake.

“Almost universally, people would be supportive,” he says. “You can help clients see they can extend to themselves the compassion and grace they show to others.” 

Guiding Clients to Appropriate Apologies

Helping clients see the value of apologies in relationship repair is important, especially when clients prioritize intention over impact. “We’ve all heard from clients ‘That wasn’t what I intended’ or ‘They took it wrong,’” Labuzan-Lopez says. “But the other person is still hurt. My first step is to slow the whole process down. I might say, ‘Your behavior had an impact on them. What was that impact and how does that sit with you?’” 

Verber encourages clients to consider whether a close and connected relationship is their goal. “When that’s our goal, we have to attend to hurt,” he says. “When someone hurts us, we tend to focus on the hurt’s impact. But when we hurt somebody else, we tend to focus on our intention.”

Intention also matters when apologies feel manipulative. Counselors can help clients consider whether insincere apologies are a pattern in the relationship, Verber says. “If it’s not a pattern, we want to try to have the most generous interpretation we can and assume it’s an ineffective apology,” he says. “But ask yourself how the apology makes you feel. If it feels manipulative, we want to call that out and address it.”

Labuzan-Lopez says clients sometimes get stuck in a one-up stance that says, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” But that position makes it hard to be in a relationship with another person. “Ultimately, we want to be ‘same as’ with our partners and not controlling or defensive,” she says.

A lack of “same as” positioning in relationships may also play a role when clients overapologize. “I work with folks who have various degrees of trauma,” Ratcliff says. “Many of them overapologize. I try to use humor and playfulness to get at why they’re apologizing and get at the beliefs they’ve been taught about anger and voicing feelings. As we start to talk about it, there’s often anxiety and people pleasing. For some, there’s fear of abandonment if they ask things of others or if they express feelings and needs.” 

According to Labuzan-Lopez, overapologizing is often a nervous system response. She tries to help clients see that apologizing for everything doesn’t build a relationship connection. Instead, it makes apologies feel meaningless.

“I ask them what danger they believe they’re preventing by apologizing,” she says. “The relational life therapy part of me always goes back to ‘Where did you learn your job was to keep the peace?’”

Verber takes a gentle approach with clients who overapologize. “I might say, ‘It seems like you might be apologizing more than you need to,’” he says. “We know that if they are overapologizing, they may be people pleasers and have a hard time taking feedback. But overapologizing can mean we’re missing opportunities to build more confidence and feel more secure. And in relationships, overapologizing means missing opportunities to have difficult, but productive, conversations.”

When There’s No Apology

Counselors may work with clients who experience distress when they don’t receive an apology they feel they deserve, especially in estranged family relationships or when the person who did them harm has died. Ratcliff says empty-chair or psychodrama techniques can help.

Talking to an empty chair or having the counselor play the role of the other person offers the possibility of an interaction that can help clients get their needs met, Ratcliff says. This can help them move toward a sense of resolution.

Labuzan-Lopez says validating what hurts also helps. “We’ll usually talk about accepting what’s happened and releasing the fantasy that the person will be a different person than who they are or were,” she says. “It can help clients understand that they can grieve an apology they never got. You can work on meaning-making of the experience and help clients apply what they’ve learned to other relationships.” 

When a person has died or a relationship has been cut off, Verber says his goal is to serve as a compassionate proxy for clients. “We explore what they would have liked to have heard,” he says. “This often helps clients shift from embittered to empowered and to recognize that they have agency.”