If you’re around kids — or even adults — for any length of time, eventually you’ll hear “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” or “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” And then the child or person goes on their merry way as if nothing had happened.
But if we didn’t mean it, why did we do it? Why do we so easily dismiss our behavior with a flippant comment?
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The underlying meaning of a communication is its truth
When we hurt someone, why do we lessen their sting by telling ourselves we “didn’t mean to”. This statement is often an unconscious behavior and perhaps one for which we are not ready to take responsibility. It’s like an “I don’t know” answer from a teenager, a cryptic comment meant to prevent us from any further discovery. However, “I didn’t mean it” has become so common that we accept it as true.
Let’s look a little deeper.
All actions speak louder and truer than our words. When our words don’t match our actions, it’s our actions that parade our truest motivation. Sorry, no sorry doesn’t cut it. Like the late Austrian psychiatrist, Dr. Alfred Adler was known to say,
“Trust only the movement. Life happens on the level of events, not words.”
The biggest culprits of hurtful behavior are unprocessed emotions, unconscious pain, and unmet needs. What we might mean by “I didn’t mean it” is that it was not prompted by conscious thought or motive. But if we look deeper, we often find hidden feelings or unmet needs that we simply haven’t recognized yet.
We may hurt ourselves when we hurt another person. A rude act to another can be an unconscious way to communicate our pain, to send an SOS that we are hurting. It may or may not have been the particular person who hurt us, especially with the kids.
Of course, when a person’s self-control is weak because they’ve had too much to drink or their addictions have overwhelmed their ability to cognitively control themselves, careless and hurtful words can slip by the wayside.
However, even under these conditions, the words may have roots of unresolved emotion or pain that creak when impulse control is reduced.
With children, their ability to control themselves is affected by developmental immaturity and brain development, so it’s up to adults to help regulate their emotions and teach them how to express their emotions in healthy ways.
My point here is to be more aware of your emotions and watch your words. Words can damage or help build healthy relationships.
Motivation Driving Behavior
How many times has a husband come home and yelled at his kids? Did they do it because they were mad at the kids? Not often. It is much more likely to be due to a difficult day at work or the result of unmet needs coming to the surface.
A child can come to school and push another child or teenager, bullying them. Another may emotionally humiliate another student, not because that person has done anything to him, but because of a sense of helplessness or a misunderstood inner conflict or an unacknowledged feeling of hurt.
Unloving behavior does not make a person evil. It makes you human. And unkind actions usually indicate a need for self-care and self-compassion.
Related reading: “Empathy and Empathic Apology: The New, Improved ‘Sorry'”
In any personal development and in any relationship, the key to loving ourselves and each other is realizing the roots of our actions.
Until we become aware of the cause of our actions and the beliefs that fuel them, we will continue to lash out, react emotionally, and reject others involuntarily. Emotional intelligence and self-awareness are essential to improving communication.
Sometimes, we’re just having a bad day and need someone to understand, even when we’re behaving badly. However, it is also important to honestly acknowledge what we feel and need. Every emotion is acceptable. Taking our moods out on others is less than desirable in any relationship.
Increase Self-Awareness: Mean what you say and say what you mean
You may have heard this saying. that’s awesome advice. Every time you hear yourself say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” search your heart.
Is there any reason you might have meant it?
Has pent-up resentment suddenly surfaced because you couldn’t communicate your feelings directly?
Has this person recently ignored you or said or done something hurtful to you that was never repaired?
Or maybe it’s as simple as the person canceling a dinner date, even if they had a legitimate reason.
Related reading: “The 4 Types of Ineffective Apologies.”
How to discern our inner motivation and learn what we need
A fundamental stepping stone to loving consciously and having more empathy for others is to decide every time we don’t love. When you find yourself doing or saying something rude, ask yourself afterward, “If I had a really good reason to act like that, what would it be?” (Not intended as an excuse to act rude; this question is an introspective exercise in becoming more honest with ourselves.)
Then explore if you need anything to regain your peaceful sense of self. Maybe you’d like an apology or a makeover, or you feel like you’d like to talk to the person about what’s bothering you. Or maybe all you need to do is be more present with your own feelings and empathize with yourself. Either way, take action once you discover what feels right.
Each time you do this process, you will feel more and more inner peace and have less and less outbursts towards others. Whenever we make a conscious effort to understand our true motives, rather than dismissing our actions too quickly, we grow in self-esteem. And every time you take action to fix anything that gets in the way of closeness in a relationship, you build more respect, closeness, and understanding.
The next time you hear yourself say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” dig a little deeper and find out if this is really true.
Insightful Additional Reading: “I didn’t mean it, or it didn’t mean anything!”
For more tools to learn how to improve communication in your relationships and live authentically, check out our wedding resources or discover more about our emotional intelligence course.
