If someone affected you emotionally in a negative way, it would be in one of two ways: neglect or abuse. Abuse can be verbal, nonverbal, physical, or sexual. Unfortunately, people can underestimate the emotional impact of verbal and nonverbal abuse.

Let’s say that someone has been verbally abusive to you, that would be similar to them smashing the windshield of your car.

If they then come up to you an apologize, it might feel good, you might feel a bit better, but that does not change the fact that the car needs repairing.

When it comes to emotions, most of us would receive the apology, and continue to drive the car despite the presence of a smashed windshield.

If we believe that the apology would repair the damage inside of us, we would no longer be able to see it, but we would still be affected by it. After all, receiving an apology for what happened does not eliminate the emotional impact of what happened.

What’s interesting here is that most people
do not care about repairing the car as much as they care about receiving the apology. The reason is that they believe that the apology would resolve the conflict and heal the wound, which is not the case. An apology can help in resolving the conflict, and can help in healing, but it does not heal the wound.

In other words, what drives the need to receive an apology is the emotional pain we feel because of what happened.

-Sam Qureshi