Why Making Amends Is So Important

Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash

When someone I love and care about tells me that I did something that hurt or upset them, my first impulse is to show them how they’re wrong. I want to explain to them how they’ve misunderstood. I want to help them see it from my point of view so they can have compassion for my choices. I want to show them how it can’t be that I’ve hurt their feelings because really, I’m a good person with good intentions.

This is a very human response, and it’s a response that most of us have. This is true for a couple of reasons.

1. When we care about someone, we don’t want anything bad to happen to them. We don’t want them to feel sadness, hurt, etc and so the thought that we could have played a part in them feeling that way is, understandably, abhorrent.
2. We are invested in thinking of ourselves as good people, and we equate hurting others with being “bad.” So the idea that our actions might have caused harm is distressing because it runs interference with how we think of ourselves.
3. We have shame around making mistakes. We have been raised in a culture where we get rewarded for doing things “right” and punished for doing things “wrong” instead of having an idea that we learn by doing, so that means that life is a learning process where we refine our choices and actions based on what we have learned.