In Defense Of "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way"

And its cousin, "I'm sorry if you're offended"

People hate this phrase. They say it’s a fake apology that only gets used to dismiss others’ concerns. Well, I’m sorry they feel that way.

People sometimes get sad or offended by appropriate/correct/reasonable actions:

• Maybe one of your family members makes an unreasonable demand (“Please lend me lots of money to subsidize my drug addiction”), you say no, and they say they feel like you don’t love them.

• Maybe you speak out against a genocidal aggressive war. Someone complains that their family member died fighting in that war. They accuse you of implicitly dismissing their relative’s sacrifice and calling them a bad person.

• Maybe you argue that a suspect is innocent of a crime, and some unrelated crime victim says it triggers them when people question victims or advocate for the accused. They say that now they are re-traumatized.

I see three classes of potential response:

• Actually change your mind. “Yeah, I’m so sorry I didn’t give you all my money so you can buy drugs, I’m going to take some time out to soul search and do better in the future. But first let me get my checkbook, how much do you need?”

• Be a jerk about it. “Haha, TRIGGERED! Whoever victimized you probably was right, you’re such a pussy about it.”

• Stay firm in your object-level position, but make it clear that you respect their feelings, didn’t mean it personally, and hope you can stay on good terms with them, ie “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Is there some incredibly eloquent and original answer that manages to convey joint firmness and compassion without using the dreaded “I’m sorry you feel that way” phrase? Maybe, but it’s not realistic to expect the average person to figure out a bespoke phrasing in the heat of the moment. It’s either “I’m sorry you feel that way” or switch to one of the other two strategies.

So why do people hate this phrase so much?

People complain a lot about “therapy culture”, but usually without explaining it or giving examples. Freddie de Boer does better here (see the list of bullet points halfway down). What do all of his examples have in common? They all overfit social norms to benefit you in the exact position you’re in at any given moment.

So if you wrong someone else, it’s a result of your trauma and disabilities, and everyone else is morally required to forgive you immediately.

But if someone else wrongs you, it’s because they’re a narcissistic abuser, and everyone else is morally obligated to shun that person forever in sympathy with you.

I think the hostility to “I’m sorry you feel that way” comes from the same place. It’s somebody in therapy culture imagining the overfit norm that they would want if somebody offended them. Then that other person shouldn’t be allowed to say anything except “I 100% admit that I was wrong and you were right, and I’ll change everything about myself immediately”.

What happens if you’re the one who offends someone else? Well, you’re a good person, you would never do that, and if someone else thinks you said something offensive, they’re wrong and they should apologize for unjustly accusing you.

If you ditch this model - if you admit there are sometimes situations where someone will be upset by some action of yours which you continue to endorse, and you’ve got to try to make them feel better with a polite compassionate response, then I think “I’m sorry you feel that way” comes out looking pretty good.

Or at least it would have, if Internet randos hadn’t installed a knee-jerk “Oh, you literally said the words, that proves you’re a bad person and I win this discussion!” reaction into anyone who hears it.

And if you disagree, I’m sorry you feel that way.