Making Amends in Recovery (Step 9 of 12)

In this video, I'm going to tell you how to make a genuine apology. And at the end of the video, you'll get to hear some personal stories about making an apology or an amend. Okay, I'm going to give you three specific pieces of advice and one extra bonus piece of advice. Even if you don't think that you're the only one at fault in a given situation, it is not the time to bring up what the other person did when you're making an apology or an amends. This is just about you and what you did or didn't do that you'd like to apologize about it. In recovery, they call that keeping your side of the street clean. So if you're really coming from the heart, you don't need to bring up excuses as to why it happened. Minimize what happened. And you definitely don't want to say something like, well, I only did that because you xyz. Now that's not going to end an apology. That will end in an argument. So you own your part. Don't worry about the other person. This is about you owning your part only. Advice number two. And my second piece of advice is for you to verbalize to the other person that you know how your action or behavior affected them. So, for example, if you're apologizing about lying in the past, then you want to talk about how those lies affected the other person or their situation. When you're able to do that, it really makes the other person feel heard and understood. And that goes a long way. That's a really important component. Especially if you've apologized more than once or twice on this subject matter, you're really gonna have to dig way in if you want someone to take your apology seriously. I mean, you're gonna have to get vulnerable like Brene Brown vulnerable. You might want to channel her spirit in or something. Take the walls down, let your guard down. Be humble and authentic. And my third piece of advice on this subject is to try and let the other person know that you understand what the underlying issue is that makes this thing keep happening. Now, this is a delicate issue because what I don't mean is make an excuse. What I do mean is express some insight into your own thinking, decision making, judgment, behavior. Like, for example, you can say something like, I know I really let my ego get the best of me. I was only focused on protecting myself and I really wasn't thinking about anybody else in the matter. There's a difference in making an excuse and a rationalization for what you did and being really vulnerable and humble to express some insight into why that happened to begin with. Because when you're on the other side of an apology, knowing that someone gets what they did, they understand how it affected you and they have some insight into what's causing the problem. It gives you a little hope that it might not happen again and that they really mean it. Now, I told you there would be a bonus. So here it is. If you really, really, really need to earn some trust, you may want to even disclose something that the person did not already know. I know what you're thinking, Heck no, I'm already in big enough trouble. But think about it like this. By the time most people get to see me, they're already pretty much in the doghouse, Usually about as far as you can go in the doghouse. And so I usually say, hey, if you're already in trouble and you're already busted, if there's anything else out there lingering that you haven't told, let's throw it out there right now because you're probably not going to get in that much more trouble. But if it comes out later and you didn't tell that part, oh my gosh, you are gonna go all the way back to, like, in the negatives of trust, and it is gonna be so hard that much harder to dig out of it. So if there are other things that you've lied about and you haven't told and there's any way possible ever that those things could surface, just go ahead and tell it and get it out of the way. This will go a long way into establishing trust because the other person's gonna know that you didn't have to tell this. So this means more than just owning up to what you've already been busted for. It's a whole different level of genuineness and humbleness, and it will go a long way. So now that you've heard my advice on the subject, let's hear from some people that have actually had to do this. Alright, so in this video, I talked about how to give a sincere apology. And you guys are gonna tell us from experience about giving a sincere apology?

Mm, we're gonna try.

Okay. Do either one of you have a story that when it particularly did not.

Go well, Lucas don't really have much on that.

Is that you?

Maybe.

I feel like Lucas might have a story like that.

Take it away. I seem to have forgotten the story now.

I'm trying to remember.

Conveniently, I think you were talking about when you were in early recovery or when you really weren't in recovery yet, you kind of get like a week clean.

Yeah.

You would try to, like, make an apology and that sort of thing.

Yeah, so. So generally the trend in my life while in active addiction, I'd have little periods of like, you know, getting sober for a week or going to detox, getting out, thinking about it. And my apologies generally went like, you know, unfortunately, it'd be someone that I, like, robbed or screwed over out of money or drugs or, you know, did something, you know, pretty bad too, and I would just expect them to sweep it under the rug with a short, you know, hey, I'm sorry, no big deal, we can put this behind us. It was really, you know, I mean, what did you want me to do? Like, you're calling me, you're telling me that you have drugs. Like, what do you think? I'm not gonna steal them. Like, truly, you understand, you know, and, you know, they'd basically be like, screw off. No way. You robbed me. Like, I'm not gonna be. Not gonna forgive you. And it's just these half hearted apologies that normally ended up with me putting the blame on them and always on to someone else.

I think people can feel when you're genuine and when you're not.

Yeah.

So when you tried those early on, they didn't work so well, huh?

No, they really just don't work well. And there's just so much that I learned about how to make apologies after getting sober that just made it a much better experience that I could actually learn how to apologize to people and, like, rectify situations and better than that, amend situations that I made with people where then we could get past certain things that I'd done because I would be able to, you know, come to them with my guard down, not looking for a fight, just looking to own up to my part of what I did, not try to justify it with anything that they did. You know, what I can do to make amends to them is try to live my life in the best way possible and not treat them like that anymore. I can't necessarily change the past.

I feel like when we were talking about it earlier, both of you told me that you had at least one sister. It feels like you both had a sister that process was more difficult with.

Yep.

Hear that? Can we hear about that? Why? Was it what made it more difficult? David, would you like to share?

Yeah, I guess for me it was just what made it more difficult. Just, I think a lack of trust. Years and years of saying I'm better, but proving that I'm not my actions saying otherwise. You know, for me, I had a sister that I took a lot away from, especially, like, attention wise with my parents. She was going through a very important time of her life when I was in one of the worst parts of mine and she was, you know, looking at colleges, trying to find a college she wants to go to, touring them, trying to figure out budgets for these colleges.

Meanwhile, special time of life.

Yeah.

But she doesn't really get to, like, really have her time.

Yeah, that you want your parents around for. You want their opinion, but you want.

To be excited and you want your parents to be excited. Yeah.

And I kind of took that from her.

Gosh, David.

Took her budget from her, you know, the budget. Yeah. Maybe she wouldn't have had to get on the meal plan and could have gone out to eat at night with her friends, but, you know, big brothers in treatment. I think it brought on a lot of feelings of neglect for her, which, you know, she has every right, had every right to hold on to that resentment the way she did. It took, I want to say, about three years, three and a half years before we really hashed that out. And we were actually convinced her, like, go on a trip with me or she convinced me one way or the other. And we went, like to the other side of the world. We went to Southeast Asia and spent like a month and Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia. And one night there. It was early on, it was like, I believe in the first week that we got there, this stuff, like, came to the surface one night and we were sitting in the room, sitting on our beds, Indian style, both crying and me telling her that, like, look, I'm. I can't change the past. There's nothing. I can't go back in time. If I could, I would. I would do everything in my power to go back and fix this for you. But what I can tell you is that I have changed now. I hope I've proved that to you by now, and I hope that I can make it up to you. Like, I am here for you. And any way that you need me, you give me a call and I'm gonna show up. Like, I'm gonna be that brother that you've always wanted.

Good choices. Throughout her life, she taught classical piano, was a dance team, you know, got her choice of colleges and got to go to college. And all the while, she's doing all these things right. I'm doing everything wrong. And, you know, doing drugs, stealing my parents, car stealing money, stealing from her, lying to everybody, disappearing for weeks. And sometimes Even months on end, and, you know, all the attention was on me, and none of it was on any of my siblings. And I don't think we really had, like, a big conversation or anything like that about it. It was just once she had seen enough that, like, it took three years for her to believe the actions.

You had to really prove it, because you probably had a lot of false starts.

Had a lot of false starts, a lot of lies, a lot of deceit, a lot of manipulation, and she just wasn't having it, and rightfully so. But now that it's based on all these actions and just me being my true self, that really is sober and trying to do the right thing, you know, we have the best relationship that we've ever had. And I got to, you know, ask to be a groomsman at her wedding. And last time I came into Charleston, she knew I was coming, called me, invited me over to her house, had me there for dinner, like, cooked me dinner. I couldn't imagine doing that with my adult siblings, and I'm just so grateful for that. It kind of makes me tear up a little bit, even hearing about your stuff, you know, just because the parallels are there, where you just feel like you may never get someone back in your life, and then to get them back is just huge.

I think one of the things I like about those two stories is they're not really direct things you did to someone that you're apologizing about. It's kind of like an indirect.

There were direct.

There were direct things, but these themes were about just sort of what it did to the family system as a whole. Yeah. And. And I think what the other person, I think, really wants from that all the time is to know that you get it. And I can tell from hearing you two talk about your sisters that you get it, that you get how whatever happened really impacted them. And I think that's really what people want to hear, is like, yeah, I get it. Like, I did. That was a real thing. I get that it hurt you or messed up your life in this way. Yeah.

And then it even goes, like, a step further, where then once I got sober, you know, it was like, all the attention was still on me because, you know, my siblings coined a phrase for me. It's called the saving grace is what they call me, because when I come into town, they think that all the attention is on me, and maybe some of it is. I don't pay too much attention to all that, but I try to be empathetic to how they feel about It. And yeah, you know, it's like, wow, Lucas is sober. And it's like the talk of the house and everything like that. And it's like, well, I graduated from college and like, didn't do drugs.

I got a Nobel prize, like, have.

All my stuff together. And it's like, yeah, that's great. But Lucas is sober. It's been nine months. So let's just really be proud of him. He's so great, you know, and like, I totally get that. And it's easy to get, you know, for a long time I just got caught up in it and it was like, yeah, I am great. I am special. And like, wasn't thinking about, you know, how that affects my siblings. And I think it wasn't until they started making those jokes and gave me that nickname that I really started to think about like, God, I'm even kind of stealing the spotlight now being sober.

Gosh, Lucas, just selfish.

Talk about conceited, self centered selfish. The laundry list goes on. So I just try to combat that with just trying to be at least aware of that, that, you know, I did rob these people, my siblings childhood. And you know, the least I could do is try to make that right by having praise your biggie bank and steals your money when you're like 12 years old. You know, a brother is someone that you should be able to go to and maybe borrow 10 bucks from, you know, the opposite way around. And just trying to be that person, that brother that I want to be rather than what I was.

Yeah, I'd like to talk about another side of amends or the ones that maybe you don't make or can't make. You know, going through this whole process. I had someone tell me that, you know, don't worry about any of your exes, any of the girls that were in your life before that you wronged or left one night because you wanted to go get drugs. It just may not be the best idea. They'll see over time that you're better. You're probably not treating people the way you were treating them then, which will give them peace of mind. But let's not make them think that you're trying to rekindle something there or start a relationship again or mess up a relationship that they may be in at the time. So that was a good piece of advice that I received. And that's not the case for everyone. That's just some advice that I followed. And then, you know, another one. Amends that we can't make is like my father, my father Passed away before, unfortunately, I got sober, and I didn't get to make those amends to him face to face. And the last time he saw me, I was very strung out, which is sad to think about, But I just try to keep my focus on. Well, I think he'd be very proud of me today. And I try to be the. The son that he didn't see in the end. I try to be the brother that my sisters didn't have in the beginning, and that's a big driving force for me. That's what. That's some of the motivation for me today is to be that guy that I wasn't.

It's one of the things I say all the time, that all of my favorite people are in recovery. And I think that's the thing I like about people in recovery is you just. I think it's from the amendment process or something or just the therapy process or what. But you have a unique ability to be humble and vulnerable and honest to, like, a degree that regular people don't have. And you can really sense. I think you can really feel inside when someone's sincere, when they mean it, you know? So I think the biggest thing about making a genuine apology is mean it. Because if you don't, if you have any kind of ulterior motive like what you were talking about, it definitely you can feel that in the energy, and it won't work. So if you're not there in your heart yet, maybe don't do it yet.

Yeah, definitely hold off until you're.

Until you're really there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think you said you even had, like, parents ask or say, like, what am I gonna get my process?

When they see this video, parents, I know y' all gonna be mad. They're like, ah, where's ours?

Where's my man? It's coming, I promise.

Yeah. I mean, it takes time, but you want to make sure that everyone's ready. And some people may take a little longer than others, but it's important for it to come from a good place, a good, genuine place.

And there's normally a lot of fear surrounding it. You know, so many. I've heard so many stories of people saying, you know, I was so worried that when I'm gonna go make these amends, they're just gonna tell me, yeah, you are a scumbag, and you did do that wrong, and I'll never forgive you. And that's just never the case, or it's very rarely the case, you know, exacerbate it. So I think that it gets built up in the mind a lot, that, like, nobody's going to forgive me. I've done these awful wrong things, and I can never make them right. And I think I've constantly been surprised by just, like, the goodness of people and that people want to forgive and people want a redemption story, and they want people to get better and do better. You just have to give them that opportunity to forgive you.

Any other wisdom for me, too? Wow. How's guys?

I think I'm tapped out for the day.

Yeah, that's.

That's it?

Yeah, I think that's it.

All right. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, no problem. Anytime here.

We're out.

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