Why Making Amends Is So Important

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 how they’ve misunderstood. I want to help them see it from my perspective 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 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 carry shame around making mistakes. We have been raised in a culture where we get rewarded for doing things “right” and punished for doing something “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.

This makes it very difficult to tolerate the idea that our choices might make someone we care about upset. We do not want to hurt someone we care about. We want to think we are a good person and avoid shame. Additionally, if we continue to make the same choices, it causes us to use our minds to feel righteous about choices and make the other person wrong for feeling hurt or deserving of our choices.

In other words, we defend and justify rather than being accountable.

Webster's Dictionary defines accountability as "the quality or state of being accountable; an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for one's actions." In other words, being accountable means being willing to face and understand that our choices and actions have impacted another.

Accountability is a Deeply Powerful Act

It’s powerful for both the actor and recipient. One of the 12 Steps is making amends, and that action is intended to heal both parties involved. Nelson Mandela understood that truth and reconciliation was the only true path forward for a nation that had experienced so much trauma.

The Native Americans understand that restorative justice was a process of accountability and repair that heals the entire community. Judaism has a yearly practice of accountability and apology to those whom you have harmed with your actions.

These practices are incredibly challenging to enact but very healing if they are done. Why are they healing? The answer is perhaps more apparent when thinking about the recipient of the amends. If done correctly, that person feels heard and understood. Their pain is met with empathy and understanding: I can understand why you would feel that way. I get it. And I'm sorry. Hearing those words uttered by someone who has harmed you helps you feel deeply validated, seen, and cared for.

But amends is also ultimately healing for the actor. It may feel counterintuitive because of all we've been taught about "making a mistake" and all of the shame we carry. Still, ultimately, our accountability, empathy, and making things right helps us grow, learn and heal.

When we harm others, we harm ourselves in the process, and rationalizing or defending only makes us feel worse. It causes us to feel a more profound shame as it pulls us from our humanity and connection — accountability and making amends help us heal the other, which allows us to forgive ourselves.

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Finally, when we can be accountable and make amends, we are forced to face our humanness. Our fallibility. It's painful, but it forces us to understand ourselves more deeply and hold ourselves with compassion. It helps us learn from the experience and grow - in our relationship with ourselves and our capacity to love others.