The visionary philosopher and psychotherapist Gene Gendlin coined a word that I love: eveving. In brief, eveving means that everything effects everything. What we do, think and feel eveves: it affects every other being in the world.
Over thirty years ago, while teaching a class on dreams, I first began to experiment with making inner apologies. This simple practice is related to the idea of eveving because it can bring changes to relationships even when no outer interaction has occurred.
Though scientists don't yet have the tools to prove why inner apologies can bring needed changes to relationships, our theory is that there's a group field that connects us all. (The biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls these fields "morphic fields.") Everything we do, think and feel affects the group field, including our unconscious and unintended actions, as well as the steps we take to make amends for them.
Relationship repair is a practice that our Felt Connection community is deeply devoted to. Without skills in relationship repair, it's hard to stay connected to yourself and others.
That said, sometimes it's awkward, or downright hard, to apologize to others if it's been a number of years since you did or said something that isn't aligned with your values. And sometimes we can't apologize because another person is no longer alive or is no longer willing to interact with us. In such cases, making an inner apology is ideal.
How to Make An Inner Apology Inner apology is simple: All you do is close your eyes, imagine that someone is seated comfortably in front of you, and with heartfelt emotion and sincerity, apologize for an unconscious or unintended action. During this apology, it's important to clearly name and own what you regret doing (or not doing) and describe the unintended impact you think it might have had on the other person. The effects of inner apology can be heightened by doing it every day for a week or a month--or every year on an important anniversary or holiday--as a way of making amends for your unconscious actions.
A Surprising Example of Eveving after an An Inner Apology
I'll never forget the first time I shared the practice of inner apology in a six-week dream class I was facilitating. The following week, a member of the class reported that she had made an inner apology to her father. They'd gotten tangled up in a big fight decades ago, and hadn't spoken ever since. For years on end, she had bitterly blamed him for the disconnect between them and had never even thought about her role in the whole situation. But to her great surprise, after making a sincere inner apology to her father, he spontaneously called her the following day expressing remorse for his past actions. They still had work to do to mend the disconnect between them, but her apology had broken the "inner ice" between them.
You can practice an inner apology with someone living or someone who has passed from this world. Or you can practice it as a prelude to making an outer apology as an "inner ice breaker".
If the idea of making an inner apology resonates for you, try it out and let the members of our Felt Connection community know what you learned (via email or the comment box below.)