What hurts is that people treat it like I am doing this obsessive, unnecessary thing when in reality the amount I say sorry is perfectly tailored to the amount that I am randomly (random only from my perspective of course) pissing people off all the time around me with my actions. Which in practice means I say sorry all the fucking time.
Those same people that tell me not to say sorry I have pushed to the edge of their tolerance of me many times, and the ONLY thing I can do in those situations is say sorry in a genuine way. People really dont fucking understand having an intimate familiarity with those moments where someone is seriously pissed off at you and not only wants a practical explanation for why you fucked up but more importantly they need an emotional explanation that squares your apparent desire to be a good person/worker with the fact that you just massively fucked up something in a way that sure makes you look like a lazy, uncaring person. I have no agency in those moments, I am basically an 18 wheeler smashing through someone else's life but I have no brakes and LITERALLY the only thing I can do in that moment to make the situation better is apologize simply but genuinely in a way that conveys how hurt I am by own actions too.
Of course, the ones that love me always return to their more patient selves and apologize for getting frustrated with me, but apologies mean nothing to the memory in my body of feeling like I am always sliding towards seriously aggravating someone and hurting my relationship with them. Further it is only a learned, constant input of willpower and constant attentiveness that keeps me from constantly blowing past people's threshold of patience for me in moment to moment interaction and also in broader life contexts. An absolutely necessary survival strategy for me has been learning to constantly "manually breath" with my experience of reality so that I don't slip back into autonomic behaviors that immediately cause friction with the environment and people around me.
Saying sorry a lot is my way of double checking my social awareness and making sure I am not missing the fact that now I am just yelling at everybody for no reason because I am excited about the conversation or something. When people react with "hey, stop saying sorry!" the consequences are they are mildly annoyed at being asked the question, but when it opens up a conversation about something I have been doing that is genuinely annoying people around me it can often be the ONLY thing that saves me and others from a lot of unnecessary suffering. It also, and I can't stress the importance of this enough, is often the only thing that can halt someone from developing a narrative about who I am that is wildly inaccurate (I don't care, I am lazy, I don't like working).
The world is going to have to become a hell of a lot more accommodating and accepting of ADHD before I stop saying "sorry!" all the time and it is frustrating that people get upset at me for using a perfectly rational coping strategy in a society extremely hostile to my disability. Its like, people don't want to see the amount of effort I have to put into not being a burden on others because it stresses them out and feels like a broken record.... and sometimes I just get so angry and sad feeling like... yes that is exactly what it is like to be in my head 24/7, I am sorry you had to briefly experience that?
Sorry, I'm running errands and wasn't able to read your whole post, but have you heard of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria? It sounds like this might be the reason you apologize so much - could be worth a look.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-way-adhd/202106/adhd-and-rejection-sensitivity-dysphoria
Yeah this is extremely apropos—and helpful.
Yeah this sounds about right. I’m 95% sure I have it and I can relate a lot to OP
Yeah definitely I have heard of RSD, it seems like at least on the Reddit ADHD community it isn’t really taken as a serious part of ADHD?
I definitely have RSD, but also I think people are missing the fact that I made my post in a moment of feeling grief that I think is perfectly genuine outside of the context of RSD (though it definitely amplifies it). A lot of responses were focused on explaining what I should do, or why I was wrong and I was just looking for some connection with other ADHD people who also feel like saying sorry after ADHD fuckups is actually a necessary survival skill and much more logical than people on the outside realize.
Apparently RSD isn't officially a recognized part of ADHD, but afaik there's some agreement that it appears to be a connected.
As for the context of my response, I apologize if my response wasn't what you were looking for. I know for me personally, the day I learned about RSD it cleared up a lot of things for me surrounding "random" emotional outbursts and over-apologizing and such. Figured it might help.
Nah I appreciate it, your response was helpful!