I recently realised something mildly horrifying about myself: I apologise constantly.

Not for things that actually warrant an apology, but for everyday situations that don't. I apologise when I ask a question, need help, correct someone, or even when somebody bumps into me.

Somewhere along the way, "sorry" stopped being a word and became a reflex.

Once I noticed it, I saw it everywhere. Women apologising before speaking up, asking for assistance, seeking clarification, or simply taking up space. It made me wonder how many of us have become so conditioned to avoid seeming difficult, demanding, or inconvenient that we apologise before anyone has even suggested we've done something wrong.

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So I decided to run an experiment: for 30 days, I would stop apologising unnecessarily.

It sounded simple. It wasn't.

The truth is, I failed. Spectacularly.

Every time I thought I was making progress, I caught another unnecessary apology slipping out before I'd even finished the sentence. It was as if my brain had installed an autocorrect feature that automatically replaced confidence with "sorry."

What became clear very quickly was that I wasn't consciously choosing to apologise most of the time.

The habit had become so automatic it felt less like a decision and more like a muscle twitch.

One afternoon, while shopping for my son's birthday, I spotted a toy I'd been hunting down for weeks.

I'd already paid and was halfway out the door when I grabbed it and headed back to the register.

"Sorry, can I grab these too?" I said to the cashier.

She looked mildly confused, as though trying to identify which part of purchasing items from a shop required an apology.

As I walked away, I found myself wondering the same thing.

Sorry for what? Sorry for buying more products? Sorry for creating additional work by participating in the entire purpose of a retail store?

A few days later, a man walked directly into me at a shopping centre. Without hesitation, I apologised.

He didn't.

He continued walking while I stood there questioning why my first instinct had been to accept responsibility for a collision I hadn't caused.

It was a tiny moment, but it perfectly summed up the problem: whenever there was an inconvenience, no matter who created it, my reflex was to absorb the blame.

Then there was the coffee incident.

The barista called my name. I stepped forward to collect the coffee I'd paid for and somehow heard myself say, "Sorry, that's mine."

Sorry.

For collecting my own coffee.

On another occasion, someone misspelt my name and I apologised while correcting her. Apparently, I'd reached the point where I was apologising for the spelling of my own name.

The absurdity became impossible to ignore.

What surprised me most wasn't how often I apologised. It was how uncomfortable it felt when I didn't.

The first few times I stopped myself from saying sorry, I felt strangely rude.

Almost arrogant. As though failing to apologise for something that wasn't my fault made me less likeable.

But then something unexpected happened.

I felt lighter.

More confident.

More direct.

It was as though every unnecessary apology had been a tiny tax on my energy. Individually insignificant. Collectively exhausting.

And that's when I realised this experiment wasn't really about language.

It was about permission.

For many women, "sorry" isn't always an expression of regret. It's often a social lubricant.

A way of softening requests, cushioning opinions, shrinking needs and reassuring everyone around us that we're not about to become difficult. We apologise before asking questions.

Before taking up time.

Before taking up space.

Before expressing a need.

Sometimes it feels as though we're expected to provide a small verbal offering before we're allowed to exist comfortably in the world.

Of course, not all women do this, and not all men don't. But after a month of paying attention, I couldn't help noticing a pattern.

Many men seem perfectly comfortable asking for what they need without wrapping it in three layers of apology first.

They make the request. Ask the question. Correct the mistake. End of interaction.

Meanwhile, many women seem to approach every request as though it arrives with an invisible inconvenience fee that must be paid upfront.

Sorry to bother you.

Sorry to ask.

Sorry to interrupt.

Sorry to exist.

The irony is that nobody was asking for these apologies.

The cashier or the barista didn't need one.

The man who walked into me certainly didn't deserve one.

Yet there I was, distributing apologies like promotional flyers.

That's not a criticism of men. If anything, it's a reminder of how much mental energy women spend trying to ensure they're never perceived as too much. Too direct. Too demanding. Too confident. Too inconvenient.

A single apology is harmless. But thousands of tiny apologies over a lifetime can teach you that your comfort matters less than everyone else's.

And that's a much harder habit to break. Imagine what we could do with that energy if we redirected it elsewhere.

I didn't succeed in giving up unnecessary apologies for 30 days. Not even remotely.

But I did learn something important.

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Most of the time, I wasn't apologising because I'd done something wrong. I was apologising because, somewhere along the way, I'd absorbed the idea that being a good woman meant making everyone else comfortable first.

These days, whenever I catch myself saying sorry, I pause and ask a simple question: What exactly am I apologising for?

More often than not, I don't have an answer.

And maybe that's the lesson.

Having needs isn't something that requires an apology. Taking up space isn't something that requires an apology. Existing isn't something that requires an apology.

The older I get, the more I suspect that one of the most liberating things a woman can learn is that she doesn't need to spend her life saying sorry for being there in the first place.

Feature Image: Getty.