01/11/2026
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Suit Up: Surviving Toxic Families Without Losing Yourself, which explores how people heal when accountability never comes—and how boundaries become an act of self-respect rather than punishment.
Lack of Accountability and Refusal to Apologize—When Repair Never Happens
In healthy relationships, people hurt each other sometimes—but they repair it. They reflect, take responsibility, make amends, and adjust their behavior. In toxic systems, however, accountability is a foreign language. The hurt is there, but the repair never comes. And when you grow up in that kind of emotional climate, you stop expecting repair. You start believing that your pain is either invisible, too much, or your fault. Over time, this belief becomes internalized until your nervous system treats every rupture like something you’re not allowed to name.
For survivors of toxic family systems, apologies are rare—if they come at all. And when they do, they’re often hollow. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” “I was just trying to help.” “I guess I can’t say anything right.” These aren’t apologies. They’re deflections disguised as regret. And they shift the emotional labor back onto the person who was hurt. Now you’re not just dealing with the pain—you’re managing the other person’s guilt, their defensiveness, their need to be seen as good.
When apologies are absent, distorted, or transactional, the emotional pattern becomes stuck. The wound never has a chance to heal. The nervous system stays tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop or the tone to change. You start telling yourself things like, I’m being too sensitive, or Maybe I misunderstood, or They didn’t mean it. And just like that, your boundary begins to unravel.
Some of my clients—especially those brave enough to look honestly at their past—often ask me: “What if I’m becoming like them?” It takes courage to even ask this question. Healing means not only seeing who hurt you and how, but also recognizing what you might have absorbed from them. So let me offer this reassurance: noticing is powerful. It means you’re paying attention, making choices, and steering toward something better. Your history shaped your road, but the path forward is always yours to pave.
It doesn’t mean you caused the harm. It means you’re no longer outsourcing the repair. Your pain is real—but so is your power to patch the road, pick a different route, or stop walking in circles entirely. Read the full excerpt here → https://lnkd.in/gCZhRHBM
If this resonates, I’ll be sharing more excerpts and reflections from Suit Up as the book moves toward publication. You can follow along here or join my mailing list to be notified when it’s available.
