Cognitive Behavioural Therapist (CBT) Dr David Burns has moved away from saying "sorry" to patients and clients who are upset by something during therapy sessio

Cognitive Behavioural Therapist (CBT) Dr David Burns has moved away from saying "sorry" to patients and clients who are upset by something during therapy sessions; he says apologising with "sorry" is such a problem because it's a too-easy meaningless platitude that people throw out without any thought and expect it to act to immediately silence the other person's upset without any further discussion, and the person on the receiving end of "sorry" knows this common use and expects it to be a cheap dismissive silencer which they can't respond to, so apologising isn't the same as accepting responsibility, apologising without accepting responsibility is dismissive and trivialising, accepting responsibility is better without it. That apologising doesn't add to understanding, it takes away from it. Accepting responsibility is understanding the other person's reasons for hurting, which means listening to them. Apologising is trying to make the other person to stop hurting, and stop them from talking anymore so you don't have to hear more or spend more time on it.