Ruptures happen in every relationship. People typically call them conflicts or arguments. They hurt, yet they offer a chance to grow. In the process of repair, we gain deeper connection to ourselves and others.
In this post, we explore how to shift your perspective about rupture and repair. To consider how conflicts can bring us closer. And, most importantly, the crucial difference between repair and apology.
Understanding Rupture
Rupture means a disruption in connection between two or more people. Most often people call it a conflict. It can occur between partners, friends, associates, or family members.
With children, ruptures happen frequently because of their underdeveloped brains. They “flip their lids” regularly. They do not have the brain circuity to help them stay balanced amidst challenges.
Meaning, they react from their downstairs brains. This leads to ruptures between themselves and others quite frequently.
Unfortunately, most adults react to children’s downstairs brain behaviors with punishment, shame, or blame. Because they don’t know that teaching changes behavior. Punishment either makes kids sneaky or overly compliant. They become people pleasers.
That is not a good thing, by the way.
While this reaction from adults must change, it’s understandable. Adults feel like failures when these ruptures arise. Society sends this message: if your child has challenging behavior, the parent is to blame.
Horrible. Let’s stop doing that.
In therapy, parents share, “I feel like a failure. Why does my child have such challenging behaviors?”
My answer always includes a discussion of the underdeveloped brain. Children’s brains don’t develop fully, it’s believed, until the early thirties. Challenging behavior fits. They act challenging because they feel challenged.
Beyond this, I tell adults that challenges help their brain’s grow. We want children to experience challenges and conflict. So you can teach them how to move through it.
Rupture leads to growth
As such, ruptures have value. Conflict is imperative for growth and development. Dr. Becky Kennedy teaches that ruptures reveal hidden needs. And, they offer the opportunity for repair.
Instead of shame, blame, or punishment, the healthy response from adults involves engaging in repair with the child.
This rupture/repair cycle helps the child’s brain develop. It’s not to be feared or avoided.
Instead, if adults learn healthy repair, ruptures benefit children in the long run. They teach them how to identify, understand, express, and then manage their thoughts and feelings. And, eventually, their behavior.
Ruptures teach how to engage in problem solving and conflict resolution.
The problem? Most adults don’t know how to do healthy repair. Because the adults in their lives didn’t know how either.
Punishment, shame, and blame are not part of repair. They do not teach skills. Instead, they teach the child they cannot trust you to guide them through challenges in a safe way.
Let’s explore how to embrace this rupture/repair cycle.
Attunement: The Heart of Repair
Repair begins with attunement. Attunement means tuning in; either to your interior landscape or someone else’s.
In my 30 years as a therapist I’ve found that most adults do not know how to engage in attunement. Because they have not been taught. Nor has the behavior been modeled for them consistently.
Observation is not attunement. Telling a child what to do is not attunement.
In this article, I will help you learn more about this important skill. It consists of two parts: intrapersonal and interpersonal attunement.
You determine if you attune regularly.
Intra-personal Attunement
Start by checking in with yourself when a challenge arises. Ask, “What am I thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving? What am I believing about myself, others, the world in this moment?”
Stay present and breathe deeply. In this way, you attend and befriend your interior landscape.
Notice: I didn’t say anything about what to do or how to “fix” what is happening. That’s on purpose.
Fixing is not attuning. Telling someone what they ought to do about their issue is not attuning.
It may come after you attune, but giving someone advice is not attuning.
As you engage with the present moment, you start to self-regulate. By intrapersonally attuning in this way, you activate a sturdiness in your nervous system.
Now, you may engage in effective repair after a rupture. What you might call fixing or “doing something” about it. With the child, or another adult. Either way, you are regulated, ready to repair.
Inter-personal Attunement
From this place of balance, you focus on the other person’s perspective. You invite them to make the u-turn inward and notice their interior landscape.
Asking open ended question such as “What happened?” and “How do you feel?” helps the child or adult identify, understand, and express their interior landscape.
The adult uses active listening to help the other person feel seen. Mirroring, summarizing, empathizing, and validating the person’s perspective.
Again, child or adult.
As the other shares the story of the rupture from their perspective, the adult responds with those active listening skills.
Not excuses, justifications, explanations, or bids for reassurance.
Here is an example from a recent therapy session. A husband goes in for a hug and his wife says, “Sorry, but I don’t feel huggy right now.” He raises his voice and says, “See? You don’t want anything to do with me.”
What would you say in response?
She said, “No, you are missing the point. It’s just right now. I don’t want a hug at this moment. It’s not about all the time.”
She explained herself. To try to help him feel less hurt, she told me. Her intention was good, right?
But the impact? He got more upset, “See? We can’t talk about anything because you get so defensive.”
When someone feels hurt and you explain why you hurt them, this may happen.
Not just with adults, but with children, too.
In contrast, actively listening to another’s perspective helps them feel seen, soothed, safe, and secure. Saying “sorry” or “sorry, but….” does not.
What to do instead: interpersonally attune
Instead of explaining herself, she might have tried being interpersonally attuning to his perspective first. To demonstrate curiosity and compassion instead of explaining.
Why was he conflating a moment with the entirety of their relationship? Something was really off for him. Pause to find out.
Adding in validating phrases such as “I believe you” and “I get now how you feel that way” or “No wonder you feel like this” may help the other person, including children, start to regulate as well.
From this attuned stance, the adult begins the rupture/repair process. The wife would absolutely share her perspective during repair.
Once the husband felt seen and soothed, there would be space for him to hear her “explanation.” Put another way, to hear her perspective.
Don’t get fixated on this one example, please. It’s one example of how we often explain ourselves instead of interpersonally attuning with the other person first. And from a brain perspective, this won’t get you far.
People need to be seen and soothed when they suffer. Not explained to.
The Process of Repair: Showing You’re Sorry
Repair means more than a simple apology. It involves showing you are sorry versus saying you are sorry.
Maybe read that again: showing your sorrow versus saying I am sorry. How is that different?
Dr. Harriet Lehrner shares her approach to an effective apology. Instead of just saying “I’m sorry,” let your actions demonstrate your regret.
3 Steps to Healthy Repair: showing your sorry versus saying sorry
- Acknowledge the Event: Clearly state what happened from the other person’s perspective, not yours. This means you first listen to the other person’s story of what happened. If their perspective differs from yours, you may need to self-regulate. To stay with the other person’s perspective and not try to dismantle it.
For example, a man comes home late from work without texting or calling. His partner meets him at the door with a disgruntled look, “You didn’t let me know you were going to be late. Dinner is cold. I feel disrespected. This happens a lot.”
To acknowledge her, the man might say “I came home late for dinner, and you feel overlooked because I didn’t text you. The food was cold by the time I came home.”
How about with a child who cries when it’s time to leave the park? Acknowledgement might sound like “Gosh, you wanted a turn on the swing set. We had to leave before you were ready to go.”
- Take Responsibility for your role: Own your role without excuses. Listen and honor their perspective: thoughts, feelings, sensations, beliefs, etc.
With the adult you add to the above acknowledgment, “I do this semi-frequently. Come home late despite you clearly telling me when dinner will be ready.”
With a child, it might sound like, “I failed to slow down and notice what was happening for you. I just rushed you to the car.”
Note the lack of excuses made, no defensiveness.
In repair, you take responsibility without explaining, justifying, or making excuses for yourself. Even though the person might have ‘good reasons’ for why they arrive late.
In a true repair, one never (never, ever!) offers a reason for WHY you did what you did.
Consider this: you do something that hurts me, then you tell me WHY you hurt me as you apologize? How does that make sense? Sit with that please because most humans do that.
A faulty repair like this with the child may be, “I failed to slow down and notice what was happening for you. But we had to get going and I gave you lots of notice that we were going to leave.”
With an adult? “I do this semi-frequently. Come home late when you’ve told me about dinner plans. But I really try to be on time. It’s hard to break away from work sometimes.”
Nope. Those reasons don’t fit here. That’s not repair.
Can you see why?
Just in case you answered “no,” let me help. You started off well, acknowledging what happened, then you “but-ed” on it. Everything after the “but” undermines the authenticity of your repair.
The excuses, reasons, justifications are about you, not them. Don’t do that in your repair. When you do, it lacks sincerity.
You say sorry you were late. You acknowledge the negative impact on me. Then you tell me all the reasons why you did it.
Again, nope.
- Act to Change: Outline concrete steps to prevent future ruptures. Let your actions speak louder than words. Meaning, follow through after.
For example, with an adult you might say, “Going forward I will commit to texting you well in advance, or as soon as I know I will be home late. You deserve that.”
With a child, “How about next time we set a timer, so you know when it is getting close to leaving. It’s hard to leave when you are having fun, huh?”
The Transformative Power of Repair
Repair transforms relationships. Saying “sorry” might not. When you actively repair, you build trust and deepen bonds.
While many adults identify as conflict avoidant, disagreements and ruptures are an inevitable part of life. Instead of being fearful of conflict, learn how to make appropriate repair.
That way, you won’t shut down, avoid, or dismiss the other person by avoiding talking about it at all. Or, by saying a perfunctory “sorry” or “sorry, but….”
Each act of repair assures both parties feel seen, soothed, safe, and secure. These moments build resilience over time and create a more secure relationship.
Both with yourself and others.
Therapists see that consistent repair practices reduce conflict. They foster an environment where vulnerability thrives, and both people grow.
Repair turns disconnection into a path toward a stronger connection.
Final Reflections
Ruptures occur in every relationship. They do not signal the end but invite deeper understanding and opportunities for growth.
Embrace attunement by making the u-turn inward, then attuning to others. Show your remorse through actions that build trust.
Use these strategies to transform each rupture into a powerful opportunity. Let your words and actions prove that you care. In doing so, you will nurture relationships that grow stronger with each repair.
Explore more about these practices on Dr. Becky Kennedy’s website and listen to Brené Brown’s insightful podcasts featuring Dr. Harriet Lehrner:
For more about healthy relationships including additional transformative communication tools, visit my Resources page.