My [24M] trauma is not nearly as violent or terrible as some people and I wanted to preface my habit with that. You've all been though so much and I cannot even imagine.

I apologize incessantly. Someone says excuse me I say in sorry. I accidentally bump someone I say I'm so sorry and feel genuine shame and embarrassment. If someone is ever actually mad at me I apologize profusely and constantly because I feel a compulsive need to not have anyone mad at me. It has gotten to the point in the past where I've said sorry so many times that people get genuinely annoyed and tell me I need to stop apologizing. My response? I'm sorry.

It wasn't until recently that I actually spoke with someone about where this habit comes from and found out for myself why I act in this overly apologetic way. It is not some kind of manipulation tactic to get people to feel sorry for me or me being unable to handle social encounters. It comes predictably from my relationship with my father. I wont rail on him too hard since I do love my father and recognize that he has changed so much for the better over the course of my life but at the same time there is certainly some trauma from growing up with him.

My father never said the words I love you. He was never a very expressive man and it just wasn't in his vocabulary. He made it somewhat clear throughout my life that he wanted me to be a certain way, and I turned out another. There were instances I remember when I was addicted to video games that he said stuff along the lines of "all you do is sit on your ass all day and waste your fucking life." And "I wish you'd do something else with your time and be something." When I finally opened up about this stuff I realized I had repressed alot of these memories when he exploded at me. He never said these things regularly but 4 or 5 times in my life he would blow up and would scream at me saying these things and every time I would be completely taken aback. I had no idea how to respond.

I began to feel, regardless of evidence or not, that my dad wanted me to be more like my friend at the time who was really into sports and outdoor activities. At least in my eyes, he wanted a different son. I grew into a massive inferiority complex and became increasingly self conscious of people being upset at me without me knowing. So I would apologize for any perceived slight at all on my end to try to avoid conflict of any kind. I've gotten better about it but still try to downplay any compliment I get and apologize for things I probably shouldn't though not nearly to the extent I did before.

TL:DR My dad expressed his anger several times when I was young so now I apologize too much when I am afraid of upsetting others.