Hello, apology fans! Prompted by a SorryWatcher, we wanted to expound on this common phrase, as well as its corollary, “This is not who we are” — with “we” referring to an institution or country.

DO NOT USE THIS PHRASE IN YOUR APOLOGY.

At best, it shows that you don’t understand what you’re apologizing for. At worst, it shows that you’re a lying liar who lies.

Whether you’re an actress being charged with disorderly conduct while your husband is being charged with driving drunk, a governor who wore blackface definitely once and possibly twice but who can really say, a teenage girl who bullied a boy with cerebral palsy by making him lie down in freezing mud so she could use him as a human bridge, a Blue Jay who hurled a homophobic epithet at the pitcher who had the temerity to strike him out, a golfer who won $1.3 million at a PGA tournament and paid his caddie $5000, a wrestler caught on tape using the n-word, a fashion designer who publicly questioned whether the women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment were “asking for it by presenting all the sexuality and the sensuality,” or a U.S. Representative who threatened a certain president’s former attorney, you made whatever you were apologizing for worse when you used that phrase.

Why? Because when you say “this is not who I am” about a thing you said or did, ipso facto, that thing is indeed who you are. Sorry. We don’t make the rules. You did or said the thing. Saying “this is not who I am” means you’re not actually taking responsibility — meaning you’re missing the single most important element of a good apology.  You’re calling yourself better than your own words or actions. You’re not taking ownership. You’re not being humble.

We are all exactly as good as our best selves and exactly as bad as our worst selves. That’s the glory and the sorrow of being human. There’s a saying attributed to the 18th century Hasidic Rabbi Simha Bunim: “Everyone should have two pockets, with a note in each pocket: One note should say, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ The other should say ‘For my sake the world was created.'”  (See how terrible it is that women’s clothing so often lacks pockets.)

There’s a reason “this is not who I am” was a space on our very first Bad Apology Bingo card, along with those other perennial classics “sorry if,” “those closest to me know,” and “let us move forward.” It’s so common because the sentiment behind it is so universal: “I don’t want to be the kind of person who did or said this terrible thing.” Then say that! Say “This is not who I want to be.” Say “I’m going to be better.”

If you’re genuinely so shocked by your own conduct that you can’t believe it’s really you, you need to do a ton of introspection and a ton of work toward redemption — the former is internal, the latter outward focused. You need to make it right with others. Think hard about what that might mean in the case of your individual transgression.

If you actually don’t see that what you did was horrid, or if you’re creating excuses (for instance, “I had one drink too many!” or “I had just stepped off a long flight and was exhausted!” or “but that kid was already lying there in the mud when I stepped on him and other kids did it first and anyway he volunteered and we thought that he thought it was funny!”), you’re not doing any of the work you need to do to actually be the kind of person you claim you are.

And when you say “this is not who we are” about a country in which children are locked in cages, prisoners are regularly tortured, and police murders of people of color are a regular occurrence, you’re either denying the truth or you can’t handle the truth. Joe Biden, take a note.

When your apology contains this phrase, you don’t deserve to be forgiven.