Monica Lewinsky admits to being a bully in essay aimed to raise awareness for her new campaign
Monica Lewinsky has admitted to being a bully in an essay aimed at raising awareness for her Stand Up For Yourself campaign.?
October is National Bullying Awareness month in the US, and in an essay penned for Today, Lewinsky is encouraging readers to stand up to their biggest critic: themselves.?
The essay begins by referencing the 1998 scandal that put Lewinsky in the public eye: "I reluctantly call myself 'patient zero' of internet bullying," she wrote.?
"I went to bed one night in 1998 a private person and awakened the next day instantly public, known around the globe," the essay continued.
"It might have been before social media, but trust me that news websites, comment sections and chat rooms could do a lot of damage."
Lewinsky explains that even though her online reputation was tarnished before social media existed, she still copped a 'tsunami of hate'.?
Over the past 25 years, Lewinsky has reclaimed her narrative, now being known as a successful producer and public speaker, even producing a popular TED Talk called "The Price of Shame".?
But it seems her successful career hasn't made her immune to ?online buying and negative self-talk.
She explains that her Stand Up For Yourself campaign was inspired by a seminar she attended over 10 years ago.
"They put us in a group of three people and asked us to write down a list of all the negative things that the voice in our head said to us," reads the essay.
"It was an easy assignment because I could effortlessly write page after page of negative comments.?
"But then, the twist, they made us read our list out loud to the other people in our group and it was a completely transformative experience for me.
"To hear myself say out loud the things that I was saying silently brought me to tears. I not only recognized how cruel I was being to myself, but how I was internalising this cruelty, too."??????????????????
Lewinsky's campaign is aimed at examining the role of self-bullying and self-shaming, and how each of us can often be our own biggest bully.?
"We can be our own worst enemy, which is obviously not helpful or healthy," wrote Lewinsky.?
"We'll never fully eradicate that negative voice in our heads, but we can shift it. We can quiet it at times and even begin to see subtle changes in how we automatically talk to ourselves."
She continues: "Our most intimate relationships are valuable because they remind us of who we really are. And our most intimate relationship is with the person we talk to our entire lives: Ourselves. "
