Lena Dunham is over saying sorry

Actress Lena Dunham is trying to quit her addiction to apologising.
The Girls co-creator has penned an essay for LinkedIn titled Sorry, Not Sorry: My Apology Addiction, in which she admits she had been “apologising profusely” since 1989 and she is trying to break the habit of uttering the word sorry too often, for any minor reason, when it isn’t truly warranted, as she believes most women do.
“I am a woman who is sometimes right, sometimes wrong but somehow always sorry,” she writes. “And this has never been more clear to me than in the six years since I became a boss. It’s hard for many of us to own our power, but as a 24-year-old woman (girl, gal, whatever I was) I felt an acute and dangerous mix of total confidence and the worst imposter syndrome imaginable.
“If I changed my mind, if someone disagreed with me, even if someone else misheard me or made a mistake… I was so, so sorry. ‘If you say sorry again, I’m going to lovingly murder you,’ Jenni (Konner, producer) texted during a meeting. ‘I’m sorry,’ I texted back.”
Lena, now 30, was challenged by her dad Carroll to go a week without apologising, and the goal actually made a difference because began properly articulating what she needed to say. Lena challenges readers to stop saying sorry unless they truly, sincerely mean it.
“But what do you replace sorry with? Well for starters, you can replace it with an actual expression of your needs and desires. And it turns out when you express what you want (without a canned and insincere apology) everyone benefits… Because it turns out saying sorry somehow makes you sorrier. In friendships, it creates tension and some odd drama where there wasn’t any…”
Her week-long challenge hasn’t stopped her saying sorry completely as it is a difficult habit for her to break, but it has given her “something to strive” for. She jokingly concludes, “I’m just sorry it took me so long.”