Lena Dunham's father once challenged her to go a whole week without saying "sorry".

She wrote: "It was actually my father who gave me the challenge: "What would happen if you spent this week NOT apologizing?" I was back at work after a health-related hiatus and I was feeling particularly vulnerable, aka sorry. "Doll, you've apologized to me 10 times in the last 10 minutes." I told him it was even worse with my friends and a total parody at work, where I was sorry for having to pee. My father likes to counter my anxiety with love-based aggression: "Get it the f**k together!"

"I won't say my father's experiment cured me. After all, I've been apologizing profusely since 1989 — like pigs in blankets and reading celebrity gossip, it's not a habit easily broken. But it illustrated a better way. Something to strive for. When I replaced apologies with more fully formed and honest sentiments, a world of communication possibilities opened up to me. I'm just sorry it took me so long. (sic)"

The 'Girls' creator recalled one apology incident during her school days when she said sorry to a girl after she had not been invited to her birthday party.

Writing a piece for LinkedIn, she added: "I'm not sure when in my life "the sorries" began, but I can distinctly remember apologizing profusely to a girl who didn't invite me to her birthday party in second grade, after she publicly handed invitations out to the whole class in front of me. Sorry for my tears. Sorry you had to be mean. Sorry I'm not the kind of person you'd want to attend a Sunday afternoon romp at the YMCA. Sorry. (sic)"