“It’s a stab in the gut. A punch. Someone hammering you on the head.”

Monica Lewinsky is describing what it feels like to receive the humiliating comments and mocking memes she still gets nearly 20 years after her affair with President Clinton threw her into the unwanted spotlight. Here she is, a columnist, entrepreneur, social psychologist, and activist; yet people still can’t stop clicking and clucking over what happened when she was an intern? It’s hard to believe. But in many ways, she was the first target of what would become America’s favorite leisure sport—cyberbullying. Before Gamergate, before Leslie Jones, before this year, when 41 percent of Americans are [harassed online], Lewinsky was the canary in the troll-mine.

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Despite becoming somewhat inured to the vitriol, Lewinsky has committed to using her voice for all those who haven’t. Today she’s launching a new campaign called “In Real Life” for Bullying Prevention Month, and talks to Glamour about how personal it is for her:

On being patient zero: I kind of tripped into being a public person in 1998. All of the sudden, people who had never met me were taking about me online, on air, making judgments, analyzing me, assuming things about me. It was really challenging. There was no handbook. There was no understanding of what it meant or the consequences. There wasn’t really anyone else in the online space to look at and say, What did they do? How did they get through this?

What it’s like to be cyberbullied: The punch, the stab, the hammer—they are some of the visceral feelings. But the most damaging part is how incredibly isolating it can be. Social ostracizing is at the core of what we all, young and old, feel the most. There was a 2015 study showing that for both targets of bullying behavior and the people who perpetrate it, the risk for suicidality is higher. So this affects us all deeply.

For me, I utilize all the filters on my social media where I can. But even then, I’ll get people I know saying, “I’m so sorry that happened [online].” So it’s hard to ignore. When a meme [of me] is going around and people close to me follow the person who posted it, there’s an additional layer of humiliation and pain. Or when I retweet someone and they get harassed, I know that I’m affecting and hurting other people, even though it’s unintentional; if anything makes me cry it’s those things.

But (and this might be shocking) when you think about all the things that have been said about me online, or in print, or in the news—which over the past 20 years must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions—I can count on one hand, maybe two, how many times people have been rude or said something cruel to my face. So we did a video for the campaign to make people aware of the disparity between how we behave online and in person. I think that there is a decency that wells up in most of us when we’re face to face with someone while the anonymity of the Internet has made people feel free to be their worst selves.

Troll Control: If people behaved online more like they do in real life, we’d reduce cyberbullying. Sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to step in when you see someone being picked on, but reaching out to the target even afterwards and offering support is important. That’s what the #Bestrong emojis are about. I conceived them over dinner with a friend and worked with experts to make sure they were recognized as images of support and solidarity around the world. (You can download them free for your phone at Apple Store an Google Play.)

Imagine a gang picking on one girl in the playground and all of the sudden 50 kids come around and just stand by her. The bullying not going to continue. The same is true online. If you see a volley of harassment happening on social media and you flood it with images of support and compassion, that’s going to change the tone.

For the person being attacked, even a small morsel of care and support can make a huge difference. Going back to 1998, there was a period for me when one of the highlights of my day was going to get the mail. Even though some of it was not kind, a majority was from strangers sending support and expressing compassion. And I can’t tell you how there were days that those letters were a lifesaver for me.

#ClickforCompassion. Share the video with that hashtag or join the conversation on twitter (#BeStrong emoji plus hashtag). All of us are collateral damage when it comes to this trolling behavior, even bystanders. You can’t unread what you saw, you can’t unfeel what you’ve felt. Cyberbullying is obviously a complex issue that’s not going to be solved quickly. But looking ahead, I’m excited about how VR is being developed to foster compassion and empathy. And there’s a TED fellow, Rebecca Brachman, who is working on a drug that increases resilience. These are the kinds of broader ideas that give me hope that we will shift the culture.

In the meantime, every one of us can help do that by finding ways to stand up for someone—in real life and online—and let them know they’re not alone.

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