Open Letter to My Younger Self

How a Trusted Educator and Author Became a Plagiarism Suspect for Plagiarizing His OWN CONTENT with the Lessons Every Creator Can Learn About Integrity, Misunderstandings, Red Flags, and Illogical Allegations in the Digital World, showing compassion

Update on 25 December 2024

After publishing this story, my appeal to Udemy was accepted, and the allegations were found false. My course was published and is now available to students. So, I wrote a new story depicting the importance of integrity. I believe the previous story will remain a sample tool for healing when creators face such setbacks beyond their control.

Context:

This story is written in a second-person narrative as a therapeutic exercise, following the advice of my trusted therapist, mentor, wife, and adult children. After a long and intensive therapy session, they encouraged me to channel my unpleasant emotions into words to prepare for the festive season with a sense of peace and joy alongside my loved ones in Down Under. The psychological shock of recent events has been overwhelming — an unbearable weight on my aging yet cognitively sharp mind and healthy body. I decided to share my expressive writing unfiltered to celebrate Christmas Day with my readers. 🎄

After a formal therapy session, now it is time for self-therapy with expressive writing, which is a powerful tool in my mental health first aid kit.

Sample Expressive Writing Challenge: An Open Letter to My Wounded Self on 2024 Christmas Day in Down Under

Healing Through Words: A Journey of Integrity, Resilience, and Compassion Amid Unexpected Allegations

Dear magnificent Mehmet the III, my infinite soul mate,❤️

You never expected this challenge, did you? It happened out of nowhere. Not after decades of dedication to professionalism, integrity, and the pursuit of excellence in education in world-class organizations as a researcher and senior consultant to policymakers.

You sit down now to write, following the therapeutic advice of your psychiatrist son, your trusted psychotherapist, and distinguished mentor, Henry. "Write it out," they said. "Let the words carry the weight of your unbearable pain."

And so, with trembling left hands, confused mind, heavy heart, and damaged mood, you begin to write this letter to your younger self, the wounded child within you. As you did in the graduate school lab, boldly cry in front of your lecturers and schoolmates to heal from childhood trauma.

Your recent education venture started with joy and gratitude, which fills you with purpose when your hard work blossoms into something of value for the community.

Your best-selling book, Substack Mastery, laid the foundation for a training course on Udemy, where you gave priority over other companies like Skillshare, Coursera, edX, Kajabi, Teachable, Udacity, or Thinkific as you believed they deserved your intellectual property first as you have been using their services for years.

This first-of-a-kind course was a collaborative effort with your protege, volunteer editor, curator, and media partner, Aiden, who named it cleverly From Zero to Substack Hero.

Together, you created something valuable — an educational program that combined your recognized and published expertise with Aiden's creative flair. The course was well-received, earning five-star reviews that pridefully filled you and Aiden.

Then came the second level of the course, Part II of From Zero to Substack Hero, which you announced to your clients, students, and subscribers.

You poured your heart into it just before Christmas, crafting a curriculum that built on the success of the first level. You wanted your students to have it as a Christmas present.

But when you logged into your instructor dashboard, the word "BANNED" stared back at you for your intellectual property, stark and accusatory. It felt like a dagger to the soul, a betrayal by a platform you had trusted implicitly.

For the first time in your 42 years of distinguished career, you were accused of plagiarism because someone narrated your content. The weight of the allegation pressed hard on your shoulders. Its injustice became unbearable.

You revisited your work with careful and concerned focus, reaffirming what you already knew: it was yours and, yes, yours only, as no one wrote an experimental book like Substack Mastery.

You were the first on Medium, Amazon, many other publishing companies, Udemy, and even Substack itself, read by over 100,000 people for free and purchased by hundreds, making it the best-selling book in its category.

The curriculum was an evolution of your book, enhanced with PowerPoint slides and your best-selling audiobook published by reputable bookstores, narrated by Aiden, with every element legally and ethically your own.

You gave Aiden credit in your curriculum and wrote even a public story about it, showing your pride for his selfless contributions to this joint effort to educate and inspire others who had never had such an educational experience before. Aiden was so happy and wrote two stories about it, sharing his joy on Medium, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.

You submitted the required evidence — an affidavit affirming your ownership — and shared links to your published works, official pages, and the universal links to your book. You also gave Aiden's consent with his email and phone number to stop allegations and satisfy the needs of the Trust & Safety department on Udemy.

Yet doubt lingered — not within you, but in the system you once regarded so highly and trusted unconditionally.

You remembered your years as a scientist, educator, and consultant in world-class corporate and federal government organizations, which gave you access to the most secret places to do your research and ethnographic studies to contribute to the body of knowledge as a scientist, inventor, and technologist.

Yet,now your integrity is questioned for doing the right things with courage, transparency, passion, and humility. Your Level 2 course is BANNED because it was flagged by unknown agents in the digital world alarmed the Trust & Safety team of Udemy, which you trusted fully and shared every bit of personally identifiable and sensitive information.

You remember the highest level of security clearances in Australia, Germany, the UK, other NATO countries, the United States, the headquarters of IBM in Armonk, and even Asian countries and banks like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and China, as well as the accolades and responsibilities that demanded integrity beyond reproach.

This accusation cut deeper than you imagined, undermining the foundation of trust you built over decades. Your cortisol levels increased despite your experience reflected in the Cortisol Clarity book, which will be presented to society on 1 January 2025.

The impact was immediate and devastating.

Your wife noticed it in your distant gaze. Your adult children heard it in the heaviness of your voice. The psychological toll was undeniable, leading to anxiety from a hurtful sense of injustice.

For someone who had spent a lifetime fighting against plagiarism with unrelenting rigor, to be accused of the very crime you stood against was beyond comprehension when you accused of plagiarising your own intellectual property, no one has ever documented yet.

The pain of illogical accusations and covert flagging in the digital world disturbed your psyche and wounded the innocent child within you.

Yet, even in your pain, you found a lesson.

Your therapist's words aligned with your son's caring encouragement: "Turn this into something constructive."

So, you decided and committed to turning this moment into a published case study, an academic paper, a book, and a story others could learn from.

When published as a book, as a paper, and as a personal case study, this harrowing experience, you realized, could become a psychological and emotional symbol of resilience for those experiencing similar challenges in the digital world where immature robots, unqualified personnel, and insensitive investigators aggravated by online trolls trying to mess up with authentic creators and affecting their mental health.

The festive season is approaching now in Down Under before other parts of the world, a time for joy, serenity, and reflection in compassion meditation. You sit with your loved ones, neighbors, and friends at a Christmas BBQ, striving to find peace amidst the turmoil.

As you write, you recount events and reclaim your integrity and authenticity narrative. You remind yourself and the world that accusations do not define your integrity but how you respond to them with authenticity, transparency, courage, humility, and vulnerability.

You want to close your story with gratitude. It is not for the pain but for the wisdom it gave you.

This painful chapter will not define you. It will teach you. And, perhaps, it will teach your readers too how to handle such complex and undesirable situations that can happen on any part of the Internet regardless of our skill and expertise in digital intelligence.

Merry Christmas, dear Mehmet, my eternal soulmate in the cosmos. Keep sending your love vibration to the universe as advised by Nicola Tesla and Madam Currie when you were a child in your dreams.

Greetings to all your versions, including Digitalmehmet and Metalhead versions, which were the affectionate words of your late father, who never had a chance to express his emotions and had to say goodbye to the world due to devastating ALS disease.

Thanks to your studies and sensible experiments, you are emotionally smarter than him to express your emotions in a healthy way with courage, humility, integrity, transparency, and vulnerability, which are your strengths.

I know the child within you became anxious, disappointed, and heartbroken. But your resilient, capable, and mature self will overcome this with your wonderful therepeutic tools, as you always have, with the unique mechanisms you developed through scientific rigor and experimental flexibility.

Remember the words of Rumi, which you translated so passionately at the age of 22 in an international linguistic class after reading 3000 pages of Masnavi:

The House of Visitors (Guest House) by Rumi

We encounter new guests every moment In this house hosting our souls. Joy, depression, and unkindness Visit us as unexpectedly in our consciousness. Why not welcome and entertain them! They may be a violent crowd bringing sadness Even taking our valuable possessions. Despite all, treat them as a guest of honor. Who knows, they may be clearing the clutter Bringing new joy to our house. Meet those murky thoughts, disgrace, and nastiness. Greet them at the doorsteps with a smile. Invite them all inside and embrace them as your guests. Show your appreciation to whoever visits your house. See them as guides coming beyond the self.💡

Dear Mehmet, let these timeless words heal your new psychological and emotional wounds, just as they did in your youth when they brought you serenity and strength.

Through the paradox of pain and acceptance, you will once again find joy, peace, and love to survive and thrive. Merry Christmas to you, your loved ones, colleagues, friends, community members, and readers. 🎄

After finishing this open letter with my dexterous writing on paper as a neurobic and healing approach, I feel much better now and have joy and peace in my heart, which I will share with my loved ones and everyone else, including online trolls as timeless wisdom of Rumi advises us.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life. More stories like this can be found in my health and wellness publication, EUPHORIA.

I invite you to join my 2025 writing prompt. The pain I feel today is so tiny compared to the pain of innocent children suffering from hunger and diseases due to poverty.

During your journey in 2025, I invite you to go outside of your comfort zone, mainly work in a stretch zone, and take calculated risks for success and joy, as I explained in a story loved by many readers.

Living with joy and serenity, you can rewire your brain to sustain your health and happiness. As a researcher in the cognitive science discipline, I wrote many stories to guide and inspire you to improve your cognition and mental health.

As a writer, editor, and content curator, I also wrote many stories to guide aspiring writers. You can find them in the attached list.

Here is a story depicting my optimistic predictions for freelance writers for 2025 in an interview with editors of my publications to guide you.

Thank you for subscribing to my content and allowing me to amplify your stories in my circles. Let's make our writing and reading community more vibrant in 2025 with wonderful stories and meaningful engagement.