In this week’s Listener Q&A, I’m answering two questions that reveal how we give away our emotional power to others’ opinions and societal expectations. One listener struggles with body image after years of parental criticism—believing their worth is tied to their size. Another feels frustrated by always initiating sex in their marriage—turning intimacy into resentment.
Both questions highlight a key issue: we let other people’s actions dictate how we feel about ourselves. Whether it’s believing your worth is tied to your body size—or thinking your partner needs to initiate intimacy for it to “count”—you’re giving away your power. Tune in to learn how to take it back.
Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain. I’m your host, Kara Loewentheil, Master Certified Coach and founder of The School of New Feminist Thought. I’m here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you’re truly excited to live. Let’s go.
Welcome to this week’s Coaching Hotline episode where I answer real questions from real listeners and coach you from afar. If you want to submit your question for consideration, go to unfuckyourbrain.com/coachinghotline, all one word. Or text your email to 1-347-997-1784. And when you get prompted for the code word, it’s Coaching Hotline, all one word. Let’s get into this week’s questions.
This is your Listener Q and A podcast for this week. Here’s the first question.
“I’m struggling with body image. I’ve read Anti Diet and The Fuck-It Diet. I’ve been working on intuitive eating. I’m really getting stuck on the fact that my parents were so mean to me about my body. I remember being a size 6 in high school, my parents being mean about my weight. I’m now plus size. I find myself changing clothes in the morning and saying to myself, no one wants to see that. You’re too big to wear that. Those are the things my parents used to say to me. If my own parents couldn’t love me when I was way smaller, how can I love myself or accept that anyone could love me romantically, especially now that I’m way bigger?”
So what you’re assuming is that your size actually had anything to do with what your parents said to you and that they didn’t love you, right? There’s a lot of jumps in here. So, number one, people can love someone and still say things to them about their weight, because love is a feeling created by your thoughts, and the action of saying things about someone’s weight is created by a different thought about their weight. There’s something people really don’t understand when they are like, well, if you love someone, how could you do X, Y, Z? We’re just different models.
Loving someone just means you have thoughts about loving them, right? If you really want to think about it. I think emotions only happen in, like, discrete moments. So really, when we’re saying I love someone, what we mean is like, this is a person that I sometimes think about loving. Right? And that’s what it means when we love them. This is a person that I sometimes think positive thoughts about and feel feelings of love about in those moments. And then sometimes I think negative thoughts and feel negative feelings about them.
So, number one, you’re assuming that because they said something to you about your weight, they didn’t love you. You have no idea if that’s true. But even if that were true, which, again, you have no idea if that’s true, my guess would be it isn’t. But also for anyone, like, loving someone has nothing to do with the things you might say to them, really, cause those are just two different models.
Even if that was true, even if they said it to you because they didn’t love you, you’re assuming, you say if my own parents couldn’t love me, as if, like, the fact that they’re your parents means they would be the most likely to love you. Right? And like, they would have the lowest barrier and lowest bar to loving you. Again, not necessarily true. All depends on the person’s thoughts. Your parents are just humans who had models in their own brains. Yes, a lot of parents have models that they love their kids, and some parents have models that they don’t love their kids.
Just because someone gave birth to you does not mean that their models are going to be a certain way. Right? So your second assumption is that basically, like, parents are the most likely to love you, and if a parent doesn’t love you, then, like, no one else could love you. But that’s totally untrue. And the third kind of assumption is that your body or you has anything to do with whether someone else loves you. Your body doesn’t cause somebody else’s thoughts. Right? There are people whose parents were harassing them to become a size six. And then there’s your parents who thought a size six was too big. Doesn’t have anything to do with the size of the body of the person.
It just has to do with the person who’s talking thoughts. Right? Your parents had a model that resulted in the action of saying, you are too big to wear that. And what you’ve made that mean is that means no one wants to see me. No one could love me. So you’re making a lot of meaning out of the circumstance that your parents said those words. And you’re assuming a lot that they couldn’t love you, that it’s somehow true or accurate, that you’re too big to wear something, or that no one wants to see your body. And that parents are like the lowest bar. And if they can’t love you, no one will.
But your lovability has nothing to do with anybody else or your size. People love us or don’t love us because of their thoughts about us. Either we’re all inherently worthy of love, or none of us are inherently worthy of love. I don’t see any logical way to determine that only some of us are worthy of love. Like, either we all are inherently worthy of love because we’re humans. Because we all come out of the womb the same way. Or none of us are.
And I choose to think we all are. But for sure, what determines whether someone else loves you is their own thoughts about you. There are people who hate Mother Teresa, and there are people who fall in love with serial killers. It’s nothing to do with how you act or what you do, and especially with how you look. So you need to break down all of these assumptions and coach yourself about them. That your parents didn’t love you because they said these things. That what they said had anything to do with how you look, and that their observations were somehow objective or like that anybody else’s thoughts have anything to do with you. Right? So you got a lot of work to do here at a couple of different levels to unpack it on. But it is totally possible because I have done it.
All right, y’ all, I know you’re as tired as I am of having the top podcasts in wellness or health and fitness categories be a bunch of dudes who don’t know anything about socialization and who are not taking women’s lived experiences into account. So if you are looking for ways to support the show, and more importantly, make sure the show gets to more people, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. And bonus points if you include a few lines about the way you use thoughtwork and self coaching or anything you’ve learned from the podcast in your daily life. Those reviews are what teach the algorithms to show us to more new people. It helps us get new listeners all over the world. And I’ll be reading one story from a recent review in each of these question and answer episodes.
Here’s today’s review from CJG724. “The recent episode on why certain people’s opinions hurt more than others has been on repeat. It is a perfect concise explanation of this issue that so many of us have and really opened my eyes to why I am so often feeling the way I am. I already sent this episode to my therapist so we can discuss it later this week.” I love this one because so many of you tell me that you actually share the podcast with your therapist or that your therapist shared the podcast with you. Such a beautiful example of how therapy and thought work work perfectly together. I see this all the time in my Feminist Self-Help Society members too.
All right, second question. “Tn my marriage of six years. Second for me, third for him. We are in our low 50s. I am the one who pursues connection and physical intimacy 99.9% of the time.”
Here’s a little tip. Whenever somebody gives me a statistic, I know it’s probably bullshit. This is what our brain does when we’re trying to like, be very convincing. We put numbers on it. Anyway, let’s say it’s true.
“He admits to it. He tells me he never knows if I have a migraine or feel good enough. So he tries to read me and then rarely initiates. We sleep in separate beds because of his snoring, so that doesn’t help. I know I end up getting resentful. That is me who is the pursuer. We end up having intimate time together physically. While it’s always great, I end up feeling empty and the resentment hangs on. I’ve talked with him about this several times and he seems to hear me understand. I have been told by my therapist to give him the space to pursue me and not beat him to it. I do this, then end up feeling even more lonely and resentful. I’m wondering if I’m talking with him about this wrong or if I need to adjust my thoughts about what our sex life should be.”
Okay, so here, let me rephrase your question. I’m wondering if talking in a different way would change him as a person to be different or should I change my thoughts? Listen, who cares? Like, you present this like it’s this clear problem, right? You say like he admits to it as if he’s done something wrong. Who cares that you initiate all the time? You would be fine. Like, right? Wouldn’t you be happy if he initiated all the time? Why would that be okay? There’s a lot of deep gender based, like stereotyping probably going on in here, which is that women are taught that men should pursue them and initiate and that women are supposed to feel sexy in a receptive capacity as the object of desire and that it is somehow not sexy or like pathetic or desperate or whatever if we initiate.
That is some bullshit. Like you are having good sex and then ruining it for yourself by telling yourself that it doesn’t count or isn’t good enough because you’re the one who like made the first move that would a hundred percent change your thoughts about this. Your getting resentful is just your feeling caused by your thought. While it’s always great. I feel empty and resentful. Why? Because of your thoughts? Because you think it should have started a different way. I want you to think about sex as if it’s like, what should we have for dinner? Do you keep track of who starts the what should we have for dinner conversation? Are you resentful if you’re the one who, like, brings up dinner because you get hungry 15 minutes earlier than he does? No, because you don’t make that mean anything. And your therapist’s advice is just, I mean, your therapist is giving you this A line advice, but of course that’s not working because your thoughts are the same, right? I mean, this is just such a perfect example.
Changing your action…You’re like, if I change my action, maybe he’ll change his action and then I can feel good. No, no, you’re not talking with him about it. Wrong. He, from what you’re writing, he understands what you want. He has his own models, just like you have your own models. His models have the feeling of hesitancy or worry about being rejected or not feeling good about his own body or performance or, I don’t know, whatever else. Whyever else he doesn’t initiate. That you wanting him to be different is never going to outweigh the emotional impulse of his models. Just like he is not able to change your model, right? So you gotta change your model.
What if your thought was, I love that my husband finds me so sexy that every time I want to get sex, I can. I can have sex on demand and the sex is amazing. How fucking lucky am I? Right? You gotta dig into these thoughts about why it matters at all who initiates.
If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out The Feminist Self-Help Society. It’s our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life, along with a library of next-level blow-your-mind coaching tools and concepts that I just can’t fit in a podcast episode.
It’s also where you can hang out, get coached, and nerd out about all things thought work and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It’s my favorite place on Earth and it will change your life, I guarantee it. Come join us at www.UnfuckYourBrain.com/society. I can’t wait to see you there.
