In this Coaching Hotline episode, you’ll hear two listener questions that will feel familiar if you have ever wondered why your new thoughts seem to “stop working” or why believing you can handle future challenges feels harder than it should. I break down what is really happening underneath that experience so you can see it with a lot more clarity.
I also talk about the mental spiral that happens when someone else’s unmanaged mind feels irritating, and why that reaction is more revealing about your own thought patterns than you think. If you have ever felt stuck between what you know intellectually and what your brain insists on believing, this episode will show you how to shift that dynamic from the inside out.
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 CoachingHotline, all one word. Let’s get into this week’s questions.
Here’s the first question. “Hi Kara, I love your podcast and the mental exercises you teach to change your thoughts. I have been insecure about my work for several years. I usually, quote unquote, feel trapped at work. Now I know that, quote unquote, trapped is not a feeling, it’s a thought. My feeling is a combination of sadness and dread. I’ve been using your podcast for the last few weeks to change my thoughts about work because I want to enjoy my work and I need new thoughts to enjoy it. I usually have the thought, I am not smart enough to learn new things. I have been using your tool regarding evidence-based approach to disprove the thought.
“For example, I did graduate university with a degree or I have learned difficult technical things and applied them at work. These new thoughts help me temporarily but seem less effective after a few days. In your confidence podcast, you mentioned that evidence-based approaches like doing an accomplishment list is a great place to start, but then we have to start thinking about challenges that were difficult and how we overcame that. This is where I get stuck. I can think of challenges I’ve overcome, but I can’t bring myself to believe I can overcome challenges in the future. Do you have any suggestions?”
So, two things. This is the reason I want to read this question. Number one, your thoughts do not become less effective. Every single time that a client comes to me and says the thoughts were working and then they stopped, when I say, how much are you practicing those thoughts every day, they say, oh, I’m not. You have to practice your new thoughts. You can’t just think them for one day and then stop thinking them. Okay? Thoughts don’t stop working. They don’t become less effective. You stop working and you become less effective. That’s what happens invariably. If your thoughts are mysteriously becoming less effective, it’s because you’re not practicing them enough and you have stopped practicing them as much.
So that’s the first thing. It’s so important. That’s why I wanted to answer this. Now, occasionally what happens is not that you’ve stopped practicing it, but that another thought has come up like an objection thought that you maybe need to come up with a second thought to answer. But it’s not like a half life, like radiation. Thoughts don’t lose their power. It means you’ve stopped doing it.
The second thing is she says, I can’t bring myself to believe I can overcome challenges in the future. So this is where you got to get tough with your brain. If you did it in the past, why wouldn’t you be able to do it in the future? Like, what is your brain’s argument for that? Really interrogate your brain. You could also start with a ladder thought, like a neutral thought, like it’s possible I can overcome challenges in the future. But you can’t just stop at, oh, I can’t bring myself to believe this, so I’m stuck. You really have to push on your brain like, okay brain, well if I have done this thing in the past, what’s your argument for why I can’t do it in the future? That doesn’t seem to make much sense. Do you have a good argument for why that’s the case? Like really interrogate your premises, not just accept what your brain says.
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 thought work 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.
I love today’s review because it is an example of how when you are able to change the way you think, you go out and change the world too. Today’s review is from anonymous. She says, “I’m a lesbian wife and mother of two amazing boys. When I found your podcast, I was in a dark place. I would wake up having panic attacks, which at the time I had no clue what they were. I also had intrusive thoughts. I was legitimately scared to be alone with my thoughts. My supporter and wife tried to help as best she could, but most of this I needed to deal with. I tried lots of remedies, but nothing was working. I then found your podcast. When I was sliding down the wall having a panic attack, I would turn on my headphones and listen. Before I knew it, I learned to change my thinking. It took almost three years, but I never stopped listening to you. I just want to say thank you. Today I’m a candidate running for the Board of Education in my town, a total soccer mom and a very confident woman. I’ve gone through the darkness and when the storm clouds pop up, I turn you on and just listen. Just wanted you to know that what you’re doing really does matter to someone.”
This question, I love this because I think a lot of us have felt this way. “Here’s my question. I don’t want to be compassionate with people who are operating from the turtle on their back crisis mode. I have lots of judging thoughts about this victim mode and feel like I cannot deal with the unmanaged minds since I am putting so much work into taking my power back. The unconditional love here is a challenge. I want to rail against this all.”
Okay, here’s what I love about this. When your thought is, I can’t deal with their unmanaged minds, and you feel judgmental or angry, your result is that you’re not managing your mind. Right? When you are judging other people for not managing their minds, you are not managing your mind. That’s your result. So you are judging them for not doing something that you are not doing either. You and those people have a lot in common. You’re both not managing your mind, right?
This is just what I love about brains. Like if my friend is complaining about her boss and I’m sitting around thinking, ugh, I can’t believe she’s complaining about him, she should just manage her mind, I am just sitting around complaining about her. Right? She’s not managing her mind about her boss. She’s giving her boss the power to create her feelings, and I’m not managing my mind about her and I’m giving her the power to create my feelings. So you just have to see you and these people have a lot in common. You’re both in victim mode. They think they’re the victim of the world and you think you’re the victim of them and that you can’t deal with their unmanaged minds. But all of that resistance is just because you’re not managing your mind.
So that is the work there, right? And you have to dig into what those judging thoughts are. And what’s so ironic is you’re probably judging them because you judge yourself about this. And in doing so, you’re actually making yourself the victim, right? You are judging them for thinking they’re victims and that’s because you’re judging yourself and subconsciously also thinking that you’re a victim. So compassion for yourself, right? And seeing how your brain is totally not managing itself about them is going to actually give you compassion for how they’re not managing their brains about other things. Because then you can see, oh, we’re all just humans who sometimes don’t manage our minds, right? And I can have compassion for that.