Do you ever feel like if you could just find the right outfit, you’d finally feel confident? Or like the only way to calm your anxiety in dating is to get reassurance from the person you’re seeing? In this Coaching Hotline episode, I answer two listener questions that show how easy it is to look outside yourself for emotional safety.
First, I respond to a question about chronic frustration with getting dressed and explain why this isn’t actually a style problem at all, but a confidence problem rooted in self-judgment and projection. Then I talk through the fear of needing reassurance in dating, why uncertainty feels so threatening, and what has to change if you want to feel steady regardless of someone else’s reactions. You’ll learn how to stop outsourcing your confidence to clothes or other people and start creating emotional security 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.
First one is about confidence and clothing, which is something I know a lot of people struggle with. So I was excited to get this question.
“Hello dear Kara.” Well, hello. “I’m the biggest fan of yours. I’m so grateful I found you. My question today is about getting dressed. As long as I remember, I’ve always had issues with that. I’m now 29, but for 23 years, I’ve been dealing with this every day. No matter where I’m going, the playground, a store, a fancy party, I never know what to wear. I’ll change three outfits, and after finally making a choice, I’m almost never happy. I’ve tried planning. I took a course in style, and I have some cute clothes, but none of that works. With your help, I’ve been paying attention to my thoughts before I get dressed. I see it all goes to what would others think about it. What would you say? How do I change it? Where do I start? I did run some models, but I don’t really see any changes or insights yet.”
Okay, so you’ve got the first part of this, which is you know that you’re thinking about what other people will think. But I don’t think that you have gotten to the actual thought. When we ask ourselves a question, we usually just confuse ourselves. If it’s not a powerful question that you’ve chosen on purpose, it goes in a useful direction, right? A negative question or a question like this, like, but what will other people think, a completely unanswerable question, is not going to help us.
So I think the real problem is your real thought is that other people will judge you based on what you’re wearing. And that is just projection. You are judging you based on what you’re wearing. So those are the thoughts you need to dig into, right? You have a thought about how you look, and you are afraid other people will also have it. And so you’re trying to control their brains with your clothing. But really, you’re just trying to control your own brain with your clothing. You’re trying to change your circumstance of what clothes you put on to create a different feeling of confidence. That’s never going to work.
So you have to figure out what do you want to think and feel about yourself regardless of what you’re wearing. And that’s the work you need to practice. So you could practice an intentional thought about getting dressed, like, all my clothes look good, or it doesn’t matter what I wear, or whatever. But I think that’s just the superficial level of this. I think you could do that, but it wouldn’t resolve this underlying confidence issue. So I would recommend that’s what you really start working on. Figure out what your actual thought is about yourself and how you look that you’re projecting onto other people, and then that’s the thought you need to work on changing. And then you’ll change your thoughts instead of your clothes.
Alright, 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.
This week’s review comes from Kelsey McQuality, and I love this review because she really points out the work she’s done to change things. She says, “This podcast is amazing. It offers so much perspective and tips for breaking down your thoughts and feelings and teaches you the importance of managing those thoughts, which will determine your feelings and behavior. I honestly can say my life has improved since listening to Kara’s podcast. How so? My approach to situations is more grounded in reality. When I face a challenging situation or feel myself becoming frustrated over the tiniest thing, I now have the tools to approach the situation 10,000 times better. I can see those results in my friendships, my marriage, and within my professional life. Count me in as a dedicated listener and you’re one podcast away from being one too.” Thanks for sharing your review, Kelsey, and I’m so proud of the work you’ve done.
Next question. “I’m in a new relationship after being a year out of a 10-year one. It’s been two months, and although we are not exclusive, which I’m not looking for, I’m very into her. I’m feeling a lot of fear about making a mistake that will drive her away. I recognize the thought error in that I can’t create her feelings, but I’m observing that I need validation from her to know it’s okay and she’s happy. When I don’t have it, I fear that she’s not. I so don’t want a do-over of my pattern, but I feel panicked and unlike myself without it. The thought ‘I’m doing the best I can’ feels depressing.”
Okay, so the problem here is not, I think you know you can’t create her feelings. The problem here is you think you need her to feel a certain way for you to feel a certain way. So you think that she needs to like you and be happy for you to feel okay. This is a really a pretty short answer, but I wanted to answer this one because I think this comes up a lot. It’s like you do see one of your thought errors, that you can’t create her feelings, and then you’re like, “But I need to know it’s okay, and I feel bad when I don’t get that validation, and so I’m stuck.”
But like really the point is it has to be okay if she’s not okay and she’s not happy. If she wants to break up with you, or if she wants to be with you and be unhappy and be mad at you. Like whatever she wants to do, that’s what has to be okay with you. That’s when you won’t need validation from her to know it’s okay and she’s happy. Your problem is your fear that she’s not happy, and I think you’re taking that a little bit on its face, but you got to get under that. Who cares if she’s not happy? Why is that a problem?
It’s because you think that if she’s not happy, then she’s going to break up with you, and that’s what you’re afraid to experience and feel. So that’s what you have to make your peace with, that when we love someone, we can’t control what they’re going to feel about us or what they’re going to do. Well, that’s true whether we love them or not. But that’s the fear you got to grapple with. It has to be okay if she’s unhappy or if she wants to break up with you or whatever else she’s going to feel.
So you can’t frame it as, “I just need to know that she’s okay, and I’ll try to get rid of my need to know,” but like keep the thought that she does need to be happy and okay. You got to accept that she may not be happy or okay. She could break up with you, anything else could happen. She could be mad at you, and none of that causes your feelings or is a problem.