You know theoretically that you aren’t supposed to have to be perfect to succeed, but you can’t stop worrying about getting fired any time you make a minor mistake.
You intellectually understand that a guy you met off Tinder last week shouldn’t be in charge of your self-esteem, but you’re still checking your phone 37 times a day for a text back.
You would tell your friend who yelled at her kids that no one is a perfect parent and you’d mean it, but if you so much as snap at yours you feel guilty and ashamed the minute the anger wears off.
You want to love your body and be nicer to yourself, but you still feel vaguely ashamed when you eat dessert two nights in a row and worry about getting wrinkles.
Men are taught that they have value and worth just for existing and being who they are. Women are taught that our value is conditional and based on what we do for other people and what they think about us.
Sometimes it’s so loud it drowns everything out. Other times we might feel empowered for a while, or in particular areas of our lives.
But so long as we are in the Brain Gap, as long as we are subject to socially-programmed anxiety, we can’t truly — fully — thrive.
Because even if we get what we thought we wanted, it doesn’t feel as good as we were promised it would.
You can produce great results, take risks, and handle it when things don’t go as planned. You know your worth, you advocate for it, and you knock your role out of the park. And when you go home at night, your work brain turns off just like your office light.
I WAS PRETTY MUCH AT BREAKING POINT WITH MY ANXIETY WHEN I JOINED. Now I’m not and I didn’t even have to quit my job to do it which seems like a miracle from where I was last year. I don’t live every waking minute terrified about what my boss is thinking and I’m actually okay with him thinking negative thoughts about me.
WOWZA HAVE I SEEN SOME CHANGES FROM DOING THIS WORK, but most especially when it comes to dating and relationships. The person I’m dating now has all of the qualities I want in a partner. It’s a wildly different experience of dating like nothing I’ve ever done.
You love your single life, you enjoy dating, and when you’re ready to settle down you know how to find the right partner for you without all the drama and dismay.
You’re way more patient with your kids in the first place, but if you do occasionally get short with them you know how to get back on track and make amends without the spiral.
THE TOOLS I’VE LEARNED HAVE RADICALLY AFFECTED MY PARENTING. I am so much less attached to my kids’ outcomes. They can be mad, they can be sad, they can fuss, and cry, and I can still feel like I’m doing just fine. I’m so much less anxious and stressed as a parent.
MY BODY IMAGE WENT FROM DISORDERED EATING AND NEVER LOOKING IN THE MIRROR to loving my butt and thighs and not thinking about what I eat outside of enjoying it. I can actually rest and take time off without shaming myself the whole time, and I’ve freed up so much brain energy that I’m now launching a business and holding down a full time biotech job at the same time, which I would never have thought I was capable of.
You may have tried therapy. You may have tried yoga and meditation. You may even have tried other kinds of coaching.
I WORKED WITH TWO DIFFERENT COUNSELORS before joining The Society. They talked through what was wrong, but never gave me a concrete action that I could do to help myself. But now being in The Society my anxiety levels have gone way down (let’s say from an 8 to a 3). I actually have tools to work through whatever’s triggering my anxiety! Just knowing that I can take care of myself in this way is so liberating.
This foundational course, which starts as soon as you join, teaches you the ground-breaking tools you’ll need to identify the thoughts creating socially-programmed anxiety and to change them. You’ll literally learn how to train your brain to think better thoughts.
Sex and romantic relationships, work and time management, money mindset, nervous system activation, body image, eating and exercise habits, social relationships, and much more — whatever is not working in your life, we’ve got a course to solve it.
You may have tried to work on these areas before, and may have made some progress. But if the tools you were using weren’t designed to address the Brain Gap, then there’s still going to be a gap between the life you want and the one you’re experiencing now
Live coaching calls, access to written coaching 24/7, a vast library of advice you can search whenever you want, and an empowering supportive community.
Some students stay a few months, some stay a few years. It’s all up to you and your journey, and we’re there with you every step of the way.
A month-long foundations course that teaches you cognitive-change tools you’ll use for the rest of your life. This is how you start to rewire your brain to heal from socially-programmed anxiety for good.
With a feminist cognitive-based approach to improving every area of your life, including work stress, money, friendships, family, relationships, time management, sex, dating, trauma, the nervous system, and more.
A 24/7 anonymous written coaching forum where you can submit whatever’s troubling you and get expert advice from one of my Feminist Self-Help Society Coaches, guaranteed.
An enormous vault of searchable coaching advice so that you can get help with any problem immediately — in both written and audio resources for all learning styles.
Watch thought-change work happen in real time. Monthly calls with me, weekly calls with the FSS Coaches, plus extra BIPOC-only calls lead by Certified Feminist Coaches of Color.
Optional for those who enjoy social media communities, full of smart courageous women who love to help each other out with coaching questions, thought change tactics, and new beliefs.
When I taught this work in a high-end group it was $10,000 for six months.
There’s no minimum commitment or maximum stay. You learn what you need, then graduate yourself any time.
I’M KARA LOEWENTHEIL, founder of The School of New Feminist Thought and creator of The Feminist Self-Help Society. I’m the host of the internationally top-ranked podcast UnF*ck Your Brain, and the author of the forthcoming book “Take Back Your Brain: How Sexist Thinking Traps You – and How to Break Free” (Penguin 2024).
My work has been featured in publications like Glamour and The New York Times, and praised on podcasts as varied as My Favorite Murder and We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle.
I am deeply nostalgic for the explosion of learning that took place in my first two years here. I watched myself grow so quickly and in so many unexpected ways that it felt like magic.
ALL OF THESE CHANGES IN CIRCUMSTANCES pale in comparison to how different I feel as a person. You could transport me back to my life when I joined and my thoughts about it would be entirely different.
Thank you to Kara for the absolute magic you have bottled here for us. You have truly helped me become the person I have always wanted to be. I will be grateful for the rest of my life.
Which means better sleep, less stress, more focus, and a lot more mental and emotional energy for the rest of your life.
Which means you set that boundary, you go for that dream job, you dump that lackluster partner and find an awesome one, you kick ass at your creative pursuit.
Which means actually living your life the way you want to live it. Maybe you quit your job and move to the French Riviera to raise prize chihuahuas. Or maybe you’re living in the same house in the same suburb with the same family you were before, but everything feels different inside.
That depends on who you are. And how we define “expensive.”
I define expensive not by how much money I invest in something, but by what I am getting for my investment.
After all, $100,000 would be very expensive for a car (in my opinion) but an incredible steal on a two-bedroom apartment in New York City.
Many of us spend $97 a month on getting fillers or dying our hair, buying skincare or makeup, or drinking/drugs/shopping to numb out from all the negative emotions we don’t know how to handle.
I’m not here to shame you for any of that. I do some of these things myself – I own more red lipsticks than anyone could say are strictly necessary.
But when we spend our money in these ways, the return is just…more of the same. We spend money on fillers and then we feel like we have to keep doing it to feel ok about how we look. We spend money on drinking our feelings away, and then we feel bad about that, and we have to spend more money on drinking those feelings away too.
Investing in our own mental and emotional health and happiness is not spending money on something that disappears once used.
It’s investing in a resource that gets more and more valuable in our lives each time we do.
You can keep getting the filler or not, but your self-esteem won’t depend on it anymore. That’s what freedom feels like.
Hiring a 1:1 coach for a session once-a-week can easily cost thousands of dollars a month, and that doesn’t come with unlimited coaching, a library of high-level coaching courses, a database of coaching answers to search anytime, a supportive community, and everything else included in The Society.
After two months in The Society you’ll start noticing that you just feel… a bit more chill.
Your emotions aren’t so much of a rollercoaster. You’re getting more done and starting to feel more confident about your abilities and your worth. You’re a little nicer to yourself. You’re spending less time scrolling Instagram feeling bad about yourself, and more time blowing your own mind with thought work in the The Society.
After four months in The Society you’ll realize it’s been a while since you took sh*t personally.
Suddenly, without quite knowing how it happened, you just feel less judgmental of yourself and everyone around you. You won’t get freaked out when something unexpected happens, because you know you can handle it. You catch your reflection in the mirror and surprise yourself by thinking “damn girl, looking good!” You have more patience with yourself and those around you.
After six months in The Society, your brain starts coaching itself.
You’re naturally and effortlessly thinking more positive, productive, and helpful thoughts, and when you look back at your thoughts from month one, you don’t even recognize some of them anymore. You show up at work as the bad-ass you always knew you could be. You show up in your personal life as the magnetic, loving, and happy woman you always wanted to be. And most importantly you’re excited for the future, because you are so proud of the work you’ve already done that you can’t wait to find out where managing your mind and The Society are going to take you next!
And after that? The sky is the limit. And the one thing you know for sure is that The Society will be there to help you get wherever you want to go.
This is such a common question – and please don’t take this personally, but I think it’s the wrong question to ask. Women are socialized to think that they only deserve things they NEED and also that they NEED to make the right decision all the time. So we’re always trying to figure out if we “need” something to justify a decision.
But it’s not about what you need. It’s about what you WANT.
If those are things you want, then that’s what matters. And that’s what The Society will provide.
This is a very normal fear! We’ve all been there.
First, There’s literally no such thing as doing everything or completing it all.
When you go to college you aren’t trying to take ALL the courses, are you? No. You take the ones relevant to your interests, and when you are fully educated in that you graduate. The Society is the same.
More importantly, The Society is designed differently, because I created it in such a way that it can make a big difference in your life even with very little time spent on it. You can spend 5 minutes a day or 5 hours a week, and you’ll see results.
I’m going to let one of The Society’s members tell you how big of a difference The Society can make even when don’t have a lot of time or aren’t the joining type.
I don’t get on the website often, and I don’t participate in coaching. I read others’ posts. I listen to the weekly podcast. That’s. It.
So let me tell you all what happened yesterday. I got walked down to HR and was told they were eliminating my position. They offered me an 8 week severance and made me turn in my badge on the spot. I have a family with two small girls. I provide the majority of our income.
Let me tell you what also happened yesterday. I didn’t lose my shit. I stood up for myself in that meeting and told them how much of a mistake they are making. I had my own back. I never cried. I came out of there feeling empowered, confident and resourceful. I have never once felt like a victim. They are the ones who lost and this is an opportunity for me to find and work for a company who values their employees, patient quality and patient care.
You don’t have to be a star student in this group to see the effects. Two years ago I would have been crippled with devastation and doom. I would have lived as a victim and not helped myself. I would have had a lack of confidence and felt like an imposter.
Not yesterday!
It’s up to you. We have folks who stay for three months, folks who stay for a year, and folks who have been in The Society since the beginning several years ago.
Your first month starts the day you join. After that you’ll be billed monthly. You can cancel at any time, whenever you want to graduate yourself from The Society and feel ready to handle life’s challenges on your own!
Absolutely not. Therapy and The Society work beautifully together. In fact we have members in The Society who were referred to us by their therapists, because therapists are not trained in socially-programmed anxiety and feminist thought tools! No matter what kind of mental health treatment you are receiving, learning how to close the Brain Gap and resolve your socially-programmed anxiety is going to make your therapy more impactful and help your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors change more quickly.
I’m going to let one of our FSS members take the mic to answer this one.
I just want to say that this stuff really works.
I just started a job in an industry I used to work in but stopped before I joined FSS. I’m sitting here in awe of my own brain.
I used to be SOOO stressed out and anxious and overwhelmed in this industry and completely burned myself out.
Now I’m calmly setting boundaries, organizing tasks, offering encouragement to coworkers, saying ” no,” and thinking thoughts that are just MAGICAL compared to how I used to exist in this space.It’s surreal.
I literally feel like I’m going through life with a different software system. My brain is noticeably different.
Nope! We have members all over the world, and we try to vary the times of our live offerings to make them accessible to different time zones. Plus all coaching calls and other live offerings are recorded and replay is available on demand so you can fit us into your schedule wherever you are.
We also have members of all different ages, from their late teens into their 70s. It’s never too early or too late to start this work.
And we welcome anyone who was or is socialized as a woman, whatever your gender or current gender expression.
That’s not a problem. There’s no loyalty oath in The Society – our whole mission is to teach you how to think for yourself and believe what you truly want to believe! We’ve got members who are ardent feminists, members who are sure they don’t want to call themselves feminists, and members who aren’t sure what they think about it. The Society is not a good fit for you if you believe that women are an inferior gender and should not have equal rights. But other than that, you’re good.
The podcast is an amazing resource, but it was created one episode at a time over many years, so it’s more like a series of advice columns on a million different topics in no particular order. And when you listen to a podcast you can’t ask a question, get feedback on your attempts to implement what you learn, or get coaching when you’re stuck. The Society not only has teaching and tools that aren’t on the podcast, but it is streamlined and organized. The courses have been put together to focus on specific topics with Kara’s most cutting-edge concepts and tools for those topics. In The Society we’ve got everything you need, including content not on the podcast, and it’s perfectly streamlined and organized for fast, maximum change. Plus you have access to the coaching support you need to keep you moving in the right direction and using everything correctly!
My work — including the same content and coaching that’s inside the Society — was part of a double-blind clinical study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association that showed coaching had a better outcome on measures of burnout, imposter syndrome, self-compassion and flourishing than almost any other intervention that had been studied in some of the same populations.
This is technically a matter of life & death. After all — we all die someday. That’s how high the stakes of this work are. I don’t want you on your deathbed however many years from now, wishing you’d been kinder to yourself, hadn’t worked so hard, and had lived your life for YOU. That’s not far-fetched, because the research is pretty clear: those are some of the main regrets that people express when they are close to death.
That’s why I call feminist coaching “practical philosophy.” It’s a way of having the conversation we all should engage in with ourselves about what creates a good life, where we’re trying to go, and who we truly want to be.
It’s about living your life with bold intention, so that you won’t regret it when you die.