Welcome to unfuck your brain. I'm your host Kara Lowentile, 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 unfuck your brain.com forward slash

coaching hotline, all one word, or text your email to plus one 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. First question, about

thought ladders. I have several unhelpful repeating thoughts, such as I'm a bad person and I don't

deserve to be happy or have fun. These thoughts don't create great results, but they're very

familiar. I've looked at making a thought ladder, but I got stuck straight away on choosing my goal thought, because things aren't black or white like that, and that black and white thinking is not helping me. It's not as simple as I am a good person and I deserve happiness, because I don't think any of us is truly good or bad, and the concept of deserving doesn't sit right. I've sat with this a few times and then just left it. It feels like there's a huge block

when working with these old familiar thoughts. Can you help with building a ladder? Is that a total

cop out? Not a cop out. Happy to help. So, number one, don't just leave it, right? This is what your

brain wants you to do. Your brain is like, listen, I have invested a lot of time and energy in teaching you that you're a bad person and don't deserve to be happy or have fun. I don't want you messing with that. I spend a lot of time on that. So of course, when you try to think something else, your brain is like, no, no, no, I hate it. Stop. So we don't ever want to just give up on it, right? We don't ever want to just not coach ourselves

because it seems hard or we're not sure what to do. In terms of how to pick your goal thought,

it really doesn't matter. If you don't like the thoughts, I'm a good person or I deserve happiness,

like a goal thought does not have to be the ultimate goal thought forever. Like if your thought is, I don't

deserve to be happy, your goal thought on your first ladder might even be like, happiness isn't a

matter of deserving, or I deserve to be happy sometimes, or I'm allowed to be happy, right? It doesn't

have to be, I deserve to happiness all the time or whatever. Or if your thought is I'm a bad person, your original goal thought doesn't even have to be I'm a good person. Could be like, I'm not good or bad or I'm sometimes good and sometimes bad, right? Like there's no one ladder. Sometimes what is your goal thought now will become your current thought and then you'll do another thought ladder. Sometimes what is like your goal thought now will turn out to be like a ladder

thought on the way to even bigger goal thought. So it's fine if the couple you come up with don't

sit right with you, but then don't give up, right? What happened here is that you're like,

...