470. Your Emotional Compass, Guilt & Shame (Greatest Hits)
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you make decisions based on what you actually want, or based on what would make you feel the least guilty? In this Greatest Hits episode, I break down how guilt and shame quietly become the emotional compass guiding our everyday choices, from small obligations to major life decisions, and why that often leaves us exhausted, resentful, or stuck.
I share how women in particular are socialized to treat guilt and shame like flashing moral warning signs, assuming that if we feel bad about not doing something, it must mean we should do it. I walk you through how to recalibrate your emotional compass so you can stop making decisions just to avoid feeling like a bad person.
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: schoolofnewfeministthought.com/470
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The Future Coach Podcast is Here!
The Future Coach: How to Succeed as a Life Coach Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond is finally here. Every other week, you'll hear practical advice about becoming a coach, improving your coaching skills, and antidotes to the most common concerns, questions, and brain drama that come up with this work, whether you're just starting out or you're years into your career. If you want to find out more, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and hit that follow button.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my friends. We are keeping with our emotion theme this month. And I want to talk today about |
| 0:07.2 | two of the core emotions that drive so much of our behavior and so many of our decisions from |
| 0:13.4 | the everyday decisions of like whether to call your great aunt back or what you're going to eat |
| 0:18.9 | for lunch to your huge lifelong decisions like |
| 0:22.1 | whether to stay married or what kind of career to pursue. And those are the emotions of guilt and |
| 0:28.5 | shame. So in this episode, which originally came out a couple of years ago, I talk about how we use |
| 0:34.5 | guilt and shame as the main driver in our decision making and how that ends up playing out in our life. And I talk about how to use guilt and shame as the main driver in our decision making and how that |
| 0:38.1 | ends up playing out in our life. And I talk about how to recalibrate your emotional compass |
| 0:42.5 | and orient yourself in a different way towards your decisions so that you aren't being driven |
| 0:48.0 | by guilt or shame and making decisions based on just trying to avoid those emotions. |
| 0:53.7 | If you learn how to reduce those emotions |
| 0:55.3 | overall, you can make better decisions and actually pursue the life that you want to have. |
| 1:00.4 | It's a really great episode. If you've already heard it, it really deserves another listen. It |
| 1:04.9 | will hit you differently where you are now. And if you've never heard it, you are in for a |
| 1:09.0 | mind-blowing episode. All right, past me. |
| 1:11.9 | Take it away. |
| 1:13.6 | Welcome to unfuck your brain. |
| 1:15.9 | I'm your host, Kara Lowentile, master-certified coach, and founder of the School of New |
| 1:20.9 | Feminist Thub. |
| 1:22.0 | I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that |
| 1:29.4 | you're truly excited to live. Let's go. |
| 1:35.0 | Hello, my chickens. How are you? I am enjoying the quiet of the last week before our |
... |
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