472. How Equanimity Can Strengthen Your Mind & Save the World: A Conversation with Margaret Cullen
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you feel like the world is on fire and the only appropriate response is constant outrage, this conversation will stretch you in the best way. I talk with psychotherapist and author Margaret Cullen about equanimity, what it actually means, and why it is not the same thing as apathy or disengagement. We unpack the idea that you can care deeply, take action, and still refuse to live in a state of emotional melodrama.
Margaret explains how equanimity helps you recover balance more quickly when you get hijacked by fear, anger, or despair. We connect this to nervous system regulation, the 24 hour news cycle, and the cultural pressure to prove you care by being constantly devastated. You'll walk away with concrete ways to engage in your personal and political life without burning yourself out or becoming what you are fighting against.
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: schoolofnewfeministthought.com/472
Follow along on Instagram: instagram.com/karaloewentheil/
Learn more about Margaret Cullen's work at margaretcullen.com
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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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to unfuck your brain. |
| 0:08.3 | I'm your host, Cara Lowentile, master-certified coach, and founder of the School of New |
| 0:13.3 | Feminist Thub. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life |
| 0:20.0 | on your own terms, one that you're |
| 0:22.0 | truly excited to live. Let's go. |
| 0:27.5 | Hello, my friends. I am really excited today to be here with an author who I had not heard |
| 0:32.8 | of before I got a cold pitch in my inbox, but sometimes that works because I'm very excited about her new book, |
| 0:38.3 | and I know that you all are going to learn a lot from this conversation. So I'm here with Margaret |
| 0:43.1 | Cullen, and as always, I'm going to welcome Margaret to the show and then ask her to brag about herself |
| 0:48.7 | because women are socialized not to do that. So Margaret, will you tell us a little bit about yourself |
| 0:53.2 | and what you do? |
| 1:03.5 | Thank you, Kara. And yes, I think this is the hardest intro I've had on a podcast. So I've spent a lot of my career. I am a licensed psychotherapist. I've spent a lot of my career translating contemplative programs into mainstream |
| 1:12.8 | settings. And I started out with mindfulness and did a lot of programs for research studies at |
| 1:20.7 | universities with a lot of different cohorts that ranged from doctors to elite military to inmates at Angola Penitentiary and many, many cohorts in between. |
| 1:33.9 | And then from there, it helped develop a compassion training at Stanford University. |
| 1:39.3 | That also was a kind of mainstream accessible program that took contemplative ideas. And now the latest thing |
| 1:48.0 | is that I've written a book about equanimity, which is another kind of contemplative virtue |
| 1:54.2 | practice that I think can be made widely accessible. And that's what I'm hoping to do with this book. And I'll just say, |
| 2:03.6 | if ever there was a time for equanimity, it's now. That is for sure. So I'm really excited to |
| 2:09.1 | talk about equanimity, but I actually just want to back up for folks who aren't familiar with |
| 2:13.1 | what you mean by when you talk about like contemplative practices or contemplation as something |
... |
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