489. Coaching Hotline: Social Media Validation & Emotional Vulnerability vs. Thought Work
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Social media will happily turn your nervous system into a tiny squirrel hunting for dopamine, my friends. This week, I coach a listener who keeps checking likes and engagement on posts for her business. Instead of treating likes, commissions, creative desire, and income as one tangled emotional knot, I show you how to separate the questions so your brain can stop making Instagram engagement mean everything about your art, your business, or your worth.
Then, I answer a deeper question about emotional vulnerability and thought work, especially in relation to Brené Brown’s work. This episode will show you how to untangle social media validation, business confusion, self judgment, and authenticity so you can see what is actually happening in your brain.
Submit your own question here and it might get answered on a future episode: unfuckyourbrain.com/coachinghotline
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: schoolofnewfeministthought.com/489
Follow along on Instagram: instagram.com/karaloewentheil/
Mentioned in this episode:
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.
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.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Un-Fuck Your Brain. I'm your host, Kara Lowenthal, 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. |
| 0:24.3 | Welcome to this week's coaching hotline episode where I answer real questions from real |
| 0:30.4 | listeners and coach you from afar. If you want to submit your question for consideration, |
| 0:35.1 | go to unfuckyourbrain.com forward slash coaching hotline, |
| 0:40.1 | all one word, or text your email to plus one 347-997-1784. And when you get prompted for the code word, |
| 0:49.7 | it's coaching hotline, all one word. Let's get into this week's questions. Here is the first question, |
| 0:57.7 | which I think is a great one because I think a lot of you struggle with this, or I don't even |
| 1:03.0 | love the word struggle, but like deal with this. So here's the question. She says, |
| 1:08.0 | in addition to my full-time job, I have an illustration business. I'm not |
| 1:11.7 | massive actioning it for now because I'm focused on school, but I want to keep it going as much as I |
| 1:16.1 | can. Part of the business is posting my work on social media as a way to get free marketing. When I do, |
| 1:22.5 | though, I can't seem to stop myself from checking how many likes I get on a post or thinking about how many |
| 1:27.8 | likes or comments it has. I suspect it's because of the thought I should have more likes engagement, |
| 1:33.2 | but there may be something else lurking. My result is I'm not focusing on creating more art, |
| 1:37.2 | products, and services. What's the Kara hot take on all this? Do you use particular thoughts that |
| 1:42.5 | lead to commitment to create content without |
| 1:44.5 | worrying about the relative popularity of your work? I'm struggling to find the service that I can |
| 1:48.9 | provide to people if I'm primarily creating art related to my interests. People have asked me to |
| 1:53.3 | create art of loved ones, which I've done. Okay, so there's a couple things going on this question, |
| 1:58.5 | and the first one is that I want to show you all that this is not all one question. This is at least two questions, possibly three. So one question is why you keep checking your posts. And it's possible that it's because you believe you should have more likes or engagement. But I think that this question is not taking into account |
| 2:18.0 | the way in which phones and social media are designed to stimulate our desire for dopamine |
| 2:23.4 | by sort of dripping out little bits of validation. The likes or the hearts or the algorithms, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kara Loewentheil, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Kara Loewentheil and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.