493. Coaching Hotline: Making Friends as an Adult & The Line Between Honesty and People-Pleasing
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Making friends as an adult can feel intimidating, especially when it seems like your upbringing didn't give you the skills to navigate social connections. In this Coaching Hotline episode, I answer two listener questions about friendships and social interactions. I explore why it is possible to build friendships while continuing your self-work, and why the story you tell yourself about your friendship skills can keep you stuck.
I also tackle the tricky line between honesty and people pleasing. I break down why volunteering opinions that nobody asked for is not automatically people pleasing and why the key is understanding your own motivations behind sharing advice or judgments. This episode will help you distinguish between speaking your truth for yourself and managing your behavior out of concern for others’ approval.
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/493
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
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| 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 unfuckyour your brain.com forward slash |
| 0:39.0 | coaching hotline, all one word, or text your email to plus one 347, 997-1784. And when you get |
| 0:48.2 | prompted for the code word, it's coaching hotline, all one word. Let's get into this week's questions. |
| 0:57.6 | Today, this is going to be a friendship themed episode because I got two great questions about friendships that I want to answer today. |
| 1:04.0 | So, first one is, I know that I have a long way to go with my thought work about self-esteem, |
| 1:09.1 | automatic negative thinking, but I also want to |
| 1:11.4 | build friendships while still working on myself. Is it realistic to work on these things at the same time? |
| 1:17.1 | Also, I grew up in an anti-social family, meaning friends were for school and only during school. |
| 1:22.4 | And I believe this prevented me for making friends, which in turn left me with poor friendship |
| 1:26.4 | skills. I'm 21. I live at home |
| 1:29.1 | due to religious reasons and in grad school for social work, and I haven't made super close |
| 1:33.2 | friends besides one who is super busy with school work. How do I make friends in grad school and be |
| 1:38.3 | okay with my parents or family being super critical angry? Okay, so this is actually a couple of |
| 1:42.9 | questions. There's a question about making |
| 1:44.2 | friends and there's a question about your family's reaction to you making friends. So, yes, |
| 1:50.4 | it's totally fine to try to make friends at the same time that you're working on your thoughts about |
| 1:53.9 | yourself. We don't have to live in a vacuum until we fix ourselves perfectly before we start |
| 1:58.4 | to try to have human relationships. And sometimes we have to go |
| 2:02.2 | out and engage with something in order to work on it. So if you want to build your thoughts about |
... |
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