503. Coaching Hotline: Sibling Rivalry & the Comparison Trap & When Your Child Has a Chronic Illness
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Do you ever find yourself comparing yourself to a sibling and feeling stuck in resentment and rivalry? In this Coaching Hotline episode, I break down why most of that tension is coming from your own thoughts and judgments, and how noticing those patterns can change the way you relate to your family.
I also answer a listener question about parenting a child with a chronic illness. Many parents feel anxious because they believe it is their job to control their child’s health. I break down why the anxiety comes not from the medical reality but from the thoughts you're having. This episode is all about seeing where your reactions really come from, reducing unnecessary stress, and interacting with your family and loved ones with more clarity and ease.
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: https://schoolofnewfeministthought.com/503
Watch episodes over on YouTube: youtube.com/@karaloewentheilcoaching
Follow along on Instagram: instagram.com/karaloewentheil/
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. |
| 0:57.0 | So here's the first question. |
| 1:02.3 | I was wondering how to use thought work to stop myself from thinking of my sister as my rival. |
| 1:07.6 | All my life, my family and people around me have compared me to my sister. I've been the bigger sister, the shyer sister, the serious sister. Our personalities have been compared. |
| 1:12.3 | As a result, I've placed it in my head that my sister is my rival, so I compare myself to her and I resent her. |
| 1:18.7 | Such a good question, right? Because I think when you start to pay attention to how parents and families often talk about children, I think this is useful both as the child of parents, |
| 1:28.6 | as we all are, but also some of us are parents ourselves and to watch our own minds when we do that, |
| 1:33.8 | like how ingrained it is in humans to make comparisons. It's so interesting. You know, |
| 1:39.5 | some of it is societal and maybe some of it is just like brains are bored. So they're like, what can I do? |
| 1:45.3 | Let me compare this object to that object. I know, you know, for instance, in my family, for sure, |
| 1:50.1 | there was a lot of like evaluation and judging of everything. Like that was just like the family |
| 1:56.1 | hobby. Like if you interact with an object or a person, the first thing you do is evaluate and judge it. |
| 2:02.4 | So I think some of our brains may be a little more prone to this than others. |
| 2:06.0 | But it's all totally resolvable with thought work. |
| 2:09.0 | So in this scenario, you are thinking that your sister is your rival, and then you resent her for that, right? |
| 2:16.1 | Even though it's your own thoughts. |
| 2:18.7 | But the whole thing under here is not the comparison necessarily, really. It's the evaluation, I think. So if I compare two |
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