UFYB 300.5: BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF THE CLUTCH: PART TWO

Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use psychology, feminism, and coaching, to rewire your brain and get what you want in life. And now here’s your host, Harvard Law School grad, feminist rockstar, and master coach, Kara Loewentheil.

Chickens, fancy meeting you here two days in a row. I am so excited to share part two of The Clutch Open house with you today because we’re going to be starting with a live coaching session. Well, technically it’s a recording of a live coaching session. You get what I mean. I’m going to coach one of our Clutch members live on emotions. How to deal with them. And before I do that, I’m going to explain why and how to listen to the coaching to make sure that you get out of it exactly what you need. It is way more powerful often to listen to someone else get coached, so really excited for you to hear that.

Before we jump into part two, I want to make sure that you know that Feminist Summer School is kicking off really, really soon. It is happening inside The Clutch during the month of August but you have to join by July 31^st to get access to the whole thing automatically just for being inside The Clutch. We have special trainings. We’ve got some fun homework, it’s the kind you actually want to do. We are going to be having these special teachings on how to have an amazing vacation, how to love your body more this summer and feel more body confident this summer. How to de-stress your summer.

So many crucial topics for really making the most of August, feels like the summer has flown by. So I’m really excited to make August incredible and I want you to also. We’re also going to have some Feminist Summer School specific challenges inside our private Facebook group and community, which is the only way to connect with other women who are doing this work, who are really trying to get the patriarchy out of their brains, change their thought processes. And we like to make it fun. We like to make it a game in a good way.

And that all goes down inside our private Facebook group. So you’ve got to be in The Clutch to get access. You won’t want to miss a minute of it, which is why you need to join by July 31^st. So join now, text your email address to +1347 997 1784, again that’s +1347 997 1784 and the code word is summer. Or just go to unfuckyourbrain.com/summer. Let’s hang out this summer inside The Clutch. I’ll see you there. And now let’s get into some coaching.

Hello, I’m back. I missed you all. Alright, so thank you, Anna and our amazing Clutch coaches. So here’s what I want to kind of, we’re going to do some coaching. We’re going to do some live coaching but I want to talk to you first about how to think about coaching. So I’m sure this is not true of any of you but sometimes I myself or some of my students might have a little bit of perfectionist thinking. We might have a little bit of black and white thinking.

And we might think that we’re supposed to be able to solve all our problems ourselves because we’re smart, or we’re supposed to be smart or some of us think we’re smart. Because while you could just listen to the podcast and solve everything for yourself, or if you join The Clutch, and I’m going to talk about why the podcast is not the same as The Clutch a little bit later. But even when you join The Clutch then it’s sort of like well, the materials are here and I’m just supposed to be able to do the materials, apply them to myself and solve my problem.

That is true for some people sometimes on some issues. But The Clutch isn’t really designed for you to just do the materials by yourself in a vacuum without any help or support. If that was really how it’s supposed to work, then I wouldn’t have Clutch coaches. We wouldn’t have a forum for getting anonymous coaching and Ask the Coaches. We wouldn’t have live coaching calls. If you were supposed to be able to do it all yourself, just put yourself together like an IKEA table with just the instructions then we wouldn’t have all the rest of this.

You’re meant to get support for your specific brain as you apply the teaching and the materials. Of course, the courses in The Clutch are incredibly in-depth, powerful, targeted lessons and exercises and practices for you, and they are very transformative. And sometimes it is totally the case that you sit down, you do a course, you listen, you do the exercises and you’re like, bam, I think I’ve got this. That’s amazing when that happens. But that’s not necessarily the norm and it certainly is not the way it’s always supposed to be. There are going to be areas that are trickier.

You’re also learning a whole new set of skills. You’re learning a new way of thinking. You’re going to need support and help in doing that. That’s why kindergartens have teachers. So those of you who are joining and I know some of you already joined on this call, I just want you to remember that you’re supposed to use the support that’s in The Clutch. So don’t listen to your brain being like my question is stupid or I should be able to solve this myself or The Clutch coaches don’t want to hear this. The Clutch coaches exist so that they can support you. I exist so I can support you.

We are all here to support you. You’re supposed to need support. You’re supposed to need help. That’s normal. So when you come in, there’s a couple of different ways you can get support and Anna talked about that. You can use the Facebook group, which is optional if you want that peer support. You can use our anonymous coaching question form, that’s the Ask the Coaches where you can ask a question or put in your situation for coaching any time and you’ll get an answer from a Clutch coach.

You can also enroll in private one to one coaching with one of the Clutch coaches after you join The Clutch. When you have a one-to-one coach, if that’s accessible and available to you, it’s really just like getting on the HOV line. What’s that called? High Occupancy Vehicle line, where if you have two or more people in the car, you can skip the traffic. That’s what working with a one-to-one coach is like. I’m someone who always wants to hire an expert to help me get results fast and efficiently, and that’s what one-to-one coaching is.

The kind of problem with hiring a one-to-one coach outside The Clutch is that they just don’t have access to the same level of resources and materials. You’re just dealing with that coach in their own six week program or whatever it is, or three month program or six month program. But in The Clutch, the Clutch coaches have access to and can coach you through and help you with anything in The Clutch, any of our 12 plus different courses we have, anything I teach on the podcast that you’ve listened to and been trying to figure out, anything.

So we want it and they’re sort of trained and continually get coaching and professional development with me and with one of my master coaches. So they’re really up to date on what I’m teaching, the newest stuff from the podcast. They are on that cutting edge. And so that’s why we offer one-to-one coaching in The Clutch at a much more accessible investment than somebody’s able to offer if they’re running their own business on their own. So we have a waitlist right now because one-on-one coaching is so popular in The Clutch.

But I want to let you know so that if you’ve already joined or you’re joining today, you want to make sure to put your name on that waitlist to save your spot the next time a space opens up. And Anna showed you where that was, I believe. But right now what I want to do is give you a taste of what that coaching is like. So what it’s like to have somebody focus with your brain and you in a back and forth conversation. And this is something that might happen on a group coaching call in The Clutch with you and me or with you and one of the Clutch coaches on one of the Clutch coaches calls.

Or it could happen in the context of one-to-one private coaching if that’s something you want to invest in and a space becomes available. So here’s what I want to tell you, watching this. Most people in The Clutch never get coached live by me and that’s actually a good thing because you can sometimes black out a little. When you’re getting coached directly, your brain is like, “Ah, she’s telling me my thoughts. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to lay down and die.” That’s very normal.

It’s so, so powerful though, to watch other people get coached. So I always really appreciate the people who come up for coaching. And they can watch the replay and get a lot out of it that way. But being coached live by me, sometimes a little bit intense for you, but watching other people get coached live is an incredible learning opportunity. So here’s, I want to give you a little sneak peek of how you should think about this when you join The Clutch. You’re not listening for when the circumstances of the person’s situation match yours.

So we’re not listening for, well, this person is getting coached about their mom and my problem is with my boss, so it’s not relevant. It has nothing to do with what the circumstance is. What you’re listening for is the kind of thoughts you have. You’re listening for the thought patterns that sound familiar. That’s what I’m coaching on. Doesn’t matter who the people are in the thing or whatever the issue is. What I’m really coaching on are what are the thought patterns going on. And if you listen and pay attention, you’re for sure going to hear some thoughts that you have no matter who I’m coaching.

And so I’m coaching them on those thought patterns, that’s going to be applicable to you. And your brain is going to take that in and start thinking about it and start thinking about how do I apply this to something I’m struggling with. So that’s the best way to listen to live coaching or to watch a replay of live coaching, but that’s what you want to be looking for, what are the thought patterns that I can take from this. And what’s the coaching Kara’s giving or whoever the Clutch coach is giving, that applies to some thought patterns that I have. Alright, Maria, you are up for coaching.

Maria: Hello.

Kara: Hi.

Maria: Hi, nice to meet you finally.

Kara: You too. Hold on, I’ve got to turn up my volume to make sure I can hear you. Okay, how are you?

Maria: I’m okay. I’m anxious. Got a lot going on with my mom’s health and it’s creating a lot of anxiety.

Kara: Okay, let’s talk about it.

Maria: Yeah, sure. Well, I guess I’ll go through the circumstances.

Kara: Sure, just tell me whatever you want to tell me.

Maria: Yeah. So she’s in the hospital in Greece now. New information, she has this neurological disorder. She’s going to need rehab to get her walking and moving. And now they’re even saying maybe cancer has spread to her brain. So I’m just sad and anxious. So just my thought is, I guess really my thought is I don’t want her to die and feel anxious. And then my A line is I’m overanalyzing things, I’m ruminating. I’m just that fight or flight response.

My stomach is in butterflies and feeling those physical sensations of anxiety. And then, I guess the result is I’m creating this for myself. But it’s hard when your mom’s really [crosstalk]. So that’s where I’m at.

Kara: Okay. Let’s talk about it. So I’m really glad you brought this because I think it’s so important to see that the point of coaching is not to be, let’s feel happy about this situation. That’s not what we’re going to try to do here. I just want to try to see if we can help understand what’s going on with the anxiety piece of it and see if there’s a way to kind of help you get yourself a little more regulated. And kind of be more prepared for whatever this experience is going to be.

So let’s talk about your anxiety, because when we’re anxious it’s because we’re afraid something’s going to happen. And if you are in The Clutch, you may know some of this, for everybody else watching when we’re afraid something’s going to happen, what we’re actually afraid of is how we’ll feel about that thing. We don’t fear that things that feel amazing will happen. So in this case, what do you think you’re afraid of? Is it afraid of feeling grief? Is it afraid of feeling guilt or something? What is it, you’re afraid you’ll feel?

Maria: I’m afraid of the feeling of the grief of just not having her here and is this the end? Is it just anticipating all that, just super anxious about that, yeah, so the grief.

Kara: Okay. So you feel anxious about the prospect of feeling the grief?

Maria: Yes.

Kara: What do you imagine the grief is going to feel like?

Maria: Terrible, like I’m dying. It’s terrible, my life is over. Everything was great when my mom was around and now it’s a new chapter, my life without my mom.

Kara: Okay. So you’re afraid you’ll feel the grief. What do you imagine, so those were some thoughts, what is the feeling in your body that you’re really afraid of having?

Maria: I’m not sure, I mean, I guess I’m already having the anxiety so I don’t know if that still counts as an answer.

Kara: Well, that’s what you’re feeling now. And you’re afraid that you’ll feel grief. But I’m just wondering, it’s interesting that your brain is like, I’m afraid of having this feeling. But what is that feeling?

Maria: Yeah, I guess loss, sadness, grief, I don’t know.

Kara: Okay. Yeah, grief is a feeling. But it’s just what I’m trying to kind of help you pick apart is what is, so  let me ask you this, what does grief feel like in your body?

Maria: Your heart is heavy, or I guess, your heart is heavy or your stomach, is a pit in your stomach. You don’t eat, you can’t sleep. You’re just in grief, you’re in a loss.

Kara: Okay. And is that a feeling you’ve had before?

Maria: Yes.

Kara: Okay. And when that feeling, oh, I’m sorry go ahead.

Maria: No. I lost a cousin of mine like four years ago and that was a big loss for me. I lost a family friend a few months ago. So I have had the grief before, the whole grief counseling group. So I’ve done a whole lot of work on grief.

Kara: Okay. So you’ve experienced grief before and you said you’ve done some work on it. What do you think about it feels so scary to you?

Maria: Yeah. What’s so scary about it? Let me think. I don’t know. That’s a good question, I guess. I don’t know, it’s the loss itself, I guess, the [crosstalk] associated with the grief.

Kara: When you feel grief, what comes up for you? Do you have thoughts about grief when you feel it? What’s your response to feeling grief?

Maria: Right. Well, I definitely don’t want to feel grief.

Kara: Yeah. That may really be it, though. Let’s just stay there for a minute. It may not be more complicated than that. What’s happening is you’re like for sure this feeling is coming and I don’t want to have it. And that is creating the anxiety.

Maria: Yeah, that definitely could be it. Yeah, well my thought is I don’t want her to die. So that does make sense. Yeah, I know, in the shower, I’m like, “Do I have to think about seeing her in a casket?” Things like that in my head. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to experience it. I’ve seen it through other people, never as close as my parent, my first cousin, who I was very close with. I considered him like a sibling almost. I’ve seen it before and I just don’t want it now with my mom. I don’t want to do it. It’s inevitable too, because we’re all going to die.

Kara: Right, that’s the thing. So you don’t have to want it. You can keep feeling exactly how you’re feeling. But I think the anxiety is, it is inevitable even if it’s not now, unless you die first, which we know your mother wouldn’t want. So at some point there’s going to be grief. And I think because you are telling yourself, I don’t want to feel grief. The signal you’re sending to your brain is that the grief is dangerous.

Maria: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Kara: And so then you’re creating the anxiety on top of the grief. So I don’t think we need to get rid of the grief. You want to feel grief about your mother, but the sort of the I don’t want to feel the grief. I wonder if we can just start with the thought, I don’t think we have to go to, let’s not try to go to I embrace the grief as part of all. Let’s just baby step, let’s come up with a baby step. I just wonder how you think, the level of anxiety you’re at when you think I don’t want to feel that, I don’t want it to happen, full stop, no, I don’t want it.

How does it feel if you practice thinking something like even though I know I don’t want to experience this, I also know that I will be able to get through it? Just try, I don’t want you to think about it intellectually. I want you to think that thought in your head and see if anything changes in your body.

Maria: Can you say it one more time for me?

Kara: Yeah, I’ll say it to you.

Maria: It’s a long one.

Kara: Just get in that place of I don’t want it, I feel anxiety. Even though I don’t want to feel this. I know that if I do have to go through it, I will make it to the other side.

Maria: Yeah, I know. I feel a little, but still like no, but I still don’t want it.

Kara: [Inaudible] shitty thought.

Maria: Right. So even though I don’t want it, I know I will get through it.

Kara: That doesn’t have to be the right thought for you. You may want to brainstorm. We can brainstorm now. But what I want to offer you as a technique here is you may not be ready to be willing to experience the grief. So what can we do that’s a sort of, it’s the yes and in improv, I don’t want to experience this and.

Maria: I know I will eventually.

Kara: Or I don’t want this and also I know it may happen and I’ll have to come. It’s sort of we can play with it, but what do you think? What do you think is something that would…

Maria: [Inaudible]?

Kara: Yeah, that you can join up with it. So you’re acknowledging, I know that I don’t want this and.

Maria: And I know, I’m like but, but I guess you could say.

Kara: No, we can try a but, we can try anything but I know that I don’t want this but.

Maria: But it’s part of life. I don’t know.

Kara: And how does that feel? There’s no right answer. We’ve just got to check in with you.

Maria: Yeah, a part of life, a little bit better, a little bit better.

Kara: Yeah, every brain is different. So this is a great example for everybody watching. I don’t necessarily know what your thought should be. I’m just going to try to help you figure it out. So it’s part of life. That’s a good option. What if we tried also something that’s sort of, I know that I don’t want to experience this grief, and I also know it’s a reflection of how much I love my mother. How does that feel?

Maria: Yeah. That feels nice. That feels a little more, I guess it’s okay to also cry about it too.

Kara: Of course, yeah.

Maria: That one also feels like a little tinge, it’s getting me more emotional, this is coming from love that I’m upset.

Kara: Yeah. I just got little chills up the back of my neck, which is my coach intuition. But that’s right, because you’re fighting the grief but grief and love go together. So if you were really in your love for your mother, you’d also be in your grief and you’re in your anxiety instead, trying to not have to feel that.

Maria: Definitely, I’m in my anxiety instead.

Kara: I want to offer you one more option and then you can kind of see, I know this is emotional, but I almost wonder if it’s maybe what we need is a thought that’s like, I know I don’t want to feel this, but I also know, I don’t know what the right word is. But it’s like I’m big enough to hold this. You’re sort of doubting your own capacity to hold that grief, but you have that much love for your mother, you’ll be able to hold that grief.

Maria: Yeah, that makes me feel a little more sad too.

Kara: Yeah, I’m not trying to coach you to not feel sad. That’s not one of the options.

Maria: Yeah, that’s true. No. I had a feeling that this was going to come up.

Kara: Yeah. I’m going to offer you one more thing. You can just practice giving yourself the choice. When you’re feeling all anxious, just be really clear to yourself. Alright, self, listen, I can feel anxious or sad. There is not a situation right now where if I just resolve my anxiety, I’ll feel neutral and chill. Does that make sense? That’s not on the table. So do I want to feel anxious? Do I want to go into the grief or do I want to be in the anxiety? You get to choose. But it’s kind of a fantasy that you’d be able to coach yourself in this scenario to be like nothing’s going on, just feel chill.

Maria: Yeah. I am a confident person now.

Kara: Or whatever. I think really your options are be in anxiety or be willing to go into the sadness.

Maria:  Right. Yeah. That is for sure, yeah. Okay. So I guess my new, I can begin to start, when I notice that I don’t want this. I’m going to, I guess, support myself through it or something. I don’t know.

Kara: Any of those are good. You can rewatch this and take notes, but I think that when you feel really anxious your brain is racing to try to be like what can we do to get rid of this anxiety? And the truth is you already have a way, which is you have to open up to the sadness. As long as you’re not willing to open up to the sadness you’re going to feel anxious.

Maria: Yeah, I definitely could be closed off to the sadness.

Kara: Because your brain knows it’s coming. If your mother passes away, you’re going to feel that sadness. So it’s coming down the pike. And you get to decide, am I going to try to open myself up to it and believe in my capacity to hold it and bear it? Or am I going to try to hold off the water and hold off the flood? Which is going to be really anxious because the food is still coming.

Maria: Yeah, either way whether I hope it’s not in the near future.

Kara: Right, whatever it is. And it’s okay to feel sad. I think that there’s no way around that sadness.

Maria: Right, yeah.

Kara: And am I going to go in or am I going to race around the outside trying to figure out a way to jump over it?

Maria: Right. Yes. Okay. I definitely will lean into it more.

Kara: Yeah, I think practicing something about your belief, your ability that you will be able to get through it, that you can hold it because your brain is like, no, no, it’s going to kill us, we can’t do it.

Maria: Right, right. Yeah.

Kara: Right. But it’s not. If you can hold that much love for your mother, you can hold that much grief for your mother.

Maria: Yeah.

Kara: So your whole affect has calmed down on this call. So I think we’re going in the right direction.

Maria: We’re definitely going in the right direction.

Kara: And that’s what I want you to just keep on, or even for like three minutes, how can I open myself up to the grief for three minutes? And then I can go back to being anxious. And I think you’re going to find the more you’re able to open to that, your anxiety is going to go down. And you’re actually going to be able to be more present with your mother, which is all we really want in this scenario.

Maria: Yes, very true. Okay, thank you so much.

Kara: You’re welcome.

Maria: [Crosstalk] by the way.

Kara: Keep us posted.

Maria: Yeah.

Kara: Bye.

Maria: Bye.

Alright, my friends. Thank you so much, Maria, for sharing such a vulnerable moment for us. I think that’s such a beautiful example. This work is about cognitive and strategies and reframing and it’s also about the emotional life. And it’s not about trying to be happy all the time or trying to feel chill all the time. It is about learning how to increase our own human resilience and capacity and learning how to have faith in our own human resilience and capacity.

Alright, some of you have already joined The Clutch and then some of you have questions and want to know even more details about what happens when you join, how The Clutch works, all of that. So I am going to share some details about that with you. And then I’m going to answer some questions. And I’ll even, if anybody wants to get coached on their decision to join, if they’re kind of feeling on the fence, I will coach you. You can raise your hand when we get there if we have time, but let’s just go over some of what you need to know.

So, hello, so here’s what we do inside The Clutch when you join The Clutch. You can get coached every day, every week, every month until you trust yourself to go after and hit every goal that you have in your life. Alright, so for me, one of the biggest kind of goals of this work is teaching you how to trust yourself. Women are systematically taught not to trust themselves, to question themselves. We’re irrational, we’re emotional. What time of the month is it if you’re upset? Are you an expert? Do you even know what you’re talking about? Is that a bad idea?

These are the kind of messages we get in society. And so women are raised to not trust themselves. And so part of what this work is about is learning how to trust yourself and learning how to believe that you’re capable of achieving whatever it is that you want to achieve. So in your first 30 days you go through the Feminist Mindset Fix, that is our kind of initial course everybody goes through. And you learn how to change your thinking.

So you learn how to create literally new patterns in your brain that will help you feel more confident, less anxious, more excited about your life, no matter what’s happening. And as you work through the program, you get to sort of uncover who you really are and who you want to be outside of what society told you that you need to be or you’re supposed to be. You learn how to uncover who you are without that social programming. And so you can build that self-trust to take action on those desires.

So many women kind of feel they don’t even know what they really want to do or who they really are or who they really want to be. Learning how to become aware of your thinking and the social programming and then how to change it is what puts you in touch with that kind of true self. And you will have ongoing support for anything that comes up in your life. Think of The Clutch as sort of two tracks. One is helping you, both tracks can be happening at the same time.

One is helping you set those big goals, become who you want to be, create a different life for yourself in this kind of forward oriented, goal oriented way. The other is just handling all the shit that’s coming at you in the meantime being a human, being a woman in this society. All of the kind of daily challenges that we all face of dealing with our work stress and fighting with our partner and yelling at our kids and feeling stressed out by our family and feeling overwhelmed trying to balance it all. Or getting an offender bender and beating ourselves up, whatever is happening. We’ve got you on that too.

So just to recap because I know that the tour was a little bit ago. Here’s what’s included inside The Clutch. We have live Clutch coach calls every week and there’s live coaching calls with me every month. .And if you’re in The Clutch for six months or longer you have two coaching calls with me every month. We have Ask the Coaches, that’s our on demand anonymous question form, get a fast response from a trained coach, one of my Clutch coaches, you just met them.

So you could ask what’s really on your mind and you can kind of let it all out and really get targeted specific advice. This is not like the AI chat bots on some people’s sites or customer service or whatever. This is a real life person giving you a specific coaching response for your situation. We have specialized courses, after you finish that Feminist Mindset Fix your first month. You then can unlock a new course every month.

We have courses on sex and romantic relationships and family and friendship and money mindset, your career, self-confidence, your body image, trauma and your nervous system. Advanced skills in kind of thinking new thoughts. We have so many amazing courses. There are opportunities to get individual coaching. We talked about using the Ask the Coaches form, getting on the waitlist for one-to-one coaching with a Clutch coach or applying for live coaching on calls with me or with The Clutch coaches.

And we have 24/7 support inside our optional Facebook group, if you want to join that. Only peer support happens there. Everything else is in The Clutch membership site that Anna showed you all. So you don’t need social media at all to be in The Clutch. But if you like Facebook and social media and chit chatting about thought work and doing some peer coaching and support, that’s what the Facebook group is for.

Phase one, that Feminist Mindset Fix really teaches you how to change the negative thoughts about yourself you have. You look in the mirror, you get kind of negative feedback at work or somebody at Thanksgiving asks you why aren’t you married yet or why don’t you have kids yet? Or you do have kids and you have a bad day with them. I mean I’m a step-parent now, some days you [inaudible] with your kids, by the end you’re like, “I’d like to wipe that from the record of my memory.” How to deal with the thoughts that come up when anything like that happens.

And in phase two, you get to choose your mindset adventure. You get to pick your specialized courses. So you really get to curate your Clutch experience to you and decide what you need to work on and in what order. What’s the most pressing? What do you want to work on longer term? You get to make those choices for yourself. Learn how to make strong decisions and hit your goals and trust yourself.

And then in phase three, you get to transform every area of your life. You get to build that self-trust, reduce that self-doubt. Really the greatest gift I think that coaching has given me is that I just know that I’ve got myself, no matter what happens. I trust myself to just figure it out. So I’m really not that scared, I’m not really scared of what the future might bring, or even if something goes wrong, I just know. It’s not that I know everything will be perfect forever. I’m sure it won’t be, I’m living a human life. It’s that I know I’ve got this. I’m going to figure this out. I’m not going to turn on myself.

I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m not going to sacrifice myself or other people’s opinions of me. I know that I am my own best friend. That’s really what I think society takes away from women and that’s what I think we have to take back.

So this summer only we are also doing that Feminist Summer School you heard about, which I’m super excited about, starts in August. You have to join by July 31^st. Inside The Clutch we are doing these four unique training sessions. We’ve never done them before. They’re brand new and they are exclusive training by The Clutch coaches that you already met to kind of help make sure that no matter what happened in June and July that August can really be amazing and beyond. How to feel confident in any body and any clothes this summer.

I definitely used to wear a bathing suit with a t-shirt over it. A bikini was out of the question, and I didn’t even really want to wear a bathing suit. And I didn’t like to look at photos of myself and I didn’t want to be in photos on vacation. So if that’s you, you need this class to learn some strategies to reduce your summer body anxiety. How to have a great vacation, no matter what. How to enjoy vacationing alone, if you have brain drama about that. If you’re on a trip with friends and you’re the only single person.

Or if you’re on a trip with your partner, you guys aren’t getting along or you’re on a trip with your family, and that’s stressful. They’ve got a lot of opinions about how you parent your kids or whatever, how to have a great vacation, no matter where you are, what happens.

This shit comes in handy because I will tell you, if you’ve been on a flight recently, it is fucked up right now. I just was in Nashville, not for a vacation, for a family medical thing for a trip, but all of our flights were screwed up. So I’m noticing how everybody else was reacting and how I was reacting. I was like, “Get coaching, man, it’s worth it, really changes your brain, your brain chemistry.”

How to de-stress your summer, whether that’s just you or you’re dealing with your kids underfoot and at home, how to take the stress out of summer. And how to live pleasurably. Why do we fixate on summer so much? Because so often we’re like, “I’m just going to grind through all this stuff until I finally can go on vacation.” And then of course, vacation isn’t a magical transporting bliss and then we’re still burnt out at the end.

How do we create pleasure all along the way so that we don’t need a vacation from our life? And if something goes wrong on vacation it’s no big deal because we already know how to live our regular life with pleasure.

So here’s what I want you to think about in terms of joining now, reasons to join today. If you are on this call because you have something in your life that you want to feel better about, that’s a reason to join now. Women are just socialized to spend our whole lives feeling shitty about ourselves and about our situations and about our relationships. And just to kind of believe that we should be grateful for anything we have, which gratitude is lovely, but it’s not a reason that you can’t make things better.

I have this fight with my partner all the time, although he actually is a man, but he got some, I don’t know, Midwestern socialization that seems similar. Where he is just sort of like, “If it’s a good enough, if it’s okay, it’s fine. We shouldn’t push it.” And I’m always like, “Let’s make this amazing.” We go through this with everything. Now I just have a shorthand where I’m like, “No, this is the mediocre versus amazing. We’re going with amazing.” That’s what I want my life to be. That’s what I want for you.

You don’t just have to tolerate something because it’s okay or it’s not that bad. Let’s make your life amazing. Let’s solve these problems, not just learn to live with them, not just be in a kind of longstanding [inaudible] where you’re like, “Well, I hate my body, so I just try not to look at photos and I don’t know.” Let’s love your body. Let’s change your thoughts so that you can actually have an amazing relationship with your body. We don’t have to just settle for mediocrity.

Feminist Summer School, also an amazing reason to join today or through July 31^st, because that alone will completely help transform your summer. And the first 20 people to join on this call get these incredible word poetry magnets that I invented. Somebody’s going to be like, “Kara’s just invented magnetic poetry.” No, I invented the idea of using them for thought work. And getting these Clutch specific ones created. So these have all the thoughts that we think, all the words, I’m sorry, that we think you most need to create new thoughts.

So when you join right now you will get instant access to the Feminist Mindset Fix, that first course. You’re going to get instant ability to get written coaching on any issue and to apply for live coaching as well. You can claim your word poetry magnet, get a little snafu there. And you get to join Feminist Summer School live.

And that is all for $97 a month, which again, remember this is the improved version of the material that I used to teach for $10,000 a month, with way less coaching available because it was just one person, me, and now we have The Clutch coaches to help. I am there. Anna’s in there and we have this incredible peer community. That is one of the beautiful things about The Clutch.

So I want to talk for a minute about the kind of annual upgrade. So this is not on the kind of page where you sign up, you enroll. This is really after you enroll, when you go through you have a chance to upgrade to annual if you want to. So I want to talk about this and this is only for people for whom this is really available to you and accessible to you financially, which is really important because the mindset difference I’m just going to spend a minute talking about, doesn’t apply if this is not financially available to you.

If you are able to join The Clutch on a monthly basis and that’s what your bank account can support, that is awesome and you can be incredibly committed that way. So you’re not who I’m talking to for the next minute. And then I’m going to talk to you again so stay here. But for the next minute, I just want to talk about the mindset difference here for people who could commit to a year. And when you do commit for a year, there is also that benefit, you get two months for free.

But I just want to talk about the mindset of I could do this financially and it wouldn’t be a big deal to me, but I don’t because of my thoughts. It’s actually very different, your reason for what you click on that page, if you click no, because that is not what your bank account and your life can financially support. That is an awesome reason and you can be 100% in on that monthly basis and get so much out of The Clutch.

But if when you read that your thought process is I could do this but I don’t really believe in it. I don’t believe in myself. I don’t think I can do it. That’s what I want to talk about. That’s the problem, because what happens when we start to change or we think we might change, we start to get afraid of being uncomfortable and we want to go back and hide. We actually, human brains will prefer pain to uncertainty. Brains do not like uncertainty, we talk about this inside The Clutch, I explain why because it’s a big part of changing your thoughts. But brains have evolved for safety, even painful safety over uncertainty, over fear.

So when we tell ourselves, if we are somebody who absolutely could invest in an annual membership but we tell ourselves, “I’ll just try this out.” That’s what we do. Then we’re dabbling, then we dip a toe in. We don’t commit to making sure that it works for us and getting what we need out of it. We basically leave it up to our unmanaged minds. We’re like, “Well, I signed up for this, who knows if I’ll commit or carry through or believe in myself but, hey, brain, just surprise me. Let’s roll the dice.” If you are able to, when you commit to the container for a year, you give yourself the luxury of time.

You’re not adding anxiety by telling your brain that it has to hurry up and change fast enough to prove that it deserves support. You’re not telling yourself, I could do this, but I just don’t believe in myself enough. Notice if that thought’s coming up, whatever decision you make about how to enroll, get coached on that immediately, whether you’re monthly or annual in The Clutch. When you come in, if you have this thought of, well, I don’t know if I can. I don’t really believe in myself. What if I don’t follow through? Please come get coached on that immediately.

That thought is going to be the biggest barrier to progress for you. When you commit to something, you start to show up in a different way, and that shifts your identity from someone who is unsure if you can change, who’s like, “Oh, I’ll try it out and see.” To someone who’s like, “I am absolutely changing. I am making big moves on my behalf. I am going to give myself the time and the space to work, to practice, to integrate this even for me to check out when I go on vacation and come back.”

It’s just such a more generous and loving way to care for yourself than telling yourself, “Well, let’s see if I can change, but the clock is ticking.” So again, it’s all about what that mindset is. If only a month to month is available to you financially, that’s awesome and you can still be going into that with a really committed mindset. But if you’re choosing that because you’re afraid and you’re telling yourself, “I’ll just dabble. I’ll just try. I don’t know. I don’t believe in myself.” That is a different problem.

And in that case, whichever you choose, I really want you to go get coached on that thought. But I want you to consider using that annual coaching commitment as a way to build that self-belief and as a way to create that container so that you have the space to do that.

Alright, this is the link which is already in the chat. So let me answer some questions. Am I going to leave this up? I think I’m going to close this so my face is bigger. You’ve got the chat. You’ve got the link in the chat. So you know where that is. I think Anna has, yeah, dropped it again. Okay, so let me answer some questions.

Somebody asked, are there people of all ages in The Clutch? Such a great question. Yes, there are people, I mean, you have to be an adult, I guess I would say, a legal adult. We don’t have 13 year olds in The Clutch. But there are people who are 18/19, early 20s and then we have women in their 70s. We may have some in their 80s. I’m not sure, but I know for sure of a couple of people in their 70s. So there really are women of all ages.

The beautiful thing about neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to change is that scientists used to think that your brain basically didn’t have that once you’re an adult. That’s obviously nonsense. I mean, people learn new things all the time. People learn new skills and thought work is a skill, changing your thoughts is a skill. So it’s never too late to learn it and it’s never too late to change your life. I believe that so strongly.

Somebody said, I’ve listened to all the episodes on the podcast and I’ve found so many of the concepts useful but I really don’t think I can change many of my ingrained thoughts, no matter how hard I try. How will the courses in The Clutch be different or help me to change my thoughts? So here’s the first thing I will tell you, honest to God, if what you tell yourself is I can’t change these thoughts, you are not going to be able to change those thoughts. It’s okay to have questions or be doubtful, or not be sure, but you have to leave open the glimmer of possibility that it can change.

If you just tell yourself, I can’t change these thoughts, it doesn’t matter how good my coaching is, doesn’t matter how good my courses are. We can’t force your brain to change. You have to open the door to that possibility. So for this person, number one, what I recommend is just think about anything you changed your opinion on. Did you ever learn a new fact and change your thought about it? Did you ever change your mind about somebody? You can change your mind, focus on that.

But on a broader level, yes, joining The Clutch is very different. So the thing with the podcast is I did a lot of great teaching in that podcast, I believe. I put a lot of my own brilliance into it. It has evolved just naturally. I’ve been podcasting now since 2017, it’s five years of the podcast. We have almost 350 episodes. My teaching has evolved. I have done an episode every week. It’s not like I set out to be like, “Here’s five years of podcast episodes pre planned out.” So there’s so much good stuff in there.

But it’s a little bit like you’re trying to build a house and you just get a box that probably has most of the materials in it, but they’re all jumbled up and there’s no manual. There’s no little booklet. When you join The Clutch you are getting only what you need, exactly what you need. There is additional content in The Clutch that’s not on the podcast, but also everything is streamlined and organized for you.

So instead of getting the jumble, which just kind of naturally evolved there, you are getting a package with lots of little pouches in it that have exactly what you need to build one part of the house with the exact instructions. And with an expert on call, if there’s any confusion or you have any questions or you want to take it deeper. So it’s just a totally different experience. Listening to the podcast is just like trying to put this together on your own based on a natural accumulation of ideas over years.

When you join The Clutch, you’re getting exactly what you need, organized, condensed, focused with new additional content that’s not even on the podcast and with the structure and support to create what you want. So it’s just a completely different experience. The other thing that obviously you have in The Clutch and not on the podcast is let’s say that you had somehow figured it out and you had listened to the podcast and you had taken notes on how I say to change your thoughts and you were practicing it and it wasn’t working.

Well, what you need is some expert eyes to look at it and tell you why it’s not working, and that’s what you get in The Clutch. There’s nobody who can’t change their thoughts. So if you have distilled everything from the podcast somehow, and even organized it for yourself, if you are the one in 10 billion people who could do that and figure that out and it wasn’t working. That means something’s gone wrong, which is totally normal. We need help when we have a blind spot. When I have a blind spot, I need help.

So when you come in The Clutch you can get that help. You can go to Ask the Coaches or you can hire a one-on-one coach. You can come to a coaching call with me and say, “Hey, here’s what I’ve tried to do. I’m really stuck on this thought. I’ve tried this thought, I’ve tried that thought, I’ve tried that thought, it’s not working, what’s going wrong?” And we can diagnose and troubleshoot for you. Is it that you’re not practicing the thoughts enough? Is it that you picked a thought that’s too far away and you don’t really believe it?

Is it that you picked a thought that has a negative unconscious thought attached to it and so you don’t see that and that’s why it’s not working? We will help you figure it out. So there’s nobody whose brain can’t change. If you’ve tried to practice this on the podcast, it’s not working the way you want it to, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It just means that probably your brain got a little stuck somewhere, and you just need some help to sort that out. That’s what The Clutch offers.

Is The Clutch for neurodiverse women? Yes, absolutely. I don’t know, I can’t say it’s a disproportionate amount. I don’t know exactly what the statistics are for Clutch members in the population, but there are definitely a lot of neurodiverse people in The Clutch. And I think a lot of neurodiverse people are attracted to thought work in general often, for various reasons, we’re questioners, we want to know how and why things work. We are maybe more sensitive in some ways, more aware of racing thoughts sometimes, have more racing thoughts.

There’s a lot of different reasons that people kind of might come to coaching and self-development and cognitive approaches, especially if they’re neurodiverse. So it is something we take account of. There are different ways of interacting with the materials. If there is a call replay and audio, there’s also a transcript. There’s different ways of accessing the materials. If you prefer written, you can get written coaching from Ask the Coaches. If you do much better with one to one conversation then you can have some peer conversation in the Facebook group.

We even have live calls of peer coaches who meet once a week, called The Clutch Coops, which Anna may have talked about. Or you can get written coaching peer support there if you’re someone who likes to talk it out. If you want to work one-to-one with someone, you can, there’s sort of different options available. And then we have some neurodiversity specific trainings. We have a training on organization in ADHD by a coach who specializes in ADHD inside The Clutch. So we have kind of various opportunities for adapting things to you.

And I also think [inaudible] obviously a lot of the trouble and the stress a lot of the kind of self, and there’s stress that comes from being neurodiverse in a kind of neurotypical world that’s from running up against the world. And there’s also just the internalized ableism, the internalized believing that we should be a certain way, be able to work a certain way, be able to function a certain way and we don’t. And so working through that self-criticism and shame is super important and The Clutch obviously helps with that.

Somebody said, I’m engaging in a bunch of self-help lately, just got a new therapist, started talking to a parenting coach. I worry about going overboard with self-help. Could you speak to how this program fits in, complements or supports stuff you may already be doing for self-improvement? Yeah, that’s a great question. There are a lot of people in The Clutch who have a therapist. There are people who talk about the podcast together with their therapist.

They work on something in The Clutch or even with their one-on-one coach in The Clutch, and then they take it back to their therapist. So it’s very common to have other support and also be in The Clutch. And when it comes to other coaching, I think what The Clutch offers is this feminist social conditioning perspective that’s really important to any other work you may be doing. This person has a parenting coach.

The way that people are socialized around parenting is so different based on whether they are perceived to be a mother or perceived to be a father based on their perceived gender. And trying to work through your parenting thoughts without that lens, you’re going to be missing a whole big perspective. What is the socialization around what it takes to be a good mom versus a good dad. Huge, huge piece of the parenting mental drama people have. So I think The Clutch is an amazing accompaniment to anything like that.

And if you think about it with body movement, you might go to Pilates once a week and you also go for a walk two times a week. And you also maybe meet with a trainer once a week to lift weights. Those things aren’t competing. They’re all supporting the overall goal of having more physical fitness or certain kinds of health markers you’re trying to achieve in your life, and they influence each other. The strength training makes the Pilates easier. And then the balance you’re getting from Pilates makes your walking better. It all works together kind of synergistically.

Somebody said, I don’t identify as a feminist, is that a problem? That’s not a problem. I would say that the community is filled with people who are kind of somewhere on two-thirds of that spectrum of maybe they’re actively feminist, maybe if pressed, would say they’re feminist, but don’t think about it that much or they wouldn’t say they’re a feminist, but they’re feminist friendly. They’re not anti-feminist. You’re probably not going to have a good time in The Clutch if you are staunchly anti-feminist.

You can absolutely have concerns about the feminist movement in the United States. It’s obviously been a very kind of whitewash movement in a lot of ways. Historically the feminist movement in the United States has been complicit in white supremacy and has marginalized women of color. So for sure, there’s people who object to the political feminist movement in the US. I don’t think that you’ll have a good time in the group if you don’t think men and women should be politically equal.

If your belief system is men are better and they should have more power then it’s not a place for you. But as long as that’s not what you think, yes, there are people anywhere from very involved, very heavily feminist identifying to not really at all. It’s all about changing our thoughts. So it’s not about, I mean, you just saw me coach someone who was having this issue with her husband and my coaching wasn’t, men are all lazy and stupid and trying to not help and you should hate him. Whatever the stereotype of feminism is. That’s not what my coaching was. It’s not about that.

It’s about understanding what society has taught us, what we’ve absorbed and how to free ourselves from that. And a lot of what people are getting coached on, it’s not gender related at all. Of course, our socialization impacts us in a lot of ways, but people are dropping questions, are getting coached about everything under the sun, their work anxiety, their body image, their relationships, their business they’re working on, why they can’t do the dishes, whatever’s going on with them.

Okay, let’s see if there’s any other questions I didn’t quite get to. I think that’s it. So what I want to do because we have about 10 minutes left is if anybody wants coaching on their decision to join The Clutch. If you’re on the fence and you just want to talk it through. I will absolutely be happy to coach you in a sort of self-empowering for you way. It is not my job to convince anybody to join The Clutch. That’s not how I roll.

But if you want coaching on it, if you kind of know you want to, but you have a thought that’s getting in the way and you’re kind of afraid about it. I’ll coach you about that. If you have a question that’s like, is this included or how does this work, please put that in the Q&A box. Don’t raise your hand for that. But if you’d like some coaching to talk about the thought you have about joining, I will coach you. We’ve got Jenny. You’re up. She declined.

Okay. [Inaudible], your hand is up. So I’m going to be calling on you, if your hands are up for some other reason, take your hand down, please. So I won’t accidentally be calling you and promote you to panelist. Alright, come on Zoom. Here we go. Hi. Wait, let’s unmute you. I need to be able to hear you, there we go.

Female: Okay. So thank you so much for your podcast. It’s so amazing. It’s so incredible. And it’s really touched my heart. And so my question is, is that I think my thing is I am wanting to get back out there with my business and I took time from social media and was dealing with navigating healing from illness and also realizing the roots of that was patriarchy and self-help. So it’s been this really difficult journey. And I still have my work that I was doing privately but I want to get back out there on social media.

So I’m kind of like that part of me is the anxiety of getting back out there, but feeling maybe that The Clutch would help me because I feel a lot of women can relate to this. Instagram and social media, there’s all these pressures of the patriarch and feeling like we have to be perfect and we have to get everything right and all these beauty centers and even if it’s not about the beauty, it’s just that pressure to be perfect.

And so I feel maybe that this program would help me and this community so that I can feel more confident, supported to get myself out there because I didn’t have it before, but now with social media, basically there’s this perfectionist aspect, you have to be perfect. And if you’re not this and that, and you’re not doing all the things then you’ll just fail, because this in social media. And I just think maybe this would help me to kind of overcome those things so I could just get out there. Because what I want to do really is help to empower women. And then I’m like, “Oh, my God, I have this.”

Kara: Yeah, you’ve got to empower yourself first 100%. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s always lots of people who coach, who have corporate jobs or stay at home or whatever. But there are a lot of entrepreneurs too, because obviously there’s so much mindset drama in being an entrepreneur or having a business. And absolutely, I mean I am somebody who firmly believes that business coaching always has to be mindset coaching first. It’s never about the strategy.

Strategies can be helpful, but if your brain is like, “Don’t go out there, you’ll die.” Then it doesn’t matter what the strategy is or how good the plan or template is, you’re not going to do it. So I absolutely think yes, this is something you can work on when you come in, I would recommend. I would pick that after you go through that Feminist Mindset Fix, pick that self-confidence course, working on that self-confidence and bring these kinds of questions to Ask the Coaches or to live coaching.

But absolutely and yes, you are not alone, a lot of people have this. This is part of how we’re socialized and I think one of the things that for a long time, it was actually physically dangerous for women to stand out, to put themselves out there, to not have a man’s protection. We didn’t have the right to have our own bank account or our own money. There’s physical and sexual violence. There’s centuries of socialization around it.

And that’s why this work is so important. If you go into a standard even business coaching thing, even business mindset coaching and no one is talking about why you’ve been trained to think this way for hundreds of years, and why it can feel so scary. You’re just missing a big piece of the picture. So I think absolutely this lens is so important for that. Why do women hold themselves back? Why are we people pleasing? Why do we have impostor syndrome?

It’s not in a vacuum. It’s not just a weird magical mystery. It’s not on our x chromosome. It’s how we were socialized and why. So absolutely, I think that is exactly the kind of thing that you would want to work on.

Female: I really appreciate that because hearing those things in your podcast. And it’s like, oh, my God I’ve been working on transforming those things on myself and I’m like, “Oh, this is just coming from the patriarch.” And I’m just like, “Okay, well there it is.” And that’s what I’m hoping to do is doing the things, shifting those mindset, not just listen to podcasts but being in the program and being able to have support with community and I’m not alone in this.

And maybe being able to ask those questions in the Ask a Coach thing because my brain is having all these things and then I’m just like, but they’re not even from me. So that’s what I’m hoping that I [crosstalk]. And I just feel like this, yeah, again, I appreciate just going on this call. Okay, I’m just going to go for it anyways.

Kara: Yeah, I’m so glad you asked that. That is a great example and I think it is very, we have to, even though the messaging came from outside, we have to change it because it’s in our brains. So it’s not just enough to know it’s there. That doesn’t make it disappear. We have to go in there and really rewire it. Awesome.

Female: Yeah. And just the last thing to say, thank you, is listening to your podcast, I was like, “I could change my thoughts.” This is the first podcast, the first person I could say, “I actually have the option. I don’t have to entertain these thoughts. I can work with them and kind of work up that thought ladder and be able to question my thoughts and be like, “Is this support?” I was like, “Wow.” I’ve never had anything where I’ve listened to something and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I could change my thoughts. I could [crosstalk].”

Kara: I know, it’s the secret to life.

Female: This is amazing. This lady is amazing. What she’s doing is amazing. I just love everything about what you have to offer, so I’m excited about joining, so thank you so much for all the work you’re doing.

Kara: Awesome. You’re welcome. I know, when I first heard that I was like, “Does everybody else know this? Why did no one tell me this? What do you mean I can change these?” It really was like boom, the secret to life. Alright, I’m going to let you go so I can coach one more person. I’m excited for you. I’ll see you in there. Alright, Kelly, you’re up. And then we are going to close it out. Alright, come on Zoom.

Kelly: There we go. I think I got it.

Kara: There we go. Okay, hi, how are you?

Kelly: Hi. My question is, I’m good, how are you?

Kara: I’m good, tell me your question. You’re like, I’ve to get to the point, this lady said to go. Alright, I’m ready.

Kelly: My biggest problem is my anxiety, but mostly my procrastination. And I want to know if this is going to help me mainly with my procrastination and my self-thought and all that?

Kara: Yes, 100% so in the module inside, once you go through the first course, there’s a module on time management organization and there’s specifically stuff in there about procrastination, because procrastination is really an emotional problem. We procrastinate because of the feeling we have about the thing we’re supposed to be doing and how we’re going to think about ourselves. So I won’t try to kind of teach you the whole thing right now, but procrastination is super common in people with high anxiety. Also, common in people who are neurodiverse in different ways.

And so there’s different concrete strategies, but there’s a lot of thought work that has to go on to help you understand why you’re procrastinating and to even figure out. For some neurodiverse people, it’s not even really procrastinating. They’re always going to do it in the last little bit of time and it’s going to come out fine so they have to get comfortable with that and just be like. “Fine, that’s how I work.” And then for other people, they have thoughts about the project or their ability to do it or what they’re going to say to themselves.

So you have to kind of go through and figure out where you are on the spectrum. But that is absolutely something we address directly, and that you can, of course, get help within Ask the Coaches or through the community group. But I was a huge procrastinator before thought work and it’s been a combination of those two things for me. I think if you go back on the podcast it’s my first episode before it was even, when there was a podcast for lawyers, was about procrastination. So it’s an issue near and dear to my heart, The Clutch will help you solve it, yes.

Kelly: Okay. Thank you.

Kara: Awesome. You’re welcome. Alright, my friends, thank you everyone who asked questions. Bye everyone.

Alright, my friends, don’t forget, if that sounded incredible to you and you’re thinking I’ll get to that later. No. No, ma’am, get to it now because you have to join by July 31^st to get access to the whole Feminist Summer School experience, because we are starting in August. So text your email to +1347 934 8861. Again text your email to +1347 934 8861. There’s no code word, you’ll just get a link. Or go to unfuckyourbrain.com/summer. Let’s make August the best part of summer and the best summer you’ve had yet. Let’s go, you all. I’ll see you there.