Podcast: Women vs. Patriarchy: Breaking Free for Stronger Mental Health

Kara Loewentheil, J.D., is a Master Certified Life Coach, founder of The School of New Feminist Thought, and host of the internationally top-ranked podcast UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone (50 million downloads and counting!).

Her first book, Take Back Your Brain: How A Sexist Society Gets in Your Head – and How to Get It Out (Penguin Life May 2024) has been called a “galvanizing debut” by Publisher’s Weekly, chosen as a “must-read” by the Next Big Ideas Book Club for May 2024, and praised by NYT-bestselling authors including Mel Robbins, Elise Loehnen, Dr. Marisa Franco, and Tori Dunlap.

A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Kara did what every Ivy League lawyer should do: Quit a prestigious academic career to become a life coach! Eight years after she stepped down as director of a think tank at Columbia Law School, she has created a seven-figure business, taught millions of women how to identify the ways that sexist socialization impacts their brains, and helped women all over the world rewire their thought patterns to liberate themselves from the inside out.

Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can’t imagine life without.

To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast where experts share experiences and the latest thinking on mental health and psychology. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. I’m your host Gabe Howard. Calling into the show today we have Kara Loewentheil, JD. Kara is a master certified life coach, founder of the School of New Feminist Thought, and host of the internationally top ranked podcast, UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone. Her latest book, “Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head – and How to Get It Out” is out now. Kara, welcome to the podcast.

Kara Loewentheil: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Gabe Howard: I am I am super excited to have you here today, and I, I have I have so many questions, and I want to let our listeners know that the questions were informed largely by our producer, Lisa Kiner, who almost never gets a shout out on this show. But she was really instrumental in helping me discuss this in a in a reasonable way. So, Lisa, thank you. And, Kara, I did my best to prepare for this, but please don’t hesitate to be like, dude, no, no.

Kara Loewentheil: Okay. Okay. I feel forewarned. I’m ready.

Gabe Howard: All right, here we go. My first question is, you say that patriarchal social conditioning constrains women’s behavior. Can you give us some examples of this in the workplace?

Kara Loewentheil: Yes, absolutely. So the impact of patriarchy, and I often want to just start with like what do I mean when I say patriarchy? Because people hear that word, they have a lot of different ideas or beliefs about what that means, or they aren’t even really sure what it means. So by that, we just mean a society that was, for the most part, created and built by men and therefore inherently has some sort of biases in favor of men. Just think about the fact that we sort of have to talk about maternity leave. And then should fathers also have leave? Like if a society had been created by people who gave birth, probably that would be more baked into our kind of norms in the workplace, let’s say. Right. So, you know, believing in a patriarchy doesn’t mean that you think every man is bad. I’m engaged to a man myself. It doesn’t mean that you hate men. Nothing like that, right? It just means that the society was kind of the default. Assumptions of things were basically created by men. And so the there are obvious there are sort of external ways that that influences women in the workforce. For example, maybe there’s not a good maternity leave policy. Or maybe there’s a maternity leave policy, but not a paternity leave policy. So like, you can take off time if you’re birthing, but you’re if you’re married to a man, they can’t get time off.

Kara Loewentheil: So you have to deal with everything yourself at home, which is obviously very difficult after you’ve given birth or there are you know, there’s a wage gap in your workplace or in your industry where men make more than women for the same job. So there are these external constraints. But what I really focus on in my work is the internalized constraints, which is that we learn what to think about ourselves from society around us. So if a society kind of has certain beliefs about what men are like and what women are like, those get absorbed into our brains and they don’t come out in our own heads like there’s some external announcer voice. They just sound like our thoughts. So you don’t hear in your brain like the news anchor saying, CEOs debate. Can women really have to the seat be in the C-suite while they have kids. Like, then you would know it was an external message. What you hear is just your own voice telling you that when you’re with your kids, you’re supposed you should be working. And when you’re working, you should be with your kids and you’re not handling it well, and you’re not balancing it well, and you’re a bad mom and a bad boss, and yet you can’t do it. All right. And so that is how the patriarchy kind of impacts our brains. So we end up with a kind of very toxic combo of some external constraints in the workplace, and then a lot of internal constraints that we’re bringing with us.

Gabe Howard: As you were talking, I was thinking about my wife. My wife has an MBA. She’s a director for the federal government. They literally call her Director Howard. I mean, she has a really high powered job, but whenever I say, oh, my wife can’t cook or clean, she immediately gets defensive. She’s like, well, I can too. Now, listen, I she cannot, I can’t, I cannot I cannot be more clear that the woman cannot cook or clean. But here’s the thing. There is no man in the world with an MBA, a director level job with the kind of power that she has and the kind of success that she has and the kind of respect that she garners just walking in a room who gives a shit that they can’t cook or clean. Only she cares about this. Is that an example of this internalized messaging where she believes that this is a skill that she should have, even though it’s not one that she even needs?

Kara Loewentheil: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, women are socialized to believe that those sorts of kind of domestic related skills, right? Like cooking, cleaning. And then for a lot of women also having children, being a mother, being partnered at all, being married, that these are all must haves. Right? We are now in a sort of a cultural moment where women are encouraged in most communities and places to have careers. Right. It’s not my grandmother’s generation or my grandmother, people would just just assumed that she would quit after teaching for a year or two as soon as she got married and had babies, which is what happened. But we still get the message that your career is fine and that’s great. And it’s great that you’re high powered and it’s great that you’re important, but that sort of isn’t enough, right? If you have a man who’s a director in the federal government or a director at a bank or whatever, and he’s not partnered or he can’t cook or he can’t clean, nobody would even ask him if he could cook or clean in the first place.

Gabe Howard: That’s also a really good point. I did not even think of that one. Who? Nobody has ever asked me if I can cook or clean and I can.

Kara Loewentheil: Right, right. There you go. I mean, patriarchy is bad for everybody.

Gabe Howard: Yes.

Kara Loewentheil: You don’t get recognized for what you can do. So nobody would ask. And if he was single, people would assume he was having the time of his life. But if a high powered woman is single, we assume it’s like, oh, something’s gone wrong. She’s, you know, it’s sad. So I think your wife hasn’t I mean, I can’t speak for your wife, but it’s common for women to have, yes, internalize those those beliefs. I call this the brain gap, which is this gap between how women want to think and feel, usually with a more kind of feminist, egalitarian point of view that they maybe learned a little bit later in life, and that how they actually think and feel, which is often a thought pattern that they learned very young and that has been kind of internalized for a long time. And then you get this gap where I’m sure that your wife says to herself, why do I even care? I shouldn’t even care about this. But nevertheless, of course, she feels defensive because society has socialized women to feel ashamed if they can’t live up to any aspect of traditional femininity, even while they’re also now supposed to live into all these aspects of traditional masculinity in terms of work, career, ambition and accomplishment.

Gabe Howard: I love the concept of brain gap but here’s my question, how do we overcome it?

Kara Loewentheil: Yeah. So the way we close any brain gap is changing the way we think. And as somebody who went to a lot of talk therapy and got into yoga and meditation, just like tried all the different things. I felt very aware of my problematic thought patterns. But there I didn’t really have any tools for changing them. Right. And that was true on a personal level and on this kind of political level or more kind of social level. And so I think what we have to do is actually literally rewire our brains to think a new way.

Kara Loewentheil: And what people have heard of is like positive thinking or affirmations. You know, listen, if those work for you, that’s great. I’m not knocking them necessarily, but they don’t work for a lot of people. And there’s actually at least one study showing that positive thinking or affirmations can actually make you feel worse if you don’t believe them, because it just highlights how far you are from, like, what you want to believe. And in the book I teach this technique called the 10% Less Shitty Thought because that’s what we’re going for, right? If you think about thought pattern change the way you would think about going to physical therapy or lifting at the gym, some kind of physical pattern you were trying to change. You can’t just say to yourself, well, I want to be someone who deadlifts 400 pounds, so I’m just going to go in the gym and try to pick up 400 pounds, right? You have to build that strength and that capacity step by step. And the same is true for your brain. It’s not technically a muscle, but your brain has literal little chemical neuronal pathways that are established in your brain with your current thoughts.

Kara Loewentheil: So just think a new way to close that brain gap. You have to build a new little bridge across the gap, thought by thought. And to do that, we’ve really got to start with something 10% less shitty. So an example I often use is when I did a lot of work on my body image. If you think that your body is disgusting because it doesn’t match what society has told you, it needs to, you really can’t go straight to thinking my body is a goddess. And actually in the book I describe a hilarious experiment. I did that a body coach told me to do about this that involved being naked in a circle of candles, and that didn’t work, as it turns out. But what did work was the thought, this is a human stomach. I have a human stomach. And practicing that thought over and over again until that became my default, thought about my stomach and then changing it a little bit more. So if you go 10% less shitty each time, you can actually get to some of those positive thoughts you’d like to believe, but you’re actually building your way there. You’re not just trying to tell a transport to having a different brain.

Gabe Howard: As I was listening to you speak, I heard you hitting on these great big concepts. And I. I think many people who understand feminism understand the concepts like rape culture and wage gap. But what are some of the more subtle forms of sexism that fly under the radar that are absolutely impacting this internal monologue? But we don’t even notice them as sexism.

Kara Loewentheil: Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on who’s doing the noticing. So I think that sort of with a lot of women I meet it’s not so much that they don’t notice sexism, it’s that they don’t see the connection between the sexism and their own thoughts. So they do for sure. Notice that, for instance, at Thanksgiving, their grandma keeps asking them if they’re dating someone and is it serious? And when are they? When are they gonna have a baby? But their brother, who is only two years younger or older, you know, nobody ever asks him about it. Or if they just say like, oh, you’re having a good time. It’s fun to be young and single, right? So it’s like women notice that they notice that sexist. Or they at least notice that seems unfair. But what they don’t really realize is that then their internal dialog about like, well, all my friends are married and I’m not married, and what’s wrong with me? And why am I having so much trouble with this, and what am I doing wrong in dating and blah blah blah blah blah that that is all part of that same socialization they’ve gotten.

Sponsor Break

Gabe Howard: And we’re back with Kara Loewentheil, author of the new book, “Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head – and How to Get It Out.”

Kara Loewentheil: I mean, if you think about kind of the social conversation around women, there’s sort of nothing in a woman’s life that society assumes she knows how to do by herself. And I don’t think that, like, that’s always recognized. But if you just think about all the content that is aimed at women about like, what time should you get up and what should your morning routine look like, and what should your skincare routine look like? And you probably don’t know how to take care of your own hair or what that should look like. So here’s a chart for what you’re, what shape face you have and what your hair should look like based on your face. And then. Of course, you don’t know how to get dressed because you don’t know what your. The correct clothing is for your body type and what you’re supposed to be trying to look like, and how to be sexy but professional and not too sexy, but not too professional.

Kara Loewentheil: Don’t be too frigid. I mean, it’s like endless. So I think that women don’t pick up on the fact that they just go through their days and they’re bombarded from society and advertising and social media with content all the time, especially in the current media ecosystem. That just assumes that they, like, cannot even know what to feed themselves, how to dress themselves, how to parent, how to show up at work. You should write emails this way. Don’t use too much exclamation points. Here’s what to do if you’re codependent in the office. It’s like there’s just a constant assumption that you’re doing everything wrong. And I think most women internalize that and they do think they’re doing everything wrong, but they don’t realize that that is a message that they’ve absorbed.

Gabe Howard: I was really intrigued by what you said, the concept that society doesn’t believe that women can do anything by themselves that they constantly need help, reassurance, guidance. And I can only imagine that what that kind of micromanaging would do to a person. I’ve been micromanaged, but. But not by society. Society doesn’t tell Gabe that he can’t do stuff unless they know that I live with bipolar disorder, and then I get closer to understanding it. But I’m still a white male, so I have privilege, even in the stigma and discrimination of living with bipolar disorder. But I have to say, women seem to tolerate it. And do they tolerate it for survival? Or do they tolerate it because there’s just nothing they can do about it because of the power dynamics? How does that all shift out?

Kara Loewentheil: Well the question is like say it to whom. Right. I mean part of what I’m talking about are like these big picture social trends that sort of one person can try to opt out of. But it’s not like, you know, I don’t have a direct line to the editor at Conde Nast who can who’s going to change all the articles in the online version of whatever magazine? It’s really just about trying to figure out a way to navigate a society that does always assume that you need to be told what to do, and you’re doing things wrong. Creating the antidote to that, which is some centering and grounding and faith in yourself and your own decisions. And that only comes from changing the way you think about yourself. I mean, most women are encouraged to be their own, you know, frenemy at best, often their own adversary constantly evaluating, critiquing and judging themselves. You talked about your wife feeling like there’s some voice in your wife’s brain about, probably about cooking and cleaning, and why it matters if her husband thinks she can cook and clean. Women, are just such an object of like evaluation and scrutiny that we then do that to ourselves. And so I think the way that we can change those social norms is to change our relationships with ourselves, so that when our self-talk changes and the way that we talk to ourselves changes, we will be less inclined to tolerate it from bosses or partners or eventually, I think, from society.

Gabe Howard: I really appreciated your example of, of of what would you call it?

Kara Loewentheil: 10% less shitty thought. Yeah.

Gabe Howard: 10% less shitty thoughts, I love that. Do you have other examples for the people listening to try to change this internal dialog?

Kara Loewentheil: Yeah, I think you can. One, t here’s sort of some not exactly templates, but like patterns that tend to work in changing thoughts. So let’s say for instance, you think that you are bad at your job in some way. Your brain will have a lot of evidence about that, right? Here’s all the reasons. Let’s say you’re a lawyer and your brain says, well, you know, you take too long and you last month you made that error in that motion or you lost this case or whatever. You’ve been socialized to believe that you’re not good enough, you don’t measure up, you’re not as smart. And now your brain is like, okay, got it. That’s the that’s our belief. Here’s all the evidence. So One kind of little template you can use is just the simple phrasing of like, it’s possible to be a good lawyer even if you blank. So whatever that evidence is, it’s possible to be a good lawyer even if you lose a case. It’s possible to be a good lawyer, even if you make a mistake. But that works for anything. You yell at your kids and your brain tells you that you are a bad mom, or a bad dad.

Kara Loewentheil: It’s possible to be a good dad, even if you sometimes yell at your kids, or even good dads sometimes yell at their kids, right? So that’s sort of that if/even or if/then is sort of helps you contextualize. Your brain wants to hyper focus on all the things you’re doing wrong in any given area. But the reality is, unless you’re like for the vast, vast majority of people, you’re doing some stuff that’s not as great and also some stuff that’s fine and doing well and is good. And so even just sort of giving your brain the direction of like, we’re not only looking at the negative thing, we’re going to at least bring in that I do some other stuff well, will help kind of balance it out. So that, for instance, is a framework you can use for almost any area of your life where your brain tells you that you’re bad. I’m a bad wife, I’m a bad partner, I’m a bad mom, I’m a bad boss. I’m a bad lawyer, doctor, architect, whatever.

Gabe Howard: I think sometimes these internalized messages are so strong, though you don’t realize that you’re doing or thinking anything that’s negative to you.

Kara Loewentheil: Yep.

Gabe Howard: In fact, when we go to the example of can women have it all? That’s that’s one that I read about a lot in preparation for this show. No man is ever questioned on whether they can have a job. And children,

Kara Loewentheil: Yep.

Gabe Howard: Women are constantly questioned about whether they can have a job or children. And when we talk about these internalized messaging, and I have to imagine just just from the women in my own life that they feel very guilty about this, and then they get pressure from the older generation, like my mom’s generation and my grandmother’s generation, who were both stay at home moms. My my sister commented before that she feels guilty for going to work. But her husband, he’s like, I need a break. I’m so thankful I have a job. And it’s just it’s that shift. So my specific question is, in this long and winding path is my sister is never going to realize that that thinking is wrong. She sees it as a protective factor, so she’s not even trying to correct it. What do you say to people who don’t realize that this is hurting them?

Kara Loewentheil: Well, I’m all about consent, so I wouldn’t try to change your sister’s thought if she doesn’t want it changed.

Gabe Howard: Fair.

Kara Loewentheil: But.

Gabe Howard: Fair. Fair enough.

Kara Loewentheil: But I think a lot of women don’t realize it because they haven’t had those connections illuminated for them between what society tells you and then what the way your brain is thinking, because they sound very different. So people often don’t come to coaching or don’t pick up the book or don’t listen the podcast because they’re like, oh, I know I have something called The Brain Gap, and I need to figure out how to close it, right? Like, that’s not what happens. What happens is they feel bad. They’re like, I feel anxious and guilty all the time. Maybe there’s a podcast I can listen to, right? I mean, it’s just that negative emotion is what’s driving them to seek some relief, get some help. They want to feel more confident. They want to feel less anxious. They want to feel less guilty, whatever it is. And then they start to learn how to pay attention to it. So, I mean, a lot of coaching work, just like forms of therapy and other kind of internal work, your emotions are really the signal to you about what’s going on.

Kara Loewentheil: Like, I feel guilty all the time, right? I feel guilty that I’m working. And then that, you know, if you are someone who is driven to, like, seek out some sort of help or support with that, that’s when you can start to unpack it like, well, why do you feel guilty? Oh, because I have the thought that I’m a bad mom. Okay, well, when you come into my world and we teach you how your brain works, you start to be able to see like, oh, my feelings are coming from the way that I’m thinking. And the way I’m thinking is not just an objective observation of the world. It’s been shaped by lots of things my upbringing, my genetics, society. And now I can start to have tools to try to understand what I’m thinking and change it. But absolutely, most people are just aware I feel like shit about one or more areas of my life, and maybe there’s something out there that would help.

Gabe Howard: I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kara. We’re we’re nearing the end of the show, and I always like to ask an open question to make sure that my guests get everything out that they want. Is there any question that you would literally like to ask yourself and answer for our audience to make sure that they have all the takeaways they need?

Kara Loewentheil: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a question, but I’ll just say, I think You listening? Whoever you are are, like, capable of so much more than you think you are capable of. Whatever that means. It doesn’t necessarily mean some huge external accomplishment. It might just mean a different relationship with yourself, a different way of being, a different feeling from your day to day. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change, and your brain can change at any age. So you are never too old or too stuck in your thought patterns to work on changing them on purpose and the way your brain is now. You really can’t imagine how much better your life and your relationship with yourself can be if you do that work. And I don’t care if you were listening to this and you were 95 years old. I have people in their 80s in my membership like it is never it isn’t. You are never too old. It is never too ingrained. So like, don’t waste that incredible potential that the brain has to change. Just taking control of 10% of your brain is 100% improvement in your life.

Gabe Howard: Kara, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you and where can folks get your book, “Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head – and How to Get It Out.”

Kara Loewentheil: You can find my book anywhere books are sold and you can find me at, honestly, the easiest place is TakeBackYourBrainBook.com because my last name is a real pain to spell and Google. So, TakeBackYourBrainBook.com or Google the book, “Take Back Your Brain” and you will find me.

Gabe Howard: Kara, thank you so much for being here.

Kara Loewentheil: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Gabe Howard: You’re very welcome, Kara. And I want to give a great big thank you to all of our listeners. My name is Gabe Howard, and I’m an award winning public speaker who could be available for your next event. I also wrote the book “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which is on Amazon. However, you can grab a signed copy with free show swag or learn more about me by heading over to gabehoward.com. You can also follow me on TikTok and Instagram @AskABipolar. And hey, can you do me a favor? Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free. And hey, while you’re doing favors, recommend the show to people. Sharing the show with the people you know is how we grow. I will see everybody next time on Inside Mental Health.

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