The Psychology Behind Your Fear of Speaking English with @karaloewentheilcoaching

Hi everyone, it's Hadar. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I am interviewing a good friend and an incredible human, and I'm so excited about this conversation. I'm actually here at her studio in New York City, and her name is Cara Lowenthal. And Cara, thank you so much for having me here in your studio and allowing me to share this conversation with my audience. I'm so excited about this conversation and everything that you have to share. Thank you so much for having me. share with my audience. But for those who don't know you, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Brag about yourself like you always say.

Of course. Please. My name is Cara Lowenthal. I am a former women's rights lawyer who quit running an Ivy League think tank to become a life coach, as one does. That was a decade ago, and now I'm a master certified coach. I'm the author of Take Back Your Brain, which was a New York Times bestseller. We've got— it's out in the US, in the UK. There's a Spanish language version now. And I'm the host of Unfuck Your Brain, which is one of the top-ranked podcasts globally. And I focus on teaching women how to change the thoughts that society has taught them to think over the years in order to tell the truth about how they feel, ask for what they want, speak up, and have more confidence.

I love it. So I actually read your book, or to be honest, I listened to it.

Check, counts as reading.

Highly recommend.

Counts as reading.

Highly recommend because the way you read it is so good. So I recommend for people to either get the book, read it, or listen to the audiobook. But the first question I have for you is, why did you decide to write this book?

Well, I actually always just sort of assumed I would write a book. I was raised in a family of readers. My fathers were a book dealer. I thought I was going to be an English professor when I was younger. So I think I always thought that I would write a book. But I wrote this specific book because I felt like so much of the self-help books that are out there could have been like a pamphlet, basically. There's like 3 points. They're all in the introduction. And then it's just like regurgitating them over and over again. As a previously voracious consumer of self-help, I often maybe got some insight into, like, what the problem was, but I had no idea how to fix it. Or the books would tell me exactly what to do, but would not give me anything if I couldn't do that or didn't want to do that, right? So it was either like, here's a how-to, as if you have no human psychology that might get in the way, or here's insight into your human psychology and nothing to do with it. And so I really wanted to write a book that has both of those things. So Take Back Your Brain is really comprehensive and it is zero fluff. And so it teaches you why and how your brain works the way it does, both from an evolutionary biology perspective and from a socialization perspective, like how society teaches you to think if you're socialized as a woman. It teaches you concrete techniques for changing your thoughts, and then it goes through kind of the major areas of women's lives and teaches you how to deprogram or reprogram yourself in those areas to have more confidence, speak up more, have a better, you know, sense of your self-worth, and be able to really create the outcomes that you want in your life. Because at the very bottom line, I think what society does to women is detach them from their own authority in their own lives and kind of alienate them from themselves. Yeah. And so this book helps you Reconnect those pieces.

So a big part of the book is your story as well and what has led you to become a life coach to begin with and then to coach coaches. And my question is, like, why did you decide to become a life coach? And how has thought work changed you? Because a lot of the work that we do in the confidence and fluency journey is to understand how you think and to recognize the things that are limiting you and preventing you from being who you can be in a second language. So why did you decide to do this work?

Yeah. So I was in a place that most of my clients are in. So I have recently launched a coach certification, but for the last 10 years, I've just been coaching women, laypeople, civilians, women who are not coaches. And that's still the primary thing I do. And I had, like many of them, you know, gotten all the brass rings, jumped through all the hoops. Went to Yale. I went to Harvard Law School. I clerked on a federal appeals court. I had a prestigious job. I was on the path to becoming a law professor. And at every stage, I thought, well, at the next accomplishment, I'm going to feel better. Right? Like, I'm going to not feel like an impostor, not feel like a fraud. I'm going to finally feel like I know what I'm doing. Mm-hmm. First, it's if I get into a good enough college. Then it's if I get into a good enough law school. Then it's if— well, if I get a clerkship, because very few people get federal clerkships. Then it's like, okay, if I get a fellowship. Okay, I got the one litigation fellowship in my area in the country the year I graduated— the year I finished clerking. And then it's like, okay, well, if I was in— right? It just kept going. Yeah. And the same thing in other areas of my life. Okay, well, if I had a boyfriend. Well, okay, if we were living together. Well, okay, if we were engaged, right? If I lost 10 pounds. Okay, maybe if I lost 20 pounds. Maybe if— right? It's just endless. So I was on this kind of endless cycle of hustling for my worth, trying to achieve my way into feeling better. And spoiler alert, that does not work. And so I finally hit a wall, and I started looking for a solution. And first I worked with a coach. I worked with both kinds of coaches that kind of parallel the kind of self-help books I talked about. Like, first I worked with a coach who was a behavioralism coach, who was just like, well, you just don't do the things that you don't— you shouldn't do, and then you punish yourself if you do them. Oh, of course. And then you reward yourself if you do the good things. And I was like, but I'm not a toddler or a dog. So I know that I could just do what I want anyway. So that didn't work. And then I did some coaching that was much more like, you know, in touch with your emotions and your thinking. That was helpful. But then it was sort of like my experience in therapy, which is like, great, I understand what my problem is now, but what am I doing? And then I found the kind of kernel of what I teach now, the part of it that was sort of based on cognitive behavioral psychology. And just using that without even all of the socialization lens that I have now, just using that was so powerful for me. Because I don't know about you, but, like, I was 33 before I found out that not all my thoughts were true. I was really under the impression they were. And—

Exactly. Like, there's a line in your book that, like, you say it so well, is like, not every thought you think is true. And— But

that was, like, mind-blowing. No one had told me that, right? Much less no one had told me that I could— decide what to think on purpose, right? These were all— when I learned, like, those few basic things, like, your thoughts cause your feelings, and those cause your actions, your thoughts aren't all true, and you can change what you think, I was just like, does everybody else know this? Which, obviously not, if you look at the world. Yeah. But, like, why didn't I learn this in kindergarten, right? So that was so mind-blowing and so powerful. And after I had used that work on myself for about a year, I just felt like, It's not that I didn't care about my previous career. Like, I cared a lot about women's rights and reproductive rights. I've been a professional feminist my whole life. But the law as the vehicle, I really didn't have a passion for. Yeah. I wasn't intellectually that intrigued by it. And I'm endlessly fascinated by— my lifelong special interest is, like, people's brains, how they think, you know, and that kind of unbridgeable— I'm always trying to bridge that unbridgeable gap, which is, like, What is another person's internal experience? How can we ever possibly know it?

Yeah. So if we dive a little deeper into that work, like, there's one thing that you talk about, which is the brain gap, like, the experience between, oh, like, I know I should feel confident or fluent or, you know, communicate what I think. And then there is the part in you that feels like, oh, you're not good enough, or you're not fluent enough, or you're gonna make mistakes. And usually when you live within that gap, it makes you actually not do all the things that you wanna do and makes you freeze. It makes it like— how do you talk about it, and how do you coach people through this?

Yeah. So the way I think about the brain gap is there's a bunch of lessons, of thoughts, basically, you're taught to think before you're conscious about it. And so those might be around gender. Those might be around fluency and speaking. Those might be around who sounds intelligent and who doesn't, right? Who has respect and hierarchy in a society and who doesn't? And so that might be based on gender, on race, on background, on fluency in language, whatever it is. And that stuff is preconscious, like preverbal. You're learning it very young. And then it's getting enforced, reinforced your whole life— your family, your school, your society, what you see on TV, all of that, right? Then many of us, we get older. Maybe we go to college. Maybe we discover feminism or equality or justice. Maybe we get some therapy, whatever. And now we have a set of conscious thoughts that are like, well, I deserve to be here and take up space. Or I don't need to be married to feel good about myself. Or what's important is that I communicate. It's okay if I have an accent. Or, right, these thoughts that we would like to believe, but they're no competition for these earlier thoughts. And what most people do is they just try to, like, think that new thought harder, right? Or, like, or they shame themselves and they're like, well, I know I shouldn't feel this way. I should be willing to speak even if I feel scared. I should know that I'm smart even if I have an accent. I should know this. But they don't feel that. Yeah. And I think people misdiagnose that. They talk about it, and this is why they're stuck, is they talk about it as, like, Well, I know this, or I believe this, but I feel this. That's not really what's happening. What's happening is you have 2 beliefs, they're contradictory, and the earlier ones are stronger. And so a lot of my work is helping women actually change their thoughts and bridge those gaps using something called the thought ladder, which I teach in the book. Because a lot of self-help is just like, okay, well, we've given you a better thought. So now that's your new thought, right?

Exactly. Right.

Or it's like—

How do you change it? Right. It's like manifesting. Okay, I'm just gonna switch.

Yeah, right. Or it's like manifesting or affirmations or like keeping your vibrations high, Whatever that means. And no one is really teaching you, how do you do the, like, kind of daily, somewhat of a grind work of actually rewiring your brain to think a different way?

Yeah. And so my question to you, like, a lot of my students, one of the things— like, 2 things that they're scared of the most. Like, one thing is making mistakes and, you know, like, being judged. And the other one is not understanding someone else. And I think these 2 thoughts, like, they usually just create Fear, fear around this or around that. Can you talk to me a little bit more about fear and what it actually is and why it does all the things that it does? Fear and maybe even shame, right? Because these are 2 strong feelings that people feel when speak— when speaking in general, you know, like not just in a second language. I think—

Those are both, I think, perfectionism, right? I can't make a mistake, and if I'm not understood, it's just another version of if it doesn't go perfectly,

right? Right.

Because like Being a human who has to communicate with other humans is a process of sometimes— I mean, I communicate with my husband. We're both native English speakers. We often don't understand what the other person's saying. Right, right.

And we don't think about it because we always assume that the problem is us and the problem is English.

Yeah, right. And because I don't have that, right, because I don't have that thought when I miscommunicate with my husband, it's just like, oh, I need to say it again. I need to say it a different way. I need to ask him what he really meant. It's like not a crisis. But if you have the belief that because of your accent or because of your fluency, you can't communicate, then your brain interprets any miscommunication as a danger. Yeah. Right? And that sets off your threat response. So the part of your brain called the amygdala is the part of your brain that screens for danger, essentially, right? It's the part of your brain that controls your stress response. And so your brain— we all are still here because our ancestors' brains were constantly scanning for danger. So it's a very powerful part of your brain. And when you teach your brain to fixate on something as a danger, that is all your brain pays attention to. So that happens with gender socialization, right? Women are socialized that what other people think of them is the most important thing about them. So they are hyper-aware of it, right? And if you are—

Say that again for people who might've missed it.

Women are socialized to believe that what other people think about them is the most important thing about them. And so they are constantly scanning in every situation to see what other people might be thinking about them.

Right. So you're like, sometimes you're not even aware of what you want or what you think because— Because you're just thinking through the lens of what they are thinking or what they want you to think.

And if you develop a story about yourself that's like, well, an accent is a problem, or I can't communicate well, or I'm not fluent, people think I'm stupid when I try to speak English, whatever it is, if you've identified that as a threat, right, a threat to your belonging, a threat to your social acceptance, a threat to your professional ambitions, whatever it is, your brain cannot help but be obsessed with it, right? And so part of where people get stuck is They've unconsciously taught their brain what to fixate on, then they're like yelling at their brain for fixating on it, right? Mm-hmm. And your brain's like, man, you gave me these instructions. Like, you told me this was life or death, so I am gonna fixate on it, right? The only way to change that is to change the thoughts and process the emotions so that you are able to basically disconnect in your brain the thing, whatever it is, making a grammatical mistake, having an accent, whatever, from the fear of death, which sounds dramatic, but that's really what your brain is doing, right? Yeah. And especially when it comes to things like language fluency, communication, social acceptance, right? Humans evolved in small tribes of hunter-gatherers, and social cohesion was the matter of life or death. If you're a little tribe of 30 people in the Amazon decides that you're a fucking pain in the ass and they don't want to feed you anymore, that's it. You are dead, right? And so now that's not the case, but our Our brains are very old. And so I think that probably one of the reasons that people have this kind of drama so much around speaking and language and fluency is it's hitting at that, right? Especially if you are living in a place where you're a non-native speaker, so you are trying to integrate and assimilate into the community. And this is this, like, othering in your mind that makes you different. And so your brain is going to be hypervigilant about that. And there's no way to— you can't get good enough at the language to solve that. You have to, like, both get better at the language if that's the work you're doing, but also you got to take the fear down by changing your thoughts about why it's such a disaster if you make a mistake, or how one miscommunication is the end of your career, like all those kinds of thoughts.

And I think both of them are equally important. And usually in conventional learning, and I talk a lot about it with my audiences, that the focus is just the language, the linguistic part, and not the behavioral part or the thinking part, right? And I think that is Because it doesn't matter how well you know the language, if you show up to a conversation and that kicks off, right, like, and the fear, and then you wouldn't say a word.

And that's true of native speakers, right? You can be a native speaker, like, and but if your thought is, if I say the wrong thing in this meeting, I'll never get promoted, and then I'm gonna die on the street, you won't talk in the meeting even though you're a native speaker, right? So it's like not just— right, it's not, it's not the fluency in and of itself. And then you meet some people who are very confident who aren't fluent at all, who are bouncing around talking all the time, right? Like, the difference is their thoughts about it.

And also, this makes me think that there isn't a point where you're like, okay, I'm done, I'm fluent. I'm like, because this work is like constant work. Like, we do it in our native language as well. How do we show up? How do we communicate? And I think like we just need to normalize experiencing that fear, but also having the tools to manage them so it wouldn't stop us from saying what we want or doing what we need.

Yeah. And nobody becomes a perfect communicator. Like, I don't understand half of what my 12-year-old, 13-year-old stepdaughter is saying, right? Because they were like— they have their own slang, that community, now. And like, I'm not going to totally understand it. But she and I have to try to communicate anyway. Like, there's no such thing as a sort of universal adapter or something for communication. And I'm sure that what you see is like, whatever our brain has decided is our problem, Everything— it runs everything through that, right? Yes. Yeah. That's now the explanation for everything that's wrong with us. Right. So, like, before I did all my body image work, it was my weight. And so every— that was the problem with everything, right? If I'm not advancing in my career, if I feel rejected at a party, if I don't get a second date, if my parents are upset about something, whatever, it's all running through that. That's my explanation for everything. That's the problem. And I'm sure that that happens with people who have identified accent or fluency as, like, their problem. Now everything's running through that. That's why I'm not getting promoted. That's why my kids are disrespecting me. That's why I haven't made enough friends. That's why I'm getting divorced, whatever it is.

Yeah, exactly. So can you teach us the thought ladders as a tool to move away from having that belief to a different place?

Yeah, I can give you the short version of the thought ladder. The long version is in the book.

The long version is in the book.

You got to practice. Well, it just takes practice, and also it's incredibly personalized. You have to check each thought with Right. But here's the basic premise is, um, a kind of manifesting or affirmation or whatever coach is just going to tell you, like, okay, just visualize yourself perfectly fluent, right? Like,

just imagine yourself walking into a room, speaking fluently, everyone listening to you.

Just seeing hearts in front of you. Yeah. You orate like Caesar, everybody falls at your feet, right? Just imagine that. Okay, okay, that's how it works. If that works for you, great. That never worked for me. So the Thought Ladder, the idea is you take what you would like to believe. We do still want to have that, like, goal of where we're trying to get to. So maybe what you'd like to believe is, I speak fluently and I have no trouble communicating. Okay, that's your goal thought. But then we got to pay attention to where we actually are, right? Most people don't want to pay any attention to their actual current negative thought. They just want to skip ahead to the part where they feel great. So we need to find out what is your actual thought. If right now your actual thought is, people don't understand me when I talk. Mm-hmm. And you're trying to believe, I'm an incredible communicator, that is way too far. Your brain is not going to make that jump. You can say those words to yourself. Like, I could say the words to myself, the lizard people run us all, right? Like, I can say any words I want in my brain, but when I say that sentence, nothing happens in my body.

And that's the gap, right?

That's— yeah.

The brain gap, like, between— That's a version of the brain gap.

A body— yeah. I mean, I would— yes, that's the— some— that is the— your body is the compass that tells you if you believe something, right? So So if you say a thought to yourself like, I'm an incredible communicator, and you feel nothing, or you feel worse, right? There's some studies showing that when you try to believe something that's too far from what you believe, you actually feel worse because you just are aware of how big that gap is. Right. So the thought ladder is, how do we get from here, people don't understand me when I talk, to here, I'm an amazing communicator? We have to build little rungs on this ladder. So what I usually say is we're looking for the 10% less shitty thought. Can I curse on this?

Yeah, 100%.

10% less shitty thought. So this thought is not gonna maybe make you feel great. You may not even feel good. You're just looking for like 10% less shitty. So if when you think, no one— people don't understand me when I communicate, you feel at a 15 on the shittiness scale, whatever, I'm just making that up, you might be looking for a thought that's like, sometimes people understand what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And that now you feel that I can— instead of 15 on the shittiness scale, right? But you have to feel it in your body. If you feel a little lighter, a little relief, a little less bad, great. Stop. That's the thought. And then you have to actually literally practice that thought. The other place that people— you know, the 2 places that thought work or cognitive change fail are either you're trying to believe a thought that you don't actually believe at all, so there's no emotional payoff, so your brain doesn't learn anything, or you did find a good thought and then you never practiced. You were like, great, I found it.

Right.

You need to practice it.

So how do you practice it?

Literally say it to yourself. Like, set an alarm on your phone that reminds you to think it. Put a Post-it note on your mirror. Read it out loud. Make it your password so you have to type it. Like, write it out 100 times. You literally— it's just like saying to yourself, okay, I understand theoretically how to do a deadlift. Now I don't need to do one and I'll still be strong. No, you have to go to the gym and do it. And you can't go from nothing to a 400-pound deadlift, right?

Right.

So you literally have to practice. When you think about your thought patterns, A thought is not a mystical thing that descends. It's literally little neurons connecting, right? So if we want to build a new, really strong neural pathway, we literally have to practice the thought over and over. You can't get rid of an old thought. All you can do is build a new neural pathway. And over time, as you redirect— that's the other way you practice. When the old thought comes up, you practice the new one.

Yeah.

Over time, that new pathway gets stronger. And your brain is always taking the most efficient path of least resistance. So your brain in some ways is very, like, value-neutral. It kind of doesn't give a shit if your thoughts are helpful or not. It just thinks the ones you've thought the most. It's just on autopilot.

Ooh, it's good.

So you have to build that new neural network. And over time, as that one gets stronger, the other one will wither, and that will become your default. And then you do the whole thing again to go up another rung.

And my favorite part about it is not, like, is that the thought Like, the thought ladder is like that. It's not the mantra. 'Cause I also use, like, these mantras with my students, and I see that it's, like, it's just not enough. So to make that less shitty thought your mantra.

Yeah.

You know, it feels counterintuitive when you think about, like, how people perceive, you know, mindset work and all of that. But I love that. And then just to think it again and again. And I talk a lot about repetition when I, you know, when we build pronunciation habits and grammar habits and like all speaking habits and thinking habits is absolutely the same. You just have to do it again and again.

Yeah. The value of a mantra is that you repeat a thing a lot and you sometimes you can brute force yourself into believing something you don't believe yet with endless repetition. But most people just aren't that disciplined and we live busy lives. We're not actually monks who have 6 hours in our schedule to sit around and think the same thought over and over again until we believe it. Like, so we need to do something we can believe now and then build from there.

Yeah. I'm thinking like a thought that I should have, um, I don't use my phone a lot, or I don't need my phone for everything. And then I need to set an alarm for it on my phone to remind me. I was like, oh wait, uh, okay.

That is an issue, but that's where Post-it notes come in handy. Okay, good.

Okay, I'll do it.

Put it up around your house.

Uh, one thing I want you to talk to me about is the concept of shame, because I think that's really huge when it comes to being a human in this world to begin with, but— or a woman in particular. But when it comes to language learning, there are 2 elements that go into it. One is the feeling of shame when I'm not— like, when my English is not good enough, right? Like, and I'm not how I, I would expect myself to be by now or in general. And the second is the shame around not doing the work that I need to do. And I think you also talk about it in the book where you're like, you know what you need to do and you don't do it, and then you feel bad about it and you feel shame around it, and then that prevents you from actually doing it. So can you talk to us about that?

About shame?

About shame. Can we just— shame. Let's just— a 2-minute long chat about shame. If I haven't said it yet, shame. Yes.

So I think that shame is not— we— the biggest problem with shame is that we think that it's useful and it's actually counterproductive.

Can you explain that a bit more?

Yeah. So shame is an emotion that comes up when we believe we've done something wrong, right? So we have— and, you know, evolutionarily, it makes sense as an emotion that developed because, you know, we're in tribes of hunter-gatherers. We're all very dependent on each other. If people are not feeling very kind of obligated to one another and very motivated to perform the tasks the collective needs, everybody's going to die, right? So probably people who had a higher shame response, and it was easier to shame them into doing things for the group, they probably survived more. That doesn't mean shame is morally useful. It just means functionally, it probably had a purpose.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think women in particular are socialized especially to have— to feel ashamed about everything, just to feel ashamed for existing. Like, you're already bad and not good enough as soon as you're born. And the rest of your life, you're trying to become good enough, and you never can. Right. And then we also live in a puritanical culture, at least here in America, that I think is very heavy on shame. I mean, I can talk about this stuff forever, because it really goes back to, like, what's your conception of a human? Like, what are humans like? Are people inherently bad, and we need to use shame to get them to do what they should do, right? Or are people inherently, quote unquote, good, whatever that means— curious, collaborative, kindhearted, And it's really just, like, stress and social pressure that divert them. Because when— the way that we're taught is basically, you're inherently lazy and shitty, and we need to shame you to get you to do what you need to do. And so we internalize that, we do it to ourselves. And so, for instance, we believe— if we're feeling shame because we, like, haven't done our language practice, it means that we have the thought that we're morally— we don't think this consciously, right? No. But it means that, like, we've done something wrong. We've done something bad.

Yeah.

Right? Either because we just should do our homework, or because we paid for it and we're not using it, or because whatever. I mean, especially if you tend this way or you're socialized as a woman, anything can become a should. Like, you should have tied your shoes differently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you feel bad about it, right? Just very primed to accept anything as a should.

It's never enough.

It's never enough. So the problem with shame is that we— it's so— it's like we're attached to it because we think we need it. We think if we just do more of it, it will motivate us. But actually, shame is not— I mean, there's a zillion studies, right? Shame is not a consistent, productive motivator. Because when you shame yourself, number one, you are adding negative emotion. You are associating the thing you're trying to make yourself do with negative emotion. So it's like burning your hand on the stove and then being like, I got it. I should put my hand back on the stove. Right. I just got to shame myself into doing that, right? Shame feels terrible. Humans hate to feel shame.

Right.

So if you shame yours— if every time you sit down to do your homework, you shame yourself, you are going to want to do your homework less and less and less. Right? So we have to remove shame if we want to actually change our behavior. And the same is true around speaking. Like, if you want to be willing to speak up, shaming yourself about your accent will not motivate you to do better. Right? It's counterproductive. You will be more willing to speak up, you will do more of your homework if you make it Morally neutral whether you did your homework. It's morally neutral if, like, if somebody doesn't understand you when you speak, that is not a moral issue. You didn't run over someone's dog.

Yeah.

Like, you just said— you made sounds with your mouth.

You're not gonna be punished.

But another person's ears and brain didn't understand. That is not a moral problem.

Yeah. And, and what would you say to people, like, when they experience shame? What— because usually when you experience shame, you do all the things that you probably don't want to do. You avoid, or you— Yeah, yeah. Procrastinate, or So when— what would you recommend for someone who is currently now experiencing shame around something? Like, what should they—

The antidote to shame is self-compassion. And my favorite shortcut to self-compassion is this phrase that comes from Buddha's meditation practices, but was kind of popularized in this form by this woman, Judith Hanson Lasseter, who's a meditation teacher and yoga teacher. And it's just, how human of me.

Oh, yeah. I love that.

So, like, I yelled at my kids. How human of me. I fumbled what I was saying in a meeting. How human of me, right? So shame is about, I'm different, I'm bad, I'm wrong, I'm separate, right? I'm not like everyone else. And self-compassion is a way of welcoming ourselves, inviting ourselves back into the fold, right? And so I think the phrase, how human of me, is so powerful because it is sort of putting us into a common humanity, right? Yeah. It's like, This is just part of the human experience, and it gives us that bigger perspective outside of ourselves. It's just a way of communicating to yourself, like, you're not uniquely different, bad, and wrong, right? You're just a person having this kind of experience that many people have.

Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. So, Cara, it was so great talking to you. And if people want to find out more about you and work with you, where should they go?

I have a podcast called Unfuck Your Brain. I have, of course, the book you can buy or audiobook, Take Back Your Brain. And I'm on Instagram at— it's @kara_lawenthal. I got a long last name and it's hard to spell. So if you just Google— We'll link to it. We'll link to it. I'm on YouTube as well. We'll tag me there. But just Google Unfuck Your Brain or Take Back Your Brain and the name Kara, and you'll get what you need.

Perfect. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure talking to you, but also being your friend and having this these conversations in private, and you have really, really impacted me, and I love knowing you. Thank you so much. You

too. Thanks for having me.