Women In Wellness: Dr Kimberly A Lemke On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
The first thing I wish people told me was to just start and stop waiting and overthinking. Whether it is getting better sleep, working on improving your health, increasing confidence, finding a better job, or anything else that requires change I tell people just start moving in the direction you want to go. Use the following visual to see what I mean. Imagine needing to climb a ladder to the top of a tall building. There are two ladders that you can choose from. One is made up of small steps that you take one at a time until you reach the top, and the second one has only a few steps, but you cannot even reach the first step to start moving because it is too high. Hopefully you would start on the ladder with the small steps so that you are at least moving closer and closer to where you want to be.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Kimberly Lemke.
Dr. Kimberly Ann Lemke is the creator of the online sleep course “Drift” and winner of the Prestigious 2020 Enterprising Women of the Year Award. She is a licensed child/adolescent & adult clinical psychologist trained in CBT-I for insomnia and is also a Certified Sleep Science Coach. Dr. Lemke owns a group private practice where she specializes in anxiety, depression, and life transitions with her patients and she serves many corporate clients by providing sleep, stress and other wellness workshops and programs to help minimize fatigue and burnout. You can find out more about Drift and Dr. Lemke at www.driftcourse.com.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
First of all, thank you very much for allowing me to share my story with your readers today! So many of our journeys are filled with ups and downs and I love being able to normalize that for people.
As I said I am a licensed adult and child clinical psychologist. My mom always told the story about how when I was a young girl, maybe four years old, she walked by my room and I had my Barbies sitting on a couch and was asking them how they felt. Talk about foreshadowing of what my career was going to be!
The thing that still amazes me is that I didn’t even know what a psychologist was until high school when I took my first psychology class. I remember sitting in class and thinking how much I loved learning all about how our brains worked and ways to help people. From that point on, I was hooked. I went on to major in psychology and pre-med in college and then knew that I would have to get a graduate degree to be able to impact the most people. I received my master’s and doctorate in clinical psychology with a minor with children and adolescents. Due to the amount of sleep issues I started seeing people struggle with, I began studying and getting training in CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia) and took classes to become a certified sleep science coach. The ironic part is that pretty much every day, I go into my private practice and have people sit on my black couch and ask them how they are feeling and how I can help just like when I was four years old!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
I think one of the most interesting and exciting things that has happened to me was winning the 2020 Enterprising Women of the Year award, but not because of why you might think. I remember being so excited to have won until I started reading about the other women that would also be there and self-doubt started pouring in. The crazy part was that even though I won the award, I started comparing myself to the huge successes of some of the other women there. I talk to people in organizations and in my office all the time of something that many of us feel called imposter syndrome. This idea basically means that you feel less competent than others believe you to be and that you don’t want to be ‘found out’ by those around you. I see this in presidents of companies, CEO’s, parents, people at new jobs, and basically everyone! We keep telling ourselves messages about how we aren’t good enough in some capacity.
I remember being on the plane to Florida to go get the award and there was an empty seat next to me. I am a very visual person, and I created this image in my mind of what my self-doubt travel partner looked like and her strapping herself into the seat next to me. She had a perfectly done updo, was all dolled up and had these very judgmental eyes with eyebrows that went up as she was looking at me in my window seat. When I pictured her gaze, I just felt like I was shrinking or getting smaller in my seat. I decided in that moment to literally ask her to leave. I told her that she would not be coming with me and that she was not the travel companion I wanted or needed on this trip. I pictured her undoing her seatbelt with a huff, grabbing her very overpriced bag from under the seat, putting on her dark sunglasses and walking off the plane without looking back. Then I sat there alone and smiled and finally felt excited about going to get the award that I won.
Even though I do this for a living day in and day out, I forgot for a moment that WE GET TO CHOOSE who we want to be our travel companion on our life’s journey. The best part is that if you look at the person YOU strapped in that seat next to you and you don’t like what you see or hear, then choose again. And if you still don’t like what you hear them saying about you, then choose again. And choose again and again and again until you both look at each other and smile, take a deep breath and think this is going to be one heck of a ride.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I think the biggest mistake I made when I was first starting out, and even until recently, was that I didn’t want to make mistakes. I didn’t want to step out of my comfort zone because I didn’t want to fail.
When I had the idea for my sleep course “Drift,” I came up with a million reasons why not to do it. Even though I knew that the program could help thousands of people start getting better sleep immediately, I knew nothing about how to even start the process of making a sleep program for people. I would have to find a production company, figure out marketing, social media, branding and a whole bunch of other things that I knew nothing about. I did know that I knew how to get people to sleep though. I just didn’t want to make a mistake or fail. Then the best thing happened. I got a rejection letter from this organization about not being able to afford my sleep workshop. I remember thinking that email could serve two purposes for me…Proof of failure that causes me to give up or proof of failure that motivated me to move forward and learn from it. After all I “failed” and was still ok! So, I printed out the email, used a black marker and blacked out the company name and taped it to my wall. I remember my daughter asking why I would put that up and if she could take it down. I tried to reach her a life lesson in that moment that took me way too long to learn…fail and then fail again and keep failing. Weird lesson to want to teach a child but once I learned that I didn’t have to be afraid to fail then it opened a whole new world for me. I started taking steps towards making “Drift” a reality and now it is! My mistake was not being willing to make mistakes. Fail and fall and get back up and keep moving. Leaning into failure versus away from it was the best lesson I ever learned.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I started my focus on helping people get better sleep because I found that if I asked anyone the following questions the answer is unanimously yes either for themselves or someone they knew.
I ask people have you ever wished you could sleep better? Do you ever lay awake in bed and wish you could fall asleep? Have you ever woken up tired and wondered how you were going to make it through the day? Again, the answers to these questions were overwhelmingly yes, and I wanted to begin helping more people on a larger scale by giving them access to effective and simple sleep strategies that they could use immediately to fall asleep and stay sleep starting the same night. People who struggle with sleep have felt like they have tried everything and are just tired of not being able to sleep. Sleep is one of the most important things in our life. It affects our mood, relationships, work life, concentration, immune system, and general enjoyment of our life.
There is a quote by Desmond Tutu where he states, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Things like burnout, stress, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, obesity, and so many more issues are linked back to poor sleep. Helping people with sleep is going upstream to keep people from falling into the river of psychological and physical despair that often accompanies insomnia and poor sleep.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing?
Great question! I love the word “tweaks” because it does just take small shifts to improve our wellbeing. I truly believe that sleep is the cornerstone to our overall health and happiness. When it comes to sleep specifically there are a few “tweaks” we can make that can help us get better sleep and feel better immediately.
First, make sure you are getting up and getting sunlight. Our brain is made to sense the sun, and when it does, it alerts our body and mind that it is time to wake up. Your body will then start to produce sleep chemicals that we need to use that evening order in to fall asleep and stay asleep. So…get up, open the curtains, and let the sun in!
Secondly, pay attention to noises that may be interrupting your sleep. For safety reasons, the auditory system is the one system that does not completely turn off at night so that it can wake us if it hears anything. If you have a tv on and the programming changes in the middle of the night your brain will wake you up just to make sure that everything is ok. If you need to sleep with some form of noise at night, white noise machines or fans are better. Ear plugs or headphones work as well if you just want to fall asleep to silence.
Thirdly, be very careful about what you put into your body. Foods, caffeine, and alcohol can all poorly affect sleep. For example, consuming alcohol too close to bed may make you feel like it has a calming or sleepy effect, however, it can wreak havoc on your sleep cycle causing fragmented sleep and possible nightmares.
Fourth tweak is not catastrophizing a poor night’s sleep. So many people have a few nights of poor sleep and panic about their sleep being off and take matters into their own hands. They will engage in behaviors that actually will make them sleep LESS such as staying in bed after the alarm goes off or going to sleep earlier. In Drift, we talk about what a Sleep Balloon is and how these small behaviors can actually worsen sleep. Your body is made to compensate for a poor night’s sleep on its own. Let it do its thing!
And the fifth tweak is to take control of your thoughts at night. So many people lay in bed thinking about things they don’t want to be thinking about. If you are lying awake in bed for more than 15 minutes leave the bed and move to a separate part of the house and do some relaxing activities and then return to your bed when you are sleepy. Journaling a few hours before bed can get some of those worries or thoughts out of your head or even just telling your brain relaxing or enjoyable things you want to think about like a beach, a good book, a fun time with a friend, etc. You DO have control of your thoughts.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I 100 percent think that a movement prioritizing sleep awareness would bring the most amount of wellness to people. The emotional and physical consequences of poor sleep are astronomical. It raises healthcare costs, causes safety issues on the job, increases anxiety and depression, and can lead to an overall dissatisfaction with life. The great news is that there are very simple things we can do to get our sleep back on track and start feeling better immediately.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
The first thing I wish people told me was to just start and stop waiting and overthinking. Whether it is getting better sleep, working on improving your health, increasing confidence, finding a better job, or anything else that requires change I tell people just start moving in the direction you want to go. Use the following visual to see what I mean. Imagine needing to climb a ladder to the top of a tall building. There are two ladders that you can choose from. One is made up of small steps that you take one at a time until you reach the top, and the second one has only a few steps, but you cannot even reach the first step to start moving because it is too high. Hopefully you would start on the ladder with the small steps so that you are at least moving closer and closer to where you want to be.
The second thing I wish I knew earlier was that I had control of that travel companion idea we talked about earlier. Sit down and visualize who you want with you on your wellness journey and if you don’t like how you feel when you are with that person you created next to you, then start again. In that very next moment create the best travel partner that inspires you to keep moving and does not judge you when you fall.
The third thing I wish someone told me was to fail early and get it over with. I tried so hard to not fail for so many years that it kept me from taking steps that I needed to because it was out of my comfort zone. Become comfortable with failure. Failure is just information. Take that information and pivot.
The fourth thing I wish I knew was not to compare my journey to anyone else’s. Your journey is your own. I talk to people every day that struggle with their own insecurities, but post on social media all the things that are going wonderfully in their lives. Remember, we all have wounds, some are visible but the most painful ones we keep invisible.
The fifth thing I wish someone told me about was the power of self-forgiveness. I can guarantee that you will slip up at some point on your journey. Remind yourself that it is ok to lose your way in a moment. Write down specific and manageable steps that are leading you towards your best self. Post it on your fridge, on the mirror in your room, on your phone, anywhere that keeps your wellness journey and dreams front and center. This way when you step off the path all you need to do in the very next moment is look at any one of those steps and take the next best step, not the perfect one, just the next best one for you. I truly believe that sometimes it is only when we are lost that we find out exactly where we are supposed to be.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
These are all very important topics, but for obvious reasons mental health is dearest to me. I feel privileged and honored to be allowed to walk with people during their darkest times in my profession, and I know the strength it takes to make changes in our lives and to challenge our deepest fears and insecurities. One of my colleagues told me, “It’s not time that will tell, it’s what you do with time that will tell.” Time in and of itself doesn’t create change, but what you do with that time does.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Thank you for such a fabulous interview and such thoughtful questions. Your readers can follow me on Instagram at drkimberlylemke, on Facebook at Drift or my website www.Drkimberlylemke.com and www.driftcourse.com.
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Dr Kimberly A Lemke On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.