Breaking the stigma: Using life coaching to navigate chronic disease [PODCAST]

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Join us with guest Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier, a family physician with a personal story of managing Type 1 diabetes amidst the pandemic. Kimberly shares her journey of struggling with the diagnosis, feeling lost and alone, until she discovered the power of life coaching. She shares how this process allowed her to take control of her emotions and make a choice to live on her own terms, even with a chronic disease.

Kimberly highlights the importance of mental clarity in the medical system and how life coaching provides a space for patients to listen to their thoughts, emotions and facts to ultimately lead to better patient satisfaction and outcomes. Don’t miss this inspiring episode as Kimberly sheds light on the human experience and encourages us to explore the other facets impacting our patients and meet them where they are to help them towards where they’d like to go.

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier is a board-certified family physician and founder, Coaching Chronic Disease, LLC. She can be reached on Facebook and Instagram.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “A doctor’s journey: Navigating chronic disease and empowerment through life coaching.”

The Podcast by KevinMD is brought to you by the Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Get CME by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today on the show we have Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier. She’s a family physician, and she’s the founder of Coaching Chronic Disease. Her KevinMD article is titled “A doctor’s journey: Navigating chronic disease and empowerment through life coaching.” Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Thank you. Glad to be here, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into the article a little bit, but first off, briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Absolutely. So I am a family physician, and I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2020 and then became a certified life coach. I went through the journey and became certified in 2022, as kind of a culmination of all of those things: diabetes plus physician, and then filling the gap with life coaching.

Kevin Pho: So tell me, when you got diagnosed with diabetes, how did it affect you professionally as a physician, and why did you seek out life coaching?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Absolutely. So as a family physician, diabetes in general is kind of our bread and butter, right? No stranger to it, although we don’t see as many type 1s. Interestingly enough, in my private practice I actually got us ADA-accredited, and we had a diabetes wellness center before my diagnosis. I really had a passion there. And then I got diagnosed and realized, as you know we do, it’s very different as a patient. And it wasn’t just about the numbers or the carb counting or the activity. There are so many facets in there: your stress, your sleep, just everything in your life kind of comes together. And for me, that came to a crashing halt in 2020. This was even pre-pandemic, where I had to go out on leave, DKA, hospitalized, all that good stuff, and then I was kind of struggling to come back afloat and maintain my family practice.

And I was looking for more. I had my family physician, I had my endocrinologist, added on a dietitian, and added on a strength coach to figure out how to now work out with diabetes and not go low, but I still didn’t quite have that community. There was still a piece of thinking of every complication, and what if this, and what if that, and why me. And I came across life coaching and found that was a way to manage my mind and my thoughts and all these other things that were coming up. With an incurable disease, what could I actually take control of?

Kevin Pho: So you mentioned that you were struggling before life coaching in order to continue your family practice in light of this newly diagnosed diabetes. Now, we’re going to talk more about your journey, of course, in your KevinMD article, but tell me, what kind of questions did you ask yourself that made you think, “I need a little bit more help when it comes to continuing professionally as a family physician”?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Yes, I mean, questions came up. Can I do this long term, meaning can I still practice clinical medicine? I have two young boys; how could I mother them? Could I be a wife, a mom, a doctor, and have diabetes? How would I have the bandwidth? How would I have the energy? How would all of that fit together? I got my sugars down pretty quick and started to realize carb counts. I mean, I had a lot of tools in my toolbox being a family physician, but just everything else about bringing it all together in life, there was a lot of “Is this even possible?”

I remember thinking, you know, “That’s the old me. That’s gone. This is the new me. I’m limited. There’s only so much I could do.” And at the beginning of that first year, I really didn’t see a way to participate and do a lot of the things the way I had done them before, to enjoy the activities, the extracurriculars I had done before.

Kevin Pho: All right, you talk more about that in your KevinMD article, “A doctor’s journey: Navigating chronic disease and empowerment through life coaching.” Now tell us, how did this article come together?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: What would I have wanted when I was first diagnosed? I remember the biggest feeling is feeling alone, feeling like, you know, I said, the “why me,” like I was the only one. Clearly there are millions of type 1s nationwide, so I’m not the only one, but I didn’t have that community. I had all of those what-ifs. I could not see a future where I did everything that I had done in the past. And like I said, I was going to my appointments, I was getting my numbers, but I just wasn’t thriving. I wasn’t doing well. I couldn’t see a lot of the things coming together.

And I was introduced to this space of life coaching, where you have 50 minutes, usually, at a time where someone just holds space for you. You’re able to talk, you’re able to process, which unfortunately, we have so much going on in modern medicine. I mean, often with our family physician, our endocrinologist, even our dietitian, we don’t get almost an hour to kind of go through everything else and adjust medications and go over numbers. So this was a place where all that medical stuff was put aside. Your life coach doesn’t care how many units of insulin you’re on. They care about managing your thoughts and why you are feeling that way. So it’s looking into all the obstacles and saying, really, how can we turn that obstacle into a strategy to get back to where you want?

Kevin Pho: So give us a specific example of how life coaching, some of those strategies, some of those sessions, eventually helped you manage all these different facets of you: the diabetes, your family life, and of course what you do as a family physician.

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Absolutely. So I definitely had a turning point. I had gone to a wellness retreat. So I thought, “I’m just going to leave everything else, and I’m going to go with a coach for a yoga retreat. I’m going to move, I’m going to eat nourishing foods, figure it all out, take all the extra out.” And that didn’t happen, but I remember her saying, “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

And I had had some pretty severe lows where I was traumatized from them, thinking if I go low again, like, that’s it. So she asked me, “What’s the worst-case scenario?” and I said, “I’ll die.” So: “OK, let’s not think of this as so black and white. What have we done in the past? How can we start trusting ourselves again to say you have had lows and you didn’t die?” We say, as type 1s, right, we’re at 100 percent survival of hypoglycemia. We’re still here. So she kind of touched on that and said, “What have you done? How can we build back your trust? What little steps can you take?” And that was something that I hadn’t even thought of.

And when I started opening up to, yes, I could die, I mean, there are a lot of diseases out there that we could die from, it was about getting away from that black-and-white thinking of either it’s A or it’s B. What are the possibilities? How can we step into that? So that was the first time I was introduced to it. I wasn’t quite ready. I still came home and thought, “Oh, she doesn’t get it, you know, my hypoglycemia.” But it opened me up, and then I followed up and I met more coaches, and they asked, “Why, why are we going down this path? What are we thinking? If you think that you will die, what is coming up for you?”

And it was thoughts of “I’m young, and I have kids, and I have a career and things that I want to achieve, and I can’t do that if.” And so it was shifting that mindset: What if you can do that? It was a whole new way of thinking that I hadn’t approached before.

Kevin Pho: How long did it take you before you shifted that mindset?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Well, it was over a year from diagnosis. So I was diagnosed in 2020, and I would say I was stuck in that mindset the entire year. In 2021, when I went on the retreat, I mean, I was a work in progress for a good three months, and then I entered life coach school, where I was really just in it every day and going through and coaching myself, which was the biggest thing. And that was, you know, a six-month journey of coaching myself and coming up with the obstacles and coming up with the strategies.

And by going into the training, I was forced to use the tools on myself. Once I used those and put them into practice, you know, I was making new neural pathways. So before, my old brain was black and white: Hypoglycemia equals death. I started to create these new pathways of what if this, what if that, what if this.

Kevin Pho: So what’s your life like now in terms of balancing all the things that we talked about: your professional life, your family, as well as your diabetes?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Yeah, so I celebrated my third anniversary in January, and I mean, it’s night and day from 2020. So I have a thriving family practice with three other partners. We’re expanding to another location. I’ve now started my own coaching business, since I realized the value of what I’ve gotten. So not only do I have a family practice, I actually added more, which I thought wouldn’t be possible when I was diagnosed. I’m present more for my kids, because I think I value that time more, so I’m able to be in their classroom and be in the moment.

Physically, I was a runner beforehand, and I was convinced that was out. My husband and I actually competed in a triathlon in the fall. So, I mean, I’m doing things that I had done, plus more. So I think before, I thought this was a negative version of me, and now I say this is, you know, Kimberly 2.0, and it’s even better than the original.

Kevin Pho: Tell us, this experience with the diabetes and life coaching, how does it affect you as a physician and in the exam room when you’re talking to patients?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: I mean, it has given me so much more grace. So I now realize, you know, as a family physician, I have the luxury of connecting with my patients and creating this chronic relationship, I shouldn’t say chronic, this relationship with longevity. But now, you know, there are so many untold stories, and the snapshot that we see, 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, is so minuscule compared to everything that they have going on. And sometimes the greatest impact that you can make at the visit has nothing to do with their chief complaint. It has nothing to do with their lab values and everything to do with all the other things that they’re managing.

I had a great endocrinologist, I had a great primary, I had great numbers, and it was kind of coming in like, “All right, A1C is great, we don’t need to adjust anything,” and I wasn’t doing well. So having that time to talk to patients and starting the conversation, “How are you doing today?” opens so many gates. I think allowing myself that time to ask them really, you know, helps connect with them, helps see obstacles, and creates a better relationship with me, and ultimately, I mean, we do get better patient outcomes that way too.

Kevin Pho: So one of the things that you mentioned that caught my ear was that you’re now uncovering stories that were previously untold. What’s an example of that? What kind of questions are you asking these patients to try to get them to tell some of these previously untold stories?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Yeah, I mean, I think the idea of non-compliance, at least in my training, we were introduced to non-compliance, and now, I mean, I’m realizing there’s no one who’s non-compliant. There are a multitude of reasons why they’re not getting the outcome that we’re hoping for them, or why we’re changing things and the outcome remains unchanged.

So I can think of my own patients. I now have several type 1 women in my practice that I didn’t have before, or, you know, we didn’t know a whole lot about them, and they’ve kind of funneled in. And what they have said was, you know, “I was seeing my endocrinologist, and I was in your practice, but I would come in once a year because my endocrinologist manages everything.” And for the most part, younger patients don’t have a lot of other things going on. And now we’re coming in, we’re talking about sleep, we’re talking about hormones, talking about how their period is affecting their sugar, and we’re talking about why they can’t get the activity in that they’re wanting. And so their, you know, diabetes may or may not look great on paper with the endocrinologist, but all the other factors I’m now able to work with them on.

Kevin Pho: Now, we’ve had several physician life coaches on the show, and whenever I ask them who benefits from life coaching, all of them say everyone benefits from life coaching. Now I’m going to ask that question another way. What kind of questions should a physician ask themselves to see whether life coaching would benefit them? What kind of questions did you ask yourself? What kind of questions should other physicians ask themselves to see whether life coaching would be of benefit?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: I think, are you at a place that you’re, are you happy with where you’re at? Do you feel like you’re working with intention and not just for, you know, happiness for happiness’ sake? Because life is a balance. We have happiness, we have sorrow; we wouldn’t have one without the other. But do you feel that you’re living each day with intention? Are you going to bed wishing there was more? Do you feel like you’re whole and you’re complete, or is there something missing?

And for me, that was it. On the outside, I was managing everything, and, I mean, you could still say I had a picture-perfect life, even with this chronic disease, but I was going to bed feeling unfulfilled, feeling distraught, feeling like I wasn’t complete and I wasn’t living the life I was meant to.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier. She is a family physician, and she’s the founder of Coaching Chronic Disease. Her KevinMD article is titled “A doctor’s journey: Navigating chronic disease and empowerment through life coaching.” Kimberly, you mentioned that you are a certified life coach, and you talk to, I’m sure, a lot of physicians. What would you say are the most common issues that come up during your life coaching sessions with other clinicians?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: With other clinicians, it’s usually time, right? So time is one of our most precious resources. I would say health is our most precious resource, especially after being diagnosed with a chronic disease, and time is number two. That’s what we’re all trying to get. We’re trying to get more time; we’re trying to get more quality in our time. And so the biggest thing is we have this practice and have these commitments. You hear charts, we hear patient visits; it’s always focused around time, and that time is finite.

So how we think about the time really can open up how we use our time, how we’re more intentional. And then at the end of the day, if you feel like you’ve used your time well, you know, you’re going to bed content, you’re getting ready for another day. So even if nothing changes in your day-to-day or your clinical, if you change the way you think about your time and how you use your time, I mean, the possibilities are limitless.

Kevin Pho: And for those clinicians who may have unexpectedly been diagnosed with a chronic disease or condition, any advice that you could share with them?

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: I mean, the time is the same there, right? So we’re all faced with our own mortality, and I think type 1 is, you know, a grave diagnosis. This is a life-threatening chronic disease that’s not curable, right up there with when we are diagnosed with cancer, right, the big C word. And so when we start thinking of those things, we think about: Did we do what we want? Are we living day to day? I mean, we really reevaluate our choices, our priorities. And so I think that is a wonderful shift.

Rather than me thinking about all the things that I’m missing out on, grieving my former life, now I’m thinking about how my eyes have been opened to what I do have in the time that I do have and how precious that time is. So in that same 24 hours, I’m now creating more joy, I’m doing things that fulfill me, and I’m spending more time with the core people that I love. So I know, regardless of where I go with my diagnosis, the time that I’m spending here on Earth is, you know, monumental. I’m getting so much and giving so much, and that is something that we often don’t see until we get something like a big diagnosis that really has us changing our whole mind shift.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: Tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Kimberly Jackson-Bekemeier: Absolutely. So the biggest take-home message, right, is when we were all those starry-eyed medical students, remembering every patient has a story. So even if it’s just one open-ended question to allow a little glimpse into their story, we may not have the time to delve in, it may not be appropriate to delve into their full story, but kind of tucking that little nugget back: Every patient has a story. Every patient’s story, they actually want to tell it. So that comes in different times, different spaces, but just allowing that opportunity for them to tell it in their words, in their time, and when they do, validating that their story is real, it’s authentic, even if it’s not something that we’re used to or we’re experienced with.

Kevin Pho: Kimberly, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for being on the show. We appreciate it.

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