HI I'M KIM, AND I'M A SELFISHLADY

I’m Kim Sarembock Grevler, and I’m a selfishlady. I am a licensed clinical social worker and life coach. I educate, help and coach women to value and trust themselves by setting boundaries and putting their needs first.

I’ll start by sharing a little about me and my journey.

I am direct and observant, blunt at times, funny and curious, but can also be known to dive right in with others in a no-BS manner to get right to the issues. I graduated with my master's in social work in 2011, with a long term goal of decreasing the divorce rate. I don’t come from a family with divorced parents, but from a young age this is an issue that I have been passionate about. Still not certain how or why this started, but the goal remains the same: to help women evolve into selfishladies who know their worth, and are not willing to settle for anything less; starting with whom they choose to date and thus end up choosing to marry.

I started my career working in foster care and later in adult psychiatric inpatient mental health (not for the fainthearted) but all throughout I never really felt fulfilled. I saw myself as a business person, a creator and innovator and those attributes were not shining in my chosen field. I learned a lot, building skills in analyzing and assessing systems of all kinds (family, organizational, government), developing my therapeutic and clinical skills, and managing and tolerating difficult people (clients and colleagues) as well as complicated and complex families. But still, it just never really quite rolled off my tongue when asked what I do – “um… I’m a social worker, BUT I'M ALSO WORKING ON BUSINESS IDEAS AND INTERESTED IN MANUFACTURING AND… what do you do? :/ hmmph ”

This is not at all a swipe at social workers, please don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I didn’t fit in a box. I was good at what I did, and I liked it, but there were so many other facets to me that were not being utilized or tapped into – as I am sure some (if not most) of you can relate.

Being opinionated and direct are not common qualities of the average therapist (doesn’t mean you can't be a good one though!), and that made me realize that I had the opportunity to built my own niche in this profession if I could just figure out my path. I wanted to hone these assets of my brain and personality. But, I was also burned out and frustrated and wanted to get as far away from helping people as possible! I thought I would get my validation and my enjoyment from creating a product that I could manufacture and produce and sell to the masses (this still might be true but I realize its not all or nothing).

I took time away to work on a business idea I had, and while doing so I completed a life coaching course to build on my skills. After much reflection working with a coach of my own, I became aware of the pressures I was putting on myself and all the judgement and false beliefs about who I was "supposed to be" that were weighing me down. Beliefs that were preventing my growth, and stunting my confidence. The time I took to reflect helped me gain perspective. My education and experience in clinical social work, married to my coaching skills, which married to my observations and perceptions of human behavior; I realized my purpose, that in fact, I was meant to help. I was just not going about it in my way.

I am a helper. But a non-traditional one. I use tough love to ensure my clients practice self love. It is hard for us as individuals to build confidence by giving ourselves permission to matter. So many of my clients STRUGGLE with accepting negative thoughts as just that, negative thoughts that are not part of them and can be changed. Their insecurities sometimes run so deep that they only way I can shake it out of them is to turn on the tough love. I believe this will be more effective when this is a conversation on a larger scale – lots of women reading and understanding these concepts collectively, compared to one woman at a time in session with me (or their therapist) once a week. I was meant to bring this information and help not as a therapist. Not as a coach. But as something more macro – something bigger.

I teach women how to retrain their brains after years and generations of priming and being socialized to put their needs last and defer to others first. To retrain our brains about the real vs. perceived consequences of putting our needs first so that the discomfort that comes with doing so is manageable and NOT catastrophic. I want to help women get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Build their confidence and sense of self trust through boundaries; NOT through the lens of others. To learn to love themselves independent of how others treat them and what they perceive others think about them. To normalize the difficulty of going after what you want and going against the grain. I teach tips and tricks to manage this effectively without reacting with self-berating talk or self-victimizing scripts. We can be selfish and not inconsiderate. We can and should be selfish to develop our independence and learn to exist in this world WITHOUT the expectation that we are supposed to have everyone’s approval, or that we are supposed to get everything right all the time.

Now more than ever I believe this movement is necessary. As we are developing our own companies in greater numbers and continue to fight the rough climb up the corporate ladder, and as we continue to mentor and employ or manage others in greater numbers – we have to get ourselves in check. You will not be effective in the work place, in your relationship or marriage, or with your friends and family if you are so worried about what they think of you, or what you should or should not be doing, or how their behavior reflects upon you. We need to develop the skills that most men around us have been raised with – to be independent and confident and brave without the approval, confirmation or appeasement of others. We need to build a new perspective that tells us we are and can be amazing even if others disagree. If you love who you are, that is all that matters. The problem, most of us do not love ourselves because we have not been taught how – we only love ourselves contingent on if others like us and show us that they are approving of what we did or said. Not only this, a lot of us do not tap into the crux of who we are because we are so busy negating what we want in deference to what those around us want or need. How can I love myself if I don’t even give myself time or space to learn what I want, like or need?! We MUST change this. And we change it by changing ourselves. Society will follow.

So welcome to those who are new! For those who know me or have been following along on Instagram, welcome back! This blog serves to give lots of information in a digestible way that can help you enact change NOW. For those who have worked with me, this blog will hopefully be a nice culmination of our work that resonates a little differently seeing it on paper rather than talking about it in session. I welcome all feedback and comments and please forward any articles to your friends, family members, etc who might enjoy the read 😊All the support is appreciated.

Lets dive in!