Latest / The Virtual Couch / You Can’t Cram for the Test of Life - Dr. Mark Redford on Flossing, Faking It, and Why Habits Never Lie

Transcript

You Can’t Cram for the Test of Life - Dr. Mark Redford on Flossing, Faking It, and Why Habits Never Lie · The Virtual Couch

• 0:22
  Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch.
• 0:25
  I am your host, Tony Overbay.
• 0:26
  I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, also host of the Waking Up to
• 0:30
  Narcissism podcast and the soon-to-return Murder on the Couch podcast as well.
• 0:35
  If you have ever had the desire to listen to the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast but just thought,
• 0:40
  okay, I don't really have a narcissist in my life, I
• 0:44
  would highly encourage you to jump over and listen to the episode that just
• 0:49
  dropped earlier this week because I have a big reveal and I talk a lot about
• 0:53
  why I do so much of the work that I do around the concepts around emotional
• 0:57
  immaturity and narcissistic traits, tendencies, personality disorder.
• 1:01
  And it has to do with interacting with some people in my family that I have
• 1:05
  finally decided to open up a little bit more about.
• 1:08
  If that isn't a teaser, I don't know what would be, but I really would encourage
• 1:11
  you to go over to the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast. I'll put the link in
• 1:14
  the show notes just in case.
• 1:15
  And you can even just say that you're listening for a friend.
• 1:18
  If you don't want to get caught listening to that podcast, but I highly recommend that one.
• 1:22
  Today, I have an episode that I've wanted to do for the better part of a decade.
• 1:26
  Literally, my guest will confirm that. He's been hearing me say that,
• 1:30
  hey, I need to get you on my podcast for about that long, 10 years.
• 1:34
  And real quick, before I get to that, follow me, of course, on Instagram at
• 1:38
  virtual.couch, on TikTok at virtualcouch, and on Substack at substack.virtualcouch.com.
• 1:46
  Substack has so much content on it. The updated Magnetic Marriage course is
• 1:51
  coming soon. So go to tonyoverbay.com slash magnetic, and you can get on the
• 1:56
  wait list to find out when that will actually launch.
• 1:58
  Here's what I'll spend maybe 90 seconds tops on. Over the years,
• 2:02
  I've worked with a lot of guys who genuinely want to show up better in their
• 2:05
  relationships as partners and as dads.
• 2:07
  They want to learn how to be more grounded and confident and more responsive
• 2:12
  instead of reactive in their lives.
• 2:13
  I am now very much convinced that bless all of our parents' hearts,
• 2:17
  we were never really taught how to do that.
• 2:19
  Or we didn't see it modeled in our childhood. We were taught to rub a little dirt on it.
• 2:23
  Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. Power through things,
• 2:26
  shut things down emotionally, somehow just magically have everything figured out.
• 2:31
  And that, I have realized, has been a lot of the reason why I became a therapist,
• 2:34
  is to figure those things out, whether I knew that or not going in.
• 2:38
  And that is why I have created the Emotional Architects Group.
• 2:42
  This is a space for men who are ready to do the work, but not in a rub-a-little-dirt-in-it,
• 2:47
  passive-aggressive way.
• 2:48
  This is for guys who want to understand themselves better, to learn how to communicate
• 2:51
  with more confidence and presence,
• 2:53
  learn how to set healthy boundaries, learn the difference between boundaries
• 2:56
  and ultimatums, build relationships based on your strength and not physical
• 3:00
  strength, although that's great if you have that, but more on the emotional strength,
• 3:03
  presence, consistency, emotional maturity.
• 3:07
  Instead of reactivity or definitely instead of avoidance.
• 3:10
  And I think one thing that I want people to know is that I've tried to make
• 3:14
  this incredibly accessible.
• 3:15
  Roughly for the cost of one therapy session with me, you'll have access to a
• 3:19
  couple of live group calls each month.
• 3:20
  Those calls are recorded and there'll be archives. You can go back and watch them anytime.
• 3:24
  There's also going to be a monthly question and answer session where you can
• 3:27
  submit questions or show up live and I will answer any and everything that you
• 3:30
  have and you'll get access to a growing library of bonus content that I've created
• 3:34
  over the past few years as I have been on my own journey to become more grounded,
• 3:38
  more present, more responsive, more emotionally mature and really trying to
• 3:42
  understand who I am and that not only helps me show up better in my relationship, in my home,
• 3:47
  but hopefully I'm modeling some healthier behavior for my children and we can
• 3:52
  get that family butterfly effect going.
• 3:54
  There's just so much that I think most of us don't even know that we don't know
• 3:57
  that I can't wait to share more.
• 4:00
  And I know that there will be more that will unfold as the group goes forward.
• 4:04
  And I love working with guys and help them discover that work.
• 4:07
  So if that sounds like something you'd want to be a part of,
• 4:09
  you can reach out through my website or email me directly at contact at TonyOverbay.com.
• 4:13
  So today I'm talking with my friend and my dentist, Dr. Mark Redford.
• 4:16
  Mark is kicking off what I really hope becomes some sort of ongoing series where
• 4:20
  I sit down with professionals from different fields. today, dentistry,
• 4:23
  maybe medicine, law enforcement, education, you name it, car sales, insurance.
• 4:28
  I want to know about everything. I love that part of my job of getting to talk
• 4:31
  to people that do all kinds of professions.
• 4:34
  And I want to dig into the mental health angles that exist in every profession,
• 4:38
  because I'm sure that there are those things that find their way into every
• 4:42
  profession, the need for validation, difficulty communicating,
• 4:46
  trying to figure out who you are, what do you do when you don't even like what you do.
• 4:49
  But before we get to the interview, this episode, this one with my dentist was
• 4:55
  almost entirely built around a single concept that I have been borderline obsessed
• 5:00
  with for quite a little while.
• 5:02
  Psychologists call it impression management. And it's this tendency that we
• 5:05
  have to control how other people perceive us.
• 5:08
  We present what we think is the best version of ourselves.
• 5:12
  Present this version that we think will be the most accepted.
• 5:14
  And it can work great in short interactions, a first date, a job interview,
• 5:19
  you just meet somebody for the first time.
• 5:21
  But the longer that somebody's around you, the more difficult it becomes to
• 5:24
  maintain that managed version of who you think you're supposed to be.
• 5:28
  And it's because patterns, patterns reveal themselves, which led me to the dentist
• 5:33
  chair. Your dentist knows.
• 5:35
  If you don't floss, or if you only floss a couple of days before your appointment, your dentist knows.
• 5:39
  I've been telling clients this for years when I try to describe this concept
• 5:43
  of impression management.
• 5:44
  And I would say, oh yeah, I've talked with my dentist friend Mark about this,
• 5:47
  which now full disclosure, I had not done so, but I was so confident that Mark
• 5:53
  would agree to the point where I think I was starting to confabulate this narrative
• 5:56
  as if I had talked to him about it.
• 5:58
  I was convinced that once we sat down, Mark would validate exactly what I'm saying.
• 6:03
  And so I'm confident that I assumed the answer and I ran with it.
• 6:07
  Now, turns out I was right, which is definitely helpful.
• 6:11
  But I was doing my own impression management by acting like we'd had this thorough
• 6:14
  conversation and that this is what the dentist would say.
• 6:17
  Mark told me that according to his patients, every single one of them brushes
• 6:21
  twice a day and flosses regularly, every single one.
• 6:24
  And he said it takes him about a second of looking in their mouth to know the
• 6:27
  truth that he can often even tell before he looks.
• 6:31
  And when I asked what percentage actually floss consistently,
• 6:33
  he said maybe half a percent, maybe one. This isn't just a dentist thing.
• 6:38
  The don't wear sunscreen because they can see your skin and they see a lot of skin.
• 6:42
  The doctor knows you haven't changed your diet based on your blood work.
• 6:45
  The cop already maybe has evidence that you don't know about.
• 6:48
  They can tell when you're not being honest with them.
• 6:51
  I dare to say that any profession where somebody has developed this concept
• 6:55
  of pattern recognition, something where they've done something for so long,
• 6:58
  the ability to see over time whether somebody's habits match what they're claiming,
• 7:03
  that you are not even aware of the things that you don't know when you try to
• 7:07
  present and show somebody that, no, I really do this thing that I kind of really don't do.
• 7:13
  I run into it in therapy pretty consistently.
• 7:16
  People essentially cram before a session. They'll hurry up and read something
• 7:19
  that I sent them, or listen to maybe a third of a podcast that I might've suggested
• 7:22
  and then come in trying to act like, no, that was so profound.
• 7:25
  I've been sitting with this material all week.
• 7:27
  And there's the different quality to that conversation. When somebody has actually
• 7:31
  been practicing versus performing, there's typically more honesty, more vulnerability.
• 7:36
  There's more texture, more humility about how hard the work actually is or the
• 7:40
  things that the person is realizing as they start to do the work.
• 7:43
  Because when you start doing the work, whatever the work is,
• 7:46
  you start to realize, oh, there's things I didn't even know were coming,
• 7:49
  both things that are kind of exciting and things that I did not see coming.
• 7:53
  Because short bursts of effort don't look the same as long-term sustained growth
• 7:58
  when you're integrating something into who you are.
• 8:01
  I see it in so many areas. I see it with running. Sometimes people will tell
• 8:04
  me when they hear that I've been an ultramarathon runner, or they will say,
• 8:08
  yeah, I am too, or I'm really serious about distance.
• 8:10
  Not that I'm doing it to be cruel, but sometimes you want to have a shared experience.
• 8:15
  You have genuine curiosity because it's something that's important to you.
• 8:19
  So maybe ask a couple of follow-up questions. Say, what's your hydration routine?
• 8:22
  Especially back in the day before there were handheld bottles or vests,
• 8:25
  where would you go bury your Gatorade on a long run?
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  Do you alternate water with electrolytes? Do you take salt tablets?
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  What do you do about chafing when you get 10, 15, 20 miles in?
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  I bet you got some stories about that.
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  There are so many things that you only know from having done the thing.
• 8:40
  When somebody hasn't done the thing, the details show themselves.
• 8:44
  I admittedly had my own version of this when I was younger. I was talking to
• 8:48
  somebody who had mentioned that their family had a BMW.
• 8:51
  And for whatever reason, in that moment, reactively, impulsively,
• 8:55
  I felt the need to say that my family also drove a BMW.
• 8:58
  We didn't. So then they asked what model we had as a family.
• 9:02
  And it froze. And I pulled the old, you know, I'm not really sure.
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  Because I had no idea at the time if I didn't know what a three series was,
• 9:09
  a five series, a seven series.
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  And I would venture a guess that if you own a particular make of car,
• 9:15
  you probably know the model number.
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  It was immediately clear that I had no idea what I was talking about.
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  Impression management falls apart the second somebody asks a follow-up question
• 9:24
  that requires actual experience.
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  This all connects to something that I keep coming back to. And it's this idea
• 9:30
  that you can't cram for the test of life.
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  And it makes sense why we would try because most of us, I think,
• 9:34
  figured out in school that if you waited until the night before,
• 9:36
  especially if you have ADHD, that dopamine dump would come of procrastination.
• 9:41
  You could cram, memorize just enough and pass.
• 9:44
  Mark talks about the fact that he did it. I sure did it. Oh boy, did I do it.
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  But then you couldn't remember anything a week later, but it worked in the moment.
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  That strategy though only works in certain subjects.
• 9:55
  I actually had to ask someone about this because I was not much of a math guy,
• 9:59
  but apparently math is cumulative.
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  Algebra supports trigonometry and trigonometry supports calculus.
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  So if somebody never understood the earlier steps, they can't just memorize
• 10:08
  their way through the advanced material because the foundation isn't there.
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  That's more like life.
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  Things like emotional maturity and communication and empathy and self-awareness
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  and patience and accountability and trust, all cumulative.
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  They build through repeated practice. You can't temporarily memorize them or
• 10:25
  perform them on demand. People will know.
• 10:28
  They have to be built, and habits start to leave fingerprints.
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  So a patient might floss for a couple of days before an appointment,
• 10:34
  but gums reflect months and years of habits.
• 10:38
  It's funny, Mark said that post-cleaning motivation, the I'm a new person,
• 10:41
  and this is what I love. This is mental health in action.
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  This is, I think in so many areas of our lives, the I'm a new person,
• 10:47
  I'm going to floss every day, that feeling has a shelf life.
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  And when I asked him, how long is the shelf life? And I think he said about
• 10:54
  one or two weeks, which is typically what I see when even a couple comes in
• 10:58
  and they get new tools and all of a sudden they're going to communicate and
• 11:01
  they've figured it out one session. I'm that good. Not really.
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  But then after a week or two, things settle back into the familiar or home base.
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  And that doesn't mean that's a negative. It's just part of the human experience.
• 11:14
  And it's why we have to continue to practice. We go back to baseline.
• 11:17
  Same cycle in therapy and relationships and personal growth. You can't cram empathy.
• 11:21
  You can't cram trust. You can't cram emotional maturity. You have to practice them.
• 11:26
  So when it comes to the things that matter most, you really can't cram for the test of life.
• 11:30
  Let me take you into the conversation with Dr. Mark Redford.
• 11:32
  We cover a lot of ground, his origin story, how he ended up in the army to become a dentist.
• 11:37
  And then before he knows it, he's deployed in Baghdad.
• 11:40
  We talk about the psychology of the dental chair. We get into one of my favorite
• 11:43
  things lately, co-regulating, where you are trying to let somebody borrow your
• 11:47
  nervous system, whether it's in a relationship or in the dental chair,
• 11:49
  and how sometimes that works and sometimes that person becomes more dysregulated.
• 11:54
  A couple of things I found fascinating, he talks about why the person who comes
• 11:56
  in with the patient is often harder to manage than the patient themselves.
• 12:01
  And then we talk about a lot more. We didn't get to everything.
• 12:03
  I've already asked Mark to come back. He is committed. Let's get to the interview.
• 12:13
  Oh, do you get allergies? No, but I don't sleep, so I get tired. Oh, okay.
• 12:18
  So that's a different thing. A dentist with allergies, if you were sniffing
• 12:21
  the whole time? That would be very frustrating. Yeah, that'd be annoying with the mask on.
• 12:24
  Okay. It gets all up inside there. Mark Redford, welcome to the virtual couch.
• 12:27
  Tony, thank you. Yeah, Mark's my dentist and my friend.
• 12:30
  Yes. And I think I've only been talking about having you on for a decade?
• 12:33
  Yeah, been a little while. Yeah. Have you given up on that? No, no.
• 12:37
  Okay. No, I know you well enough. You get around to it. It just takes time.
• 12:42
  That might be the kindest thing I think I've ever heard. Hey,
• 12:45
  we're both in the same boat. I get it. Yeah.
• 12:47
  I have so many. I've wanted to do this for a long time. And this is,
• 12:51
  I want to even call this, you are going to kick off a series of mental health
• 12:55
  and with professionals. I like that. I know, right?
• 12:58
  And so, dentists, I think about this all the time. I've worked with a lot of dentists.
• 13:02
  There's some pop psychology myths I want to know if you can debunk or validate.
• 13:08
  And I just want to hear what got you into dentistry. I want to,
• 13:12
  I've got so many things that I thought, I almost want to start with something
• 13:16
  that is more of a psychology phenomenon and then we'll get to the back.
• 13:19
  Then I want to go back in time and hear your story and that sort of thing. Sounds good.
• 13:22
  But I guess basically, I'm wanting to eat the dessert first. Okay. Okay.
• 13:26
  So, something that needs to be backstory here.
• 13:30
  Basically, I have already had this conversation with you. I've assumed that
• 13:34
  you will tell me an answer.
• 13:36
  I have gone with it and I worry that I've even confabulated a narrative that
• 13:41
  I tell clients that, you know, I've talked with my dentist friend, Mark, about this.
• 13:45
  So, you don't have to validate me, but I hope you do.
• 13:49
  But I want you to poke holes in this. Okay. Are you ready? Yes.
• 13:53
  Something that I think about often and I try to tell clients is that life doesn't
• 13:57
  let you cram for a test in school.
• 14:00
  I don't know if you ever had this, but you would wait to the last minute,
• 14:03
  procrastinate, get a huge rush of dopamine, cram, and then do well? Yes.
• 14:08
  That was very consistently. Was it? Yeah. Okay. And it worked. It worked great. Yeah.
• 14:13
  Yeah. Couldn't remember anything a week later, but it worked right at that moment.
• 14:17
  So, I think that emotional growth maybe doesn't happen like that.
• 14:21
  And so, So the patterns that people do reveal their life and then with a lack
• 14:26
  of consistency it's really evident when somebody is, and I'm debuting this concept
• 14:31
  now, but it is when they try to cram for the test of life.
• 14:35
  So then here's where I go, I always then say that somebody who knows their craft
• 14:38
  or their profession can spot the patterns.
• 14:41
  So do you know when somebody sits in that chair and they say,
• 14:46
  oh no, I floss all the time?
• 14:48
  Yes. Okay. You can tell. And can you tell, tell me even what that's,
• 14:52
  and how often do people say it? Oh, all the time. Okay.
• 14:56
  According to all of my patients, they all brush twice a day.
• 15:00
  They all floss twice a day. They all take really good care of their teeth.
• 15:04
  It doesn't take but a second to look inside their mouth and see.
• 15:07
  Now, I could probably tell beforehand as well, just by, you have the anxious
• 15:13
  patient, you have the voided patient, you have all the ones that,
• 15:17
  They don't look you in the eye. They look away when they're saying stuff that
• 15:20
  tells you, okay, I don't know if they're really being honest now,
• 15:23
  but it takes a second of looking in their mouth to know really.
• 15:28
  And what percentage of patients do you think actually do floss regularly?
• 15:33
  One, half a percent. That's so validating, sad maybe?
• 15:37
  Well, yeah. I mean, it's tough. Do I do it as much as I should?
• 15:41
  No, I try, but we get in our routines and either we're good at what we do and
• 15:47
  we have that routine. I have some patients who are just religious.
• 15:50
  They have floss with them everywhere. They floss all the time.
• 15:52
  But in general, that's the very few. Now, okay, that brings up something that I never thought about.
• 15:57
  Is that somebody who potentially has OCD? Oh yeah, it's the other way around.
• 16:01
  They cause other damages.
• 16:03
  You can damage your teeth otherwise. So, you can be too aggressive and you can
• 16:06
  cut your gums up and cause damage cutting your gums by over flossing,
• 16:10
  by flossing too aggressively. See, that's what I'm worried about,
• 16:13
  so I want to make sure that I don't over floss.
• 16:14
  People who are aggressive, they'll grab a metal pick and try and scrape their
• 16:17
  teeth, which can really damage the enamel.
• 16:19
  Even though the hygienists do it, they do it specifically and it's once every
• 16:23
  four to six months versus every day.
• 16:26
  Okay, true confession, I did buy a thing on Amazon that looked like the little
• 16:30
  pick. A little scaler, yeah.
• 16:31
  Yep, and I read all the reviews and then I got it and I sat with it for months
• 16:36
  and then when I finally tried to use it, it terrified me and it hurt.
• 16:40
  So, I got rid of it. Okay. Yeah, there you go.
• 16:43
  Yeah. Yeah. Trust your hygienist. Okay. Okay. You know what's funny as well
• 16:47
  and maybe this leads into I did not go to the dentist for a long time and you
• 16:51
  are my dentist and then it was
• 16:53
  probably two years that I was telling you I'm coming in and yes it was.
• 16:56
  Yeah and I had a fair amount of work that needed to be done and you did an amazing
• 16:59
  job with it and what's funny though is you did such a nice job that I had this
• 17:03
  little gap where food would get caught and that was why I flossed Thank you.
• 17:07
  And so, you fixed me so well that it's your fault that I don't floss now.
• 17:10
  You don't floss, it's my fault. Okay, I'll take the blame.
• 17:12
  Okay, I blame my parents for anything. So, you can blame your dentist for all
• 17:15
  your teeth problems, right? Yeah, you did so well, but then I don't floss.
• 17:18
  Okay, so then that's safe to say that I'm looking at pattern recognition.
• 17:21
  So, if somebody said to you, hey, I really don't floss very often, do you kick them out?
• 17:26
  No. I know, right? So, it's like, maybe anybody listening, there's your chance
• 17:30
  to be so brave is to tell your dentist, I don't floss. Be honest.
• 17:33
  I mean, we can talk about it. It probably won't change your pattern or your
• 17:37
  behavior, but we can at least explain why you should floss.
• 17:40
  So, then there's a conscious choice instead of an unconscious choice.
• 17:43
  That's right. I'll go from unconscious incompetence to now conscious incompetence. There you go.
• 17:47
  That's brilliant because that, man, see, this is why I was telling you you should
• 17:50
  have came on years ago, years ago.
• 17:51
  Because I love the mental health aspects or psychological aspects of everything
• 17:56
  because what you just said there is funny too because how many times is somebody
• 17:59
  then leaving the dentist and then they say, okay, teeth are clean.
• 18:02
  I am a new person. I'm going to this for the rest of my life and then it has
• 18:06
  a shelf life. I wonder how long would you guess?
• 18:09
  I'd say a couple weeks in general. Two weeks is where I go of anything almost
• 18:14
  in general and then we go back to our home base of the way we operate.
• 18:17
  Yeah, 100% yeah. I thought we're trying to tell patients all the time like they
• 18:21
  come in for a cleaning, my gums are bleeding, okay, they're nice and clean now.
• 18:24
  If you floss regularly for the next two weeks, they'll stop bleeding and they
• 18:29
  do but then they stop flossing and they start bleeding again. That's so funny.
• 18:32
  Are you a big fan of the little flossers or regular flossers?
• 18:36
  I'm a big fan of whatever gets people to do stuff, but I use the little flossers
• 18:40
  just because I prefer... What works best for me is I drive a lot.
• 18:44
  My office is a half hour away from my house, so I floss... Every time I get
• 18:47
  in the car, I floss on the way to work and I floss the way home from work.
• 18:50
  Oh my gosh. I don't floss when I'm brushing my teeth.
• 18:52
  But I floss in those times because I'm trying to break up that plaque and then
• 18:55
  brush it later, it gets that fluoride in there. Okay, life hack right there.
• 18:58
  Yep, that's for me that works.
• 19:00
  No, it's brilliant. It's funny, I just talked to a guy the other day,
• 19:03
  he's a plumber, he's in his car a lot and he doesn't brush much and he forgets
• 19:08
  to use deodorant on occasion.
• 19:10
  And so, I came up with the brilliant idea of getting the little brushy things
• 19:13
  and deodorant he keeps in his car. Yeah.
• 19:16
  So, that's funny, I have little forearm workouts that I have in all my cars,
• 19:19
  Any car I drive and I've got one at my desk. I didn't think about that.
• 19:23
  Yeah, that's okay. I love it already. This is gold.
• 19:25
  There's a term in psychology and it's called impression management.
• 19:29
  It's when people try to control how others perceive them by presenting what
• 19:33
  they think is the right image.
• 19:35
  I think that's pretty fascinating. So, do you see a lot of that?
• 19:38
  Oh, yeah. I think we do it ourselves. Probably do it myself a lot.
• 19:40
  Absolutely. I was going to say, I think it's pretty common.
• 19:42
  I'm doing it even right now. Like I'm probably trying to present.
• 19:45
  No, this is what a podcast from a mental health professional talking about mental health.
• 19:50
  A dentist would look like, even though I have no idea. Yeah,
• 19:53
  never done this before. Nope, no podcast. Exactly, right?
• 19:56
  But I do think that concept of impression management works really well in short
• 19:59
  interactions, short bursts.
• 20:01
  So, when somebody meets somebody new for the first time, then they present a... Best foot forward.
• 20:05
  Yep, yep, impression management and then it's really funny because then people
• 20:08
  lock in on, oh, this is who that person is.
• 20:10
  Boy, so then first impressions, do you feel pressure when new patients show
• 20:15
  up to present a good image?
• 20:18
  That's yes and no. You go through cycles as a dentist.
• 20:21
  When you're a new dentist, you tend to over-explain, try and show your intelligence,
• 20:26
  show all the things you've learned and know and then after doing it,
• 20:29
  I'm doing it for 23 years now, I just say hi, how are you doing and then just
• 20:33
  talk to them and find out what they want, what they have concerns about,
• 20:36
  what their questions are and then just go from there.
• 20:38
  Okay, let this unfold in front of us because that's my, that's the therapist
• 20:41
  journey or anything, I over-explain everything because I want the validation.
• 20:45
  You need to know I'm a good therapist, but over time then I know I'm a good
• 20:48
  therapist. You're a good dentist? Yes.
• 20:50
  Well, that's good because your presence, I dig it. When you go in your office, it's just a vibe.
• 20:55
  You feel it and it seems like your staff feels it. Yeah, your staff builds off
• 20:59
  you and you get good staff. You got to find good staff as well. Make a huge difference.
• 21:03
  Going back to I have, currently I have several dentist clients and it's funny
• 21:06
  because I have heard more about staffing related things in the last probably three or four years.
• 21:11
  Maybe it's post-pandemic, but is it more difficult to find staff? Yes, it has been, yeah.
• 21:16
  A lot of people retired during the pandemic. A lot of the older hygienists and
• 21:20
  assistants who have been doing it for a long time just fell out, didn't come back.
• 21:23
  And then this new generation has a little different work ethic,
• 21:25
  a little different... The kids these days? Yeah, the kids these days.
• 21:28
  They just, they don't, they want to feel happy and good at work, not just work.
• 21:32
  Oh, that's okay. I just now know what will our second podcast episode.
• 21:37
  So, I want to have you back quarterly. We can talk about staffing.
• 21:40
  That would be interesting. That really would. And the psychology of staffing practice.
• 21:44
  Okay, let's go back in the time machine because I really want to hear.
• 21:48
  I love origin stories. Okay. What drew you to dentistry?
• 21:52
  Have you wanted to since you saw the Christmas special of Harvey the Elf that
• 21:56
  wanted to be the dentist?
• 21:59
  No, Marathon Man. Oh, I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. When did you think
• 22:02
  about it? Or when did you know? You know, I've always medical healthcare.
• 22:06
  I was always interested in as you're younger, I'm gonna be a doctor,
• 22:09
  not knowing what that meant. And why do you think that were people in your family doctors?
• 22:12
  No, no doctors. My dad's and my father's an insurance broker.
• 22:15
  My mom's a stay at home mom. No, I just always was intrigued by healthcare.
• 22:18
  Just love that side of stuff.
• 22:20
  Just how the body works, the anatomy, the sciences around that.
• 22:23
  I always found it fascinating.
• 22:25
  My uncle is a dentist. And so when I was going to college, when I went to undergrad,
• 22:30
  And I started looking at them pre-med, pre-dental, I went out and shadowed him
• 22:33
  for a bit and I liked the fact that he used his hands.
• 22:36
  I liked the fact that he got to do stuff with his hands and it's all manual dexterity.
• 22:42
  You're like a little mini mechanic, you're doing things all the time, which I love.
• 22:45
  I like building things, playing guitar, doing that kind of fishing,
• 22:48
  doing things where I could use my hands a lot.
• 22:50
  And then once I figured out that I could go home to my family after work and
• 22:53
  I didn't have on-call or rotations or 48-hour shifts, I was married at that
• 22:59
  point. and we were expecting our first kid when I decided to go to pre-dental at BYU.
• 23:03
  That was like, okay, I want to be able to come home to my family and have a
• 23:07
  family because you do give up a lot of that as a medical doctor,
• 23:11
  at least for the first big bulk of your career.
• 23:13
  Was there something that you had thought about doing other than...
• 23:16
  Dental while you were in college? I was looking at all the sciences.
• 23:19
  In undergrad, it really doesn't matter what your major is, you just have to
• 23:22
  have all the pre-requisites to be able to take the test for either the MCAT or the dental tests.
• 23:28
  From what I know about you, it's fun to see you talk about the manual dexterity
• 23:32
  because when I think about talking to you about dentistry, you like making the
• 23:37
  crowns and you like really getting in there and doing the work.
• 23:40
  Yeah, I do a lot of implants, I do a lot of crown and bridge.
• 23:43
  I do basically, I'm a general dentist, but I do a lot of everything,
• 23:45
  taking teeth out, all of it.
• 23:46
  For the first part of my career, I don't do it as much anymore,
• 23:49
  but if I had a patient who had a full mouth restoration, I would do all the wax up.
• 23:53
  I'd sit there in my lab and I'd design all the teeth and I'd build them and
• 23:56
  shape them and do all the modeling of them so they're where I wanted them.
• 24:00
  And then I would use that to help design the teeth.
• 24:02
  I don't do it much anymore. Would you like to? Do you like that?
• 24:05
  Oh, if every once in a while, I'll pick it back up. Time.
• 24:08
  You get too busy. I have other things I do with my time in my office when I've
• 24:13
  not seen a patient other than tinker with my lab stuff.
• 24:16
  And you mentioned too that being able to come home and the commitment that would
• 24:20
  have been had you gone to medical school, but then you did spend a fair amount
• 24:24
  of time away from your home. I did, yes.
• 24:26
  Talk about that. I joined the military to pay for school, for dental school.
• 24:30
  Which it sounds brilliant from what I hear that people do that.
• 24:33
  What happens? You join? So they've We have something called the Health Professions
• 24:37
  Scholarship Program, the HPSP.
• 24:40
  You have to go active for however so many years, whatever your contract is.
• 24:44
  So I did three years active duty and they paid for the last few years of my dental school.
• 24:48
  Wow. So you exited dental school, no debt?
• 24:51
  Well, I had first year. Oh, okay. Because the first year I hadn't applied for that yet. Oh, I see.
• 24:55
  And then second year, we decided we were financially, we had two kids in dental
• 25:00
  school. We're trying to, I was working nights.
• 25:03
  And going to dental school. And so we decided we need to find something to help.
• 25:07
  And so the scholarship was a good option.
• 25:09
  Okay, so I didn't realize that. So then did they pay for your dental school
• 25:12
  and then you went active duty? Correct.
• 25:14
  Yeah. So I finished, so I came out of dental school and then went right into
• 25:17
  the army as a captain. Wow. And did you, when did you do boot camp?
• 25:20
  Right after I graduated. That's what's funny to think when I hear about these,
• 25:23
  the medical scholarship, I can't imagine. I used to love watching war movies,
• 25:29
  Saving Private Ryan, you name it, full metal jacket, I can't platoon back in
• 25:32
  the day. What was your boot camp experience?
• 25:34
  It was, it was, well, no, it wasn't that much, but it was, it was officers.
• 25:38
  We didn't go to, we didn't go to under, you have enlisted boot camp and you
• 25:40
  have officers candidate school. Okay.
• 25:42
  So we went to officer candidates school because I came out as a captain.
• 25:46
  So I never went through anything enlisted.
• 25:48
  So it's still, you do, they bring the dentists out about, about a month before
• 25:52
  the rest of the officer candidates, because they've already gone through,
• 25:55
  they were enlisted, they were coming up to be officers.
• 25:58
  Whereas us dentists had no army experience, no... It was the medical as well,
• 26:03
  but had no military experience whatsoever.
• 26:04
  So, they put us through marching and all how to salute and how to dress and
• 26:08
  how to do all your stuff and how to... And so, basically a crash course on how to be in the army.
• 26:13
  Where did the people that had gone through and enlisted up to there,
• 26:15
  was there a definite division? Oh, huge divisions.
• 26:18
  It was interesting because in Officer Candace School, it's a lot about...
• 26:21
  There's lots of different parts.
• 26:23
  You have the didactic part, which is all the test taking, how to do,
• 26:26
  because you're supposed to be a captain in the army.
• 26:29
  So, you're supposed to be able to lead troops into battle.
• 26:32
  So, you have to go through all the war planning and the gaming and all that stuff.
• 26:36
  And so, you have to know how to deploy troops and best thought practices on
• 26:39
  that. What was that like for you?
• 26:41
  It was actually fun because it was like, you just graduated dental school, so test taking was easy.
• 26:45
  So, we were, it was great because I could take a test in a second and do wonderful.
• 26:49
  It was actually funny because they kept all the dentists and medical doctors
• 26:52
  in one platoon and they had been three or four platoons of officer candidates.
• 26:57
  And all the other ones were just a mix of other enlisted people coming up.
• 27:01
  We failed all the physical stuff we were last, all the orienteering we were
• 27:05
  last, all the outdoor stuff we were last, but we killed them so bad on all the
• 27:08
  written tests that we were way ahead of everybody in points and so we were considered
• 27:12
  the number one platoon which ticked all the regular army people off.
• 27:16
  So at the second half they broke all the and split them up, split us all up
• 27:20
  between everybody else, so it was kind of fun.
• 27:22
  How has that not been a Netflix movie or special, the ragtag bunch of military
• 27:26
  people that can't do the physical and then are getting called nerds and then
• 27:30
  sometimes they're all trapped together somewhere and they make it work together.
• 27:34
  They make it work together, who knows.
• 27:35
  And then did it benefit you in things like playing the game Risk?
• 27:38
  No, no, no, no. I did not realize that. Did you know at the time that there was.
• 27:44
  A potential that you would be deployed? Oh, yeah. I actually took my oath of
• 27:49
  office and I accepted the scholarship and it got sworn in a week before 9-11. Oh.
• 27:55
  A week before that happened. So, a week before, yeah, I was about to say,
• 27:57
  man, what was that like knowing that was coming?
• 28:00
  But I mean, obviously, you didn't. Well, not when I sent in,
• 28:01
  but I knew right after it happened. A week later. A week later.
• 28:04
  What did you remember your thought process then?
• 28:05
  Well, thought process was what in the world, where's our world going?
• 28:08
  This is sad and we were watching it all the time.
• 28:10
  I had a lot of friends in dental school because I was in Florida for
• 28:13
  dental school down in south florida a lot of them from new
• 28:16
  york so i had several people who's had family and so
• 28:19
  close ties yeah and so we it was crazy it's
• 28:22
  actually in the middle of a test when it all happened and the doctors who were
• 28:26
  running tests said you guys can't leave finish your test you don't have an option
• 28:29
  to stop a treatment if something crazy in the world happens you got to finish
• 28:31
  your treatment before you can go find out what's happening wow that's wild and
• 28:35
  then from there what was the time frame when did you start hearing that people
• 28:40
  were going over and you might go over?
• 28:42
  So that was 2001 and then I didn't graduate for three more years.
• 28:46
  So a lot of that initial push into Kabul and all the other stuff had happened already.
• 28:50
  And so when I got to Fort Stewart, Georgia, it was during Operation Iraqi Freedom, which is the second one.
• 28:56
  And so we heard about that. People were going around all the time.
• 28:59
  I thought I might get lucky because when I first got to my post,
• 29:02
  the third ID, which is the third infantry division out of Fort Stewart was deployed.
• 29:06
  So I wasn't part of that group. So I was on base and I was doing,
• 29:10
  taking care of people that were back and doing all that stuff while they were deployed.
• 29:13
  So, the first six months was all the build up to that.
• 29:16
  So, it was a lot of work to get them ready to go and then the next year,
• 29:19
  there was like a ghost town because the whole division was gone in Iraq.
• 29:23
  And so, during that time, I just treated it like training.
• 29:26
  So, I'd go, I'd work and then go to the specialty clinics and practice and learn
• 29:29
  on what they had. So, I thought I might get lucky.
• 29:31
  But then I, and then my last year, I got called up to go in what's called PROFIS,
• 29:36
  which is a professional backfill.
• 29:38
  So we're going to go replace other dentists and doctors out there.
• 29:41
  So it was a division of dentists and doctors that had got pulled from all over
• 29:44
  the country, different basis, made it into a unit and then deployed throughout
• 29:48
  Iraq. And so I got to go over to Baghdad.
• 29:50
  I was over in Baghdad for about six, seven months.
• 29:53
  Do you remember your mental health challenges or mental game?
• 29:56
  What was it like once you knew I'm going over?
• 29:59
  Well, my wife was pregnant, almost about to have her fourth kid when I found
• 30:03
  out. So it was very stressful for that.
• 30:06
  She had our youngest son about three months, two months before I left. Was that hard for you?
• 30:10
  I missed a lot that first year. I missed this whole first year,
• 30:12
  but it was scary going over there.
• 30:14
  You don't know what because it's a war zone. I mean, it wasn't as bad as going
• 30:18
  with the first units over there, but it still was a war zone.
• 30:22
  It's interesting too, because you think about medical professionals going over
• 30:25
  until the first time we talked about it.
• 30:27
  I never thought about you need all the medical dentists and because people are,
• 30:32
  I mean, I can't even imagine somebody wakes up and they've got to abscess and
• 30:35
  they've got to go... Yeah, toothache or something like that,
• 30:37
  yeah. So then was a lot of it emergency?
• 30:39
  Yeah, so basically my progress where I was, I was actually in Baghdad in the
• 30:44
  green zone, so I was one of the nice, I had a fixed facility I was in.
• 30:47
  I wasn't in a tent, which was nice.
• 30:48
  I know you have interesting stories about where you... I have,
• 30:50
  yeah. Can you talk about that? Sure. I mean, I was in the green zone,
• 30:53
  which is where all of Saddam's palace, a lot of his palaces were.
• 30:56
  And so it was basically a fixed structure with entry points, so it's safer. fur.
• 31:00
  The things that we happen to us a lot is they would just throw mortars in.
• 31:03
  So, the people outside would come and drive up, shoot a mortar into the compound
• 31:06
  somewhere in the driveway. There's no aiming, but things would explode from time to time.
• 31:10
  I mean, I have a few stories where it exploded outside the building I was in
• 31:13
  and things falling down and lights flickering and stuff and that kind of stuff.
• 31:17
  But then you just pick yourself up and finish what you're doing and walk out and walk home.
• 31:20
  Well, you have such a calming presence anyway. Did that change at that time?
• 31:24
  In the beginning, the funny thing is first, like the first week I got there,
• 31:27
  first or second week I got there, they had thrown a mortar into the compound
• 31:31
  and actually hit an ammo dump.
• 31:32
  So things started blowing. It was on the edge. It wasn't near me.
• 31:35
  It wasn't near me, but things were exploding like crazy. So I got my flak helmet
• 31:37
  on, my flak jacket on. I'm hiding in a bunker.
• 31:40
  Right outside of my room and like two of us in there rest people are
• 31:42
  just walking around and then towards the end of the time i was
• 31:45
  i remember working we were in the evening we would go there's gyms
• 31:48
  and stuff we could work out in and a mortar exploded outside one of the gyms
• 31:52
  and everything's falling on us we'd get up and walked home went to dinner afterwards
• 31:55
  wow and you just didn't even phase you anymore after that after a bit is that
• 31:59
  a positive or a negative thing in the long run i don't know you kind of learn
• 32:03
  i mean it's amazing how we can adapt to a situation.
• 32:06
  And also, weren't you in... I swear, did you... I might have made this story up in my head.
• 32:11
  Were you in one of his really fancy palaces where you had doing dental work
• 32:15
  by gold fixtures and things like that?
• 32:17
  No. I made that up. I mean, we were in the hospital.
• 32:21
  We go to dinner in some of his palaces. That's where they have the cafeterias
• 32:25
  or the place we'd go eat were there. And just opulence? Yeah, it's crazy.
• 32:29
  Wow. Yeah, just opulence all over. Do you ever remember a time thinking a few
• 32:33
  years earlier you're at the BYU creamery getting an ice cream cone and now you're
• 32:37
  flak jacket in a bunker in Baghdad?
• 32:40
  That's not my not the way my brain works. True.
• 32:43
  Yeah, that's a good point. That is. And then how long were you there?
• 32:46
  About six, seven months around there. Yeah. So I was gone, about two month build
• 32:50
  up, a month or two month build up with where you're away from family.
• 32:53
  So I left Amy, actually drove her out to stay with her sister and her and her
• 32:58
  husband out in Utah for the time I was gone. Yeah. Because she had the four kids and the new baby.
• 33:02
  And then I was there for about a month and a half getting all the,
• 33:05
  finishing all the prep work to go to Baghdad.
• 33:07
  Then we fly to Kuwait and you're there for several weeks to acclimate.
• 33:11
  And then you fly in on a C-130, they do what's called a combat landing into Baghdad. What's that?
• 33:17
  It's where they basically take a, they come and they turn and they drive almost
• 33:20
  straight down and they level out right at the end to land.
• 33:23
  Because they don't want to come in slow because you can be your target.
• 33:25
  So, it's like you're, because you're sitting sideways in the back of those, right?
• 33:28
  Oh, yeah. In the C-130, you're all sitting sideways like this and all of a sudden
• 33:31
  the plane just kind of turns and dives.
• 33:34
  It's like straight down and it pulls up at the end. That's wild,
• 33:36
  Mark. Yeah, it was crazy.
• 33:37
  So then you come back from there and then how much more time did you have in
• 33:41
  the army? Basically, I was ready to get out.
• 33:42
  So I came back and I started my out-processing at that point.
• 33:45
  All right. And then where'd you go after that?
• 33:48
  Arizona. I was in Arizona for about three years. I so appreciate that story.
• 33:52
  You are a veteran. You are a combat veteran. I am, yeah.
• 33:56
  Do you feel like a combat veteran? No, because I was a dentist.
• 33:59
  You just don't feel like it. It's not like I was carrying guns the whole time.
• 34:02
  I had weapons and stuff. You have your M9 and your M16. I never shot anything.
• 34:07
  I never... I saw a lot of stuff, crazy things. I saw a lot of the aftermath, which is different.
• 34:11
  I've never even asked you when we just said a minute ago, was it a good thing
• 34:14
  or a bad thing to get used to the bombing?
• 34:17
  Do you ever feel like you struggled for any PTSD after that?
• 34:21
  Amy says I have. I don't notice, honestly. What did she say?
• 34:25
  She said I was different when I came back. I just was just different.
• 34:29
  Which is really interesting because if we want to jump into the mental health
• 34:31
  stuff, and by the way, your wife is one of the funniest people I know. She is.
• 34:34
  And anyone, I'll put links in the show notes to her.
• 34:38
  The One Cute Cookie. Yeah, One Cute Cookie. She does classes,
• 34:41
  cooking classes for kids and adults.
• 34:44
  And if I see her and she doesn't hand me caramels, I'm a little bit upset.
• 34:48
  Right. They're amazing. They're very good. Yeah, so I'll put links in the show notes for that.
• 34:51
  That's great. The mental health stuff is interesting because I know when you
• 34:54
  and I are just talking, I talk maybe incessantly about mental health related
• 34:58
  things. and one of them is that if I feel it, it's true.
• 35:00
  So, if let's say hypothetically, if she just, I feel like you're different, then you are different.
• 35:05
  But it could theoretically be, Amy watches this. Hi, Amy.
• 35:09
  I can't imagine being a mom to four little kids and you're gone.
• 35:13
  And then that feels overwhelming.
• 35:15
  And so, it comes back and it's, I am overwhelmed. You seem different.
• 35:19
  Yeah. Could easily be that way. Yeah. It's really interesting though.
• 35:22
  Looking back now, would you still choose dentistry if you were starting over.
• 35:27
  Oh, yeah. I love doing dentistry. And this is the part, you only know what it feels like to be you.
• 35:32
  Admittedly, I get to talk to a lot of people, a lot of professions,
• 35:34
  and I'm always fascinated by the amount of people that wouldn't do dentistry
• 35:40
  or wouldn't be a doctor again or wouldn't be an attorney.
• 35:42
  And you actually break this theory that I have. I don't know if I ever shared
• 35:45
  this one with you, but sometimes I think that doctors, dentists,
• 35:48
  and lawyers, when they're young, if they say that they're going to be one,
• 35:53
  then anybody they interact with is, man, that's great, champ.
• 35:56
  You're going to be so successful.
• 35:57
  Because we get that whole sense of self from validation.
• 36:00
  So then everybody's validating that there's my future doctor.
• 36:04
  And so then that carries you into, all of a sudden you're in college,
• 36:08
  you're in dental school, medical school, law school.
• 36:10
  And then you get out. And at that point, you're still thinking,
• 36:13
  okay, this is going to be amazing. I'm going to be wealthy.
• 36:15
  And also I have a half a million dollars in student loans. Yeah, exactly.
• 36:20
  And so now I'm just grinding it out, having kids, life's overwhelming,
• 36:24
  working long hours, and I cannot tell you, Mark, the number of people that I see.
• 36:30
  At that point, they realize, I don't even like this anymore,
• 36:32
  but they feel locked in to the profession and they can't get out.
• 36:36
  And that part breaks my heart because I find often, and maybe this is me projecting
• 36:40
  that I had 10 years in software and now it's been 20 plus as a therapist and
• 36:44
  I am so grateful to find the second career.
• 36:47
  I've always appreciated that you have loved it. And I think because you like
• 36:51
  the tinkering, you like the being in the mouth.
• 36:54
  And a lot of people don't. Well, I mean, I could separate the business side
• 36:57
  of dentistry and the stresses of dentistry versus doing dentistry.
• 37:01
  So, I like doing dentistry.
• 37:02
  I like working on patients and taking care of patients and like I said,
• 37:06
  the physical, the actual dexterity part of it.
• 37:08
  The business side is very stressful, very different. And why you became a dentist was not?
• 37:13
  There's no education, there's no classes in dental school or anything about
• 37:16
  economics, about overhead, about business practices. Supply chain demand.
• 37:21
  Any of that. So, you learn a lot, you make a lot of mistakes.
• 37:26
  It's definitely the two parts to that.
• 37:29
  Yeah, and it's fascinating just my hypothesis is that then at that point I wonder
• 37:33
  if that's when the version I was talking about a minute ago that isn't yours
• 37:37
  because you really like doing the work and I'm also, how much projection is this too?
• 37:42
  I love doing what I do and by the time people are doing therapy for 20 years,
• 37:46
  usually they're pretty burned out and they're trying to get a bunch of interns
• 37:48
  and they move into more management.
• 37:50
  I want nothing to do with that And I've talked with other professions,
• 37:53
  a cop that had become a detective and then he realized, oh, I want back on the
• 37:56
  beat or are you like staying and doing the dentistry?
• 37:59
  Yeah. I look at that and think, okay, we found our thing and so,
• 38:02
  if somebody got in there early because of validation, realizes they don't like
• 38:05
  it, I wonder sometimes if it's like, I'll be happy if, so I'll do the business part.
• 38:09
  Yeah. But they weren't trained in business. So, then they get there,
• 38:11
  I'm like, oh, I'm still unhappy.
• 38:13
  I just wonder if that could be a thing. Definitely. 100% could be a thing. I've seen it. Yeah.
• 38:18
  And there's those guys who go into dentistry actually planning to be businessmen,
• 38:22
  don't want to do the dentistry at all.
• 38:23
  I know several who get their dental degree, they pass the boards,
• 38:27
  they're a dentist, they see patients for maybe a half a year,
• 38:29
  and the rest of the time they're growing, buying practices, having their dentist
• 38:33
  work for them, and they do the business side of stuff.
• 38:35
  Yeah. They're super successful. They make way more money than I do.
• 38:38
  And now I'm thinking of another friend. Yeah, you're right. that he now owns
• 38:41
  several different companies and he started as a dentist and he does seem just
• 38:44
  he seems like a true entrepreneur.
• 38:46
  Yeah. So, I know he was a good dentist but then it was like, what's next?
• 38:49
  But you really enjoy what you're doing. Yeah, I like what I do. Yeah.
• 38:53
  I'm curious, is there a personality type that is more suited for dentistry in your opinion?
• 38:58
  I think there's a personality type that's more prevalent. Well, what's that?
• 39:01
  It is that kind of caregiver, the more, I don't know, disc. We use disc in my
• 39:06
  practice when I talk about communication styles.
• 39:09
  What's that? The D-I-S-C, it's just one of the communication styles.
• 39:12
  So you have your extrovert, the one you talk with the introvert,
• 39:16
  the different person, the first different ways of communicating. Okay.
• 39:19
  And so most dentists I would consider are an S-type, meaning that they're more,
• 39:23
  they're the workhorse, they're work engines.
• 39:25
  They just want to go and get to work. They don't want, they don't want stress,
• 39:27
  they don't want the anxiety, they don't want to have, they want things to go
• 39:30
  smooth, they don't want, they're not trying to rock the boat and they want to
• 39:33
  work and make things happen and take care of people.
• 39:35
  They're not the ones who want to change it up or be in charge all the time.
• 39:38
  They want to do the dentistry. Yeah. Do you know what the DISC stands for?
• 39:42
  Dominant. There's the three that you have the dominant, the...
• 39:45
  I can't even look it up and then I'll make it sound smart. So, yeah.
• 39:48
  So, DISC, you have the four different kinds, right? You have the extrovert.
• 39:51
  That's... So, there are two extroverts and two introverts.
• 39:53
  The extrovert, that's... Okay. So, I'm... No, I wasn't familiar with DISC and
• 39:56
  so I just did a quick look.
• 39:58
  Dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. Yes.
• 40:01
  So, where do you fit on that? I'm... Yeah, I'm definitely steadiness. That makes sense.
• 40:05
  Okay, steadiness. If I go through these, then dominance, confident,
• 40:08
  competitive, and results-oriented?
• 40:10
  Kind of more like a CEO type. Okay, is that A type? Yeah, A type,
• 40:13
  yeah. So it depends how you say it, yeah. And then the influencer?
• 40:16
  And influence, enthusiastic, optimistic, and social? Like the party,
• 40:19
  but I call them that, the ones that want to be the life of the party all the
• 40:21
  time. I might find myself a little bit of that. You might find yourself there, yeah.
• 40:23
  Okay, and then yeah, steadiness, you are, boy, I think I want my dentist steady.
• 40:27
  Patient, reliable, team-oriented.
• 40:29
  So the way I explain it is I'm introverted, but I'm people-oriented.
• 40:33
  So the S type are introverted but more people-oriented where the conscientious
• 40:36
  are introverted but data-driven.
• 40:39
  D-types are the extroverts that are data-driven and the intro and the I are
• 40:43
  the extroverts that are people-driven.
• 40:45
  That's kind of how you look at it. And so, the reason this comes into play for
• 40:49
  me is because as soon as a patient sits down and I start talking to them,
• 40:53
  I can basically determine where they land on that spectrum so I know how they want to be told.
• 40:58
  So, if I'm talking to somebody who's a D-type personality, they're making the
• 41:01
  decision. So, I give them a couple decisions, and say, go for it.
• 41:03
  This is what you need to have done. I let them make the choice of talking to
• 41:06
  somebody who's an I. It's more about, OK, this is going to make you feel good.
• 41:09
  It's going to feel great.
• 41:11
  This is how it's going to work for you. That's what I want to hear.
• 41:14
  And then S for me, it's.
• 41:16
  For me, it's more just, I'm just going to take care of you, make sure it's no
• 41:20
  longer bothering you, that kind of stuff, right?
• 41:22
  And whereas the C is going to be really, this is how this piece works.
• 41:26
  And I go into little detail.
• 41:28
  They want details on what type of material are you using to do a filling?
• 41:31
  What type of this are you using?
• 41:32
  So you go into real fine detail to help them understand. I like that.
• 41:35
  So everybody has a different style of communicating.
• 41:37
  It's no right or wrong. It's just, this is how they want to be talked to.
• 41:41
  And if I could talk to them that way, then it helps them understand why they
• 41:45
  need what I'm telling them. That's really good. I really like that.
• 41:47
  I've never heard of that one.
• 41:49
  I love that. I've got an episode written that I haven't recorded yet,
• 41:52
  and now I'm going to need to add that too. But I went down everything.
• 41:55
  The print study, which is similar to that. I could add that. I've got Enneagrams.
• 41:58
  I looked at my astrology chart, my Myers-Briggs, and then used them all.
• 42:03
  Basically, it's almost creepy how accurate they are. It is.
• 42:07
  Yeah. And I want to look at it as a place to operate from, not an excuse. Well, I'm a this.
• 42:12
  Yeah, no, it's not. It's not. It's never an excuse. It's just,
• 42:15
  there's no right or wrong.
• 42:17
  It's not a belief thing. It's nothing. It's just a kind of communication style.
• 42:20
  That makes so much sense in the way you just laid that out too.
• 42:22
  Okay. Let me get back to the, okay. By the way, I am now noticing,
• 42:27
  I'm bringing gentle awareness to myself that I am really.
• 42:30
  Appreciative of you coming in and I am wishing I would have done this a long
• 42:33
  time ago because I have five different clusters of questions and we just got
• 42:39
  through one and we're over half an hour in.
• 42:41
  So, I want to go into a little bit of the psychology of the dental chair and
• 42:45
  then I will commit you with a contractual basis to come back.
• 42:50
  Because here's where I think the mental health things come in is I assume that
• 42:55
  dentistry is one of the few professions where people show up anxious.
• 43:00
  I was about to stop and say mine as well, maybe a doctor, but sometimes it seems
• 43:04
  like people going to the doctor wanting to just be told they're okay,
• 43:06
  they may not need anything, and people eventually, I'm told,
• 43:10
  look forward to coming to therapy in a way because they do, but is yours,
• 43:16
  because you're not going to get out of there without somebody at least scraping your teeth.
• 43:21
  Well, reframe that for me, that one didn't land well, but yeah,
• 43:24
  so what's that like? Can you tell when people are nervous?
• 43:26
  Yeah. I mean, it's most, I'd say over, you know, over 50% are really,
• 43:31
  really anxious or quite anxious and then everybody's got a little bit of anxiety coming to the dentist.
• 43:37
  Our goal is obviously to help them function through that because you have the
• 43:43
  ones that are so anxious they haven't been to the dentist in years and then
• 43:46
  they have a lot of problems and then you have to try and address the issues
• 43:49
  from the neglect but in a way that allows them to want to actually come back and see you instead of.
• 43:55
  Increasing the anxiety and making him not want to ever come back or ever see
• 43:58
  the dentist again. What does that feel like to you?
• 44:01
  I don't, I mean, it's always a challenge, but it's kind of natural for me.
• 44:05
  I hate to say that, but I'm very, I don't have a, I've been very lucky in that
• 44:09
  I tend to have people relax and as time goes on and I have a lot of patients
• 44:14
  who didn't come in for a long time and then now they're very comfortable.
• 44:17
  After seeing me for a little while, they don't have any, their anxiety,
• 44:20
  well, they probably have a little anxiety, but not enough to stop them
• 44:23
  from coming in or and you know the several that were in the beginning
• 44:26
  i had to sedate them just to see them and now we don't have to
• 44:28
  sedate them anymore because they're comfortable i don't know if we talked much about
• 44:31
  this because it's my current fixation but on co-regulation where
• 44:35
  the nervous systems co-regulate yeah and i have not thought about i don't know
• 44:40
  if i and i'm not just saying this because you're here and you're my friend but
• 44:43
  the co-regulation of a dentist would be incredible because you're basically
• 44:46
  saying hey you can borrow my nervous system while you're here yeah you do you
• 44:50
  have that because i could also see if somebody wasn't doing their own good liking
• 44:54
  what they do. Chair side matter.
• 44:55
  Chair side manner matters a lot, right? I mean, you'll have dentists who are,
• 44:59
  could be great clinicians, but people don't like them.
• 45:03
  They'll go see them for whatever reason, but they just, they don't ever really
• 45:06
  connect and they're always on edge.
• 45:08
  They always, they have to be sedated. I know a lot of dentists,
• 45:10
  I have a couple of dentists, not a lot, but I know a couple of dentists who
• 45:13
  basically have to sedate every patient.
• 45:15
  Because if they're not sedated, their mannerisms and the way they treat their
• 45:18
  staff and the way they do things and the way they talk,
• 45:20
  they're just very, they're more like a D, they're very aggressive and very demanding
• 45:24
  and controlling and people feel that tension because, you know,
• 45:28
  your staff tends to be more on that caregiving style as well.
• 45:32
  So they don't respond, staff doesn't respond a lot to the aggressive, controlling person.
• 45:37
  They like to be, they like to be soft hand or gentle touch. Which makes so much sense.
• 45:42
  Now, all of a sudden, I'm thinking, holy cow, Mark, we got to do a course and
• 45:45
  a program and a whatever.
• 45:47
  Because the co-regulation piece there would be incredible. It really does go
• 45:51
  to you and what... It matters a lot.
• 45:54
  And your staff, both. Yes. I remember one time, because it didn't start early.
• 45:59
  Do we all start early? Not all, but I do. Okay, because I like going early and
• 46:03
  I remember one time I showed up at your office and I was early and you were
• 46:06
  early and I think I texted or something and you poked your head out and you're
• 46:10
  having a meeting, a staff meeting.
• 46:12
  Yeah, yeah. So do you do that every morning? We do a huddle.
• 46:14
  Yeah, it's called a huddle. We call it a huddle every morning before to talk
• 46:16
  about the patients we have.
• 46:18
  You touch lightly on patients. We talk about what opportunities are available
• 46:22
  to add treatment in, just so the day runs smoothly.
• 46:24
  Yeah, but is that a place where you like we get on the same wavelength?
• 46:27
  Yeah, we try to do a little rah-rah, whatever the woo-woo, whatever you call it, Tony.
• 46:31
  Currently it is woo-woo. Yeah, it's woo-woo, yeah. So actually,
• 46:33
  we just have a little motivational thought and try and get the day started right.
• 46:37
  Yeah. Because it can be stressful. I mean, you get,
• 46:39
  the people that come in to make it. It's not usually the dentistry people, it's the other people.
• 46:43
  I'm gonna be thinking about that a lot if the dentists themselves...
• 46:47
  Because I'm thinking about this with co-regulation so much as if I don't know
• 46:49
  myself that I'm so worried about how other people will take me,
• 46:53
  so I have to convince them that I'm okay.
• 46:55
  And so then if that brings anxiety with it, so then if the dentist is already
• 46:59
  anxious, then the patient will see that anxiety, feel it.
• 47:03
  And then, man, okay, I was gonna say I should have, I'm not gonna show it myself,
• 47:08
  I will send you a document.
• 47:10
  I just had a fascinating conversation with the guy who teaches genetics at a
• 47:14
  university back east. Okay.
• 47:16
  And we were talking, I told him I wanted him to take me down to the cellular
• 47:19
  level of co-regulation. Okay. And we went there. That's cool.
• 47:22
  I know, right? You would have loved it. I should have prepped you with that,
• 47:25
  but we'll do that one next time too.
• 47:26
  Because sometimes I can help, I'll just go a gender stereotype guy,
• 47:29
  you know, get the guy nice and grounded, differentiated, and he makes space
• 47:33
  for the big emotions of his family.
• 47:36
  And then he's saying, borrow my nervous system and then spouse or family,
• 47:40
  it allows the calm to come in.
• 47:43
  Thinking of a mom who, or a little baby's crying, doesn't know how to regulate
• 47:47
  itself and then a mom holds it. She's saying, hey, you can borrow my nervous
• 47:50
  system, we'll co-regulate.
• 47:51
  And so, a lot of times I can help somebody get to that place and it does impact
• 47:55
  those around them in a positive way.
• 47:58
  But sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes the more grounded they become,
• 48:01
  the more chaotic the system gets because they need it to get back.
• 48:07
  It's almost like the homeostasis is chaos because that is they co-regulate with chaos. Gotcha.
• 48:13
  And so then this guy laid it out so well, and I'll save this for maybe next
• 48:17
  time, but he just talked about even.
• 48:20
  Down to the, maybe I won't go into all that. The cellular level.
• 48:24
  Yeah, so then there's a part that he was talking about where it doesn't always
• 48:29
  bring the other person into coherence or down into calm.
• 48:32
  Okay. So, do you ever see that as calm as you are? Is it almost like you can
• 48:36
  feel the person needs you to get this with them?
• 48:39
  Oh, sometimes, yeah. I mean, you could say there's people who want you to join
• 48:43
  them in the chaos but obviously that doesn't help. No, because you would be in authentic then.
• 48:48
  Yeah, well, and it's not, that's not what, that's not what your nervous system
• 48:51
  means when you're in a dental chair. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 48:54
  That reminded me, I have to tell a hilarious anecdote because I don't know if
• 48:57
  you remember the last time I came in and I was getting a bunch of stuff done
• 49:00
  and you gave me a shot and I did one side.
• 49:02
  I came in once and did half of my mouth and I came in another time. Yeah.
• 49:05
  And do you remember you, I got lucky and you hit a nerve? Oh yeah. Yeah. What was that?
• 49:10
  Well, so you're anesthetizing. We're trying to get near the nerve without touching it.
• 49:15
  You want to bathe the nerve in anesthetic so it goes numb.
• 49:19
  But if you take the needle and you actually poke the nerve, it sends an electric
• 49:24
  shock down the nerve to the end.
• 49:26
  It shows that our nerves are electrical conductivity because you touch it on
• 49:30
  and that electric shock just travels down that nerve and exits the end of the
• 49:34
  nerve, which is in my parlance is the nerve runs down your jaw and nexus and hits your lip.
• 49:39
  So, that's the final endpoint of that trigeminal block nerve right there.
• 49:42
  And so, if I touch that nerve, you'll feel it go down and it'll feel like you
• 49:45
  hit my lip, it burned or the tongue because the tongue nerve is in between where I want to go.
• 49:50
  So, every time I'll touch that and they're like, oh, you stabbed my tongue.
• 49:51
  I said, no, it's I've touched the nerve and so you feel that shock in your tongue.
• 49:55
  And hitting that is what percentage you hit that?
• 49:58
  It's not very often, right? No, I mean, it's enough. I mean,
• 50:00
  but I do a lot of shots every day.
• 50:03
  So, I mean, I'd say out of every 50 or so. I'll brush it.
• 50:07
  I mean, you'll hit it because we wanted, we're trying to get near it every time.
• 50:10
  Oh, yeah. So, it's like I can't see. I don't have x-ray vision. No, not yet. Not yet.
• 50:15
  Because it was funny, you hit that and I was like, wow, okay,
• 50:18
  I guess I'm lucky. And then I came back a couple weeks later and I was waiting for that.
• 50:23
  And then you got, I was two for two. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was,
• 50:26
  but then I was definitely numb. Yeah. You know, you get numb fast.
• 50:28
  Speeds it up, unfortunately. Yeah. I think I had a little note here of saying,
• 50:32
  should I purchase a lottery ticket that day?
• 50:34
  It was because it doesn't normally happen that way. No, it doesn't. Yeah.
• 50:37
  But again, some people are more prone to it or just... I got big nerves.
• 50:40
  Got big nerves. Okay. That sounds cool. Yeah.
• 50:42
  A couple of things, just the rapid fire then even, are dentists trained at all
• 50:46
  in managing anxious or fearful patients in dental school? No.
• 50:50
  Okay. Should that be a thing?
• 50:51
  I would, that'd be tough. The only reason I say it would be hard is because
• 50:55
  it's, there's so many, the dentists are also different.
• 50:58
  So to teach a dentist how to use their personality to calm somebody and to manage
• 51:03
  somebody versus a different personality, because you wouldn't do it the same.
• 51:06
  I wouldn't manage the same as you would manage somebody.
• 51:09
  And so you have to, that'd be hard. And there's so much you have to learn in
• 51:12
  dental school. I like what you're saying there.
• 51:14
  And then I think it goes, man, here we go with the cool concept that I love when they overlap.
• 51:19
  I'm trying to figure out or I'm working on a premarital course,
• 51:22
  a newlywed course, but I already know that they don't know what they don't know.
• 51:27
  And so you teach them tools and they're saying, I don't really need those.
• 51:31
  That's not actually a problem. And I'm saying, oh, it is.
• 51:34
  Wait another 20 years of doing this. It's a problem. But they don't know.
• 51:39
  So, if you tried to teach somebody about, hey, you're going to run into tons
• 51:44
  of anxious patients, they're going to be like, sure.
• 51:46
  But they don't know, they don't have that experience yet. Yeah,
• 51:48
  they wouldn't know how to do it. And they're all in their 20s and there's something
• 51:50
  to be said for experience.
• 51:52
  Yeah, there is. Okay, a couple more. The pop psychology myth that I was referencing
• 51:58
  earlier is, and I still hear this often from non-dentists or people will say,
• 52:04
  I've heard that dentists have the highest rate of suicide.
• 52:06
  Did you hear that? Oh, I've heard that tons. All the time. Okay,
• 52:11
  and what do you know about that?
• 52:12
  Well, I don't agree, but I know there was a study. I can't remember when.
• 52:15
  I just know there was a certain...
• 52:17
  Study done about a certain time period over a certain little section of time
• 52:21
  where that did happen where there was a higher suicide rate among dentists and
• 52:25
  that became like a trope at that point.
• 52:27
  Yes, I found the research and I got the summary. The old claim that dentists
• 52:30
  have the highest suicide rate of any profession is exaggerated,
• 52:32
  but research does show that dentists experience significant stress,
• 52:35
  burnout, anxiety, and higher than average mental health challenges.
• 52:38
  So, I almost wonder if it's one of those where then somebody has ran with that
• 52:41
  narrative and well, if that's the case, they probably have higher rates of...
• 52:45
  And there was one, a large analysis of U.S.
• 52:47
  Death records found dentists at times were twice as likely to die by suicide
• 52:51
  compared with general population, but that was just at one point.
• 52:54
  You wonder if it was also back in the day when there was a lot of mercury?
• 52:59
  Because back when the first doing surgery and dentists, this is a long time
• 53:02
  ago obviously, the silver fillings are a mercury mixture, so they would mix them.
• 53:07
  So you've heard of Mad Hatter's disease and things like that from working on
• 53:09
  the mercury. So there was, they didn't use gloves, anything like that,
• 53:12
  so they were mixing stuff with mercury at a certain point to make their fillings.
• 53:15
  So that, I don't know what that, I mean that's always been my thought on that
• 53:18
  is there could have been a time when it was more prevalent due to that other
• 53:21
  physiological factors or chemical factors, things that were affecting the dentist.
• 53:26
  You know, now we use our PPE, our professional gloves, masks.
• 53:30
  You've been doing dentistry for a long time.
• 53:32
  Were you doing it when, did they used to recycle the water? What was that?
• 53:39
  Okay, talk about that. So yeah, they didn't have suction.
• 53:41
  They didn't have suction, so they'd work on the patient, they'd get all in their
• 53:46
  mouth and they just went, you need to spit all the crap and they had a little
• 53:48
  bowl that was right next to the patient's head.
• 53:50
  They just lean over and spit all the crap out of their mouth into the bowl and it would just spin down.
• 53:55
  Man. When I got out here to Northern California, when I started first looking
• 53:58
  at a practice out here, I was looking at a practice up in Auburn that had those still in it.
• 54:02
  Now, they had suction too, but they still had them in the rooms.
• 54:05
  I'm like, that is crazy. Okay.
• 54:08
  I'm like, you're nuts. So it wasn't that one recycled the water per se,
• 54:12
  but it was like... No, it was just like the water was just spinning there because
• 54:16
  they didn't want to have... They didn't want to rinse it down so they'd have
• 54:18
  the water would constantly go so they would spin it inside.
• 54:20
  Oh, okay, that makes sense. So the water was always going so they didn't want to like spit in the dry.
• 54:25
  Wow. Okay, do you ever... Are there ever times or days where you...
• 54:29
  It does feel like you absorb more from the patients?
• 54:32
  Oh yeah, yeah. And is that more, do you think based off of what you are feeling or dealing with?
• 54:37
  Yeah, it's definitely how I handle my own feelings. So, examples of something goes wrong, okay?
• 54:44
  As a dentist, it's always heartbreaking when the body doesn't react properly
• 54:48
  or I place a lot of implants, they fail from time to time.
• 54:51
  Someone's body rejects it or something gets in there and causes it to get affected
• 54:54
  and lose it or you do a big case on someone and they're not happy with it or
• 54:59
  for whatever reason and if they if they ever blame,
• 55:02
  so the hardest part for me as my personality type and how I handle that is when
• 55:06
  someone wants to blame, say it's my fault, or they blame me for what the issues they're having.
• 55:12
  And you couldn't say, oh, you're not, you don't know what you're doing or that kind of stuff.
• 55:16
  It takes time. So, it definitely affects you and it takes me time to work through it, right?
• 55:20
  And I realized, well, no, that's not the case because I'm very specific in my
• 55:25
  didactic and my clinical procedures.
• 55:27
  The human body you're working on, nothing's ever 100%, nothing's ever cut and
• 55:30
  dry. So, we don't know necessarily always what the problem is or we do and it's
• 55:34
  done at home or it is something that happened.
• 55:36
  It could be a lot of different things but that takes me time to work through that.
• 55:39
  So, I get through it but it's not like I can let it go in a minute.
• 55:43
  I have I have to internalize it. I have to work through it and say,
• 55:46
  okay, did I do something wrong?
• 55:47
  What's really going on here? And even if I know I didn't, I still feel bad about it for a while.
• 55:52
  And which if you didn't would be kind of odd. Yeah. And so it just takes time to process all that.
• 55:56
  And so one of the nice things I do like about where I practice dentistry,
• 56:00
  which is down in Sacramento, it's a half hour to my house. I get to decompress on the way home.
• 56:05
  So no matter what crazy stuff I dealt with that day with patients or crazy,
• 56:10
  it's usually not the patient. It's usually the person who comes with the patient.
• 56:13
  Really? Oh, yeah. Because when you're dealing with anxious patients,
• 56:16
  that's one thing, but when you're dealing with anxious spouses or parents or
• 56:19
  things like that, it's a whole other thing.
• 56:21
  I did not even think about that. Because they're not going to get relaxed.
• 56:24
  They're still going to live in their heads and be anxious the whole time. And so it gets crazy.
• 56:29
  And then the financial side where people just don't want to pay for anything.
• 56:32
  Oh, boy, that's the truth, too. That's a whole different thing.
• 56:35
  I think more stress I would get in dentistry comes from patients not wanting to...
• 56:41
  Upset that they have to pay for the work. I run into that in my job often as well.
• 56:45
  And it's really interesting because I'll have somebody talk about,
• 56:48
  they'll tell you about a lavish vacation they took. Yeah.
• 56:51
  They'll roll up with their nails and their lips and their eyes and their fingernails
• 56:55
  and their phones and their bags. But you need to charge less though for what you do.
• 56:58
  Yeah, but they're unwilling to pay for it. And I do take a lot of insurances
• 57:01
  and it's very affordable, but it's still never enough.
• 57:04
  That is hard. Yeah. That's part of the things that I do hear a lot of people
• 57:08
  in the helping profession.
• 57:09
  That's where burnout comes a lot in dentistry is not the, not at least for me, it's not the work.
• 57:14
  I can do that all day and I can, and I physically is tiring, but not mentally.
• 57:18
  It's all about the finances and about the, that side of managing people's emotions,
• 57:22
  people's emotions and people's expectations and people's projections.
• 57:26
  I can only imagine if you have somebody that I appreciate
• 57:29
  you saying that if something happens because it
• 57:32
  does because we're human and human things
• 57:35
  happen to human people but then there's a inherent need
• 57:38
  to get rid of that discomfort and diffuse it
• 57:41
  blame blame somebody else yeah yeah because i know that
• 57:44
  there are definitely situations a lot of situations where it is obvious that
• 57:48
  someone did a thing that led to another thing sure but there are others where
• 57:52
  it just happened and it is yeah it just is but that person at that point i don't
• 57:57
  want it to just be i need somebody to be at fault and And a lot of times I find
• 58:01
  that people in the helping professions are,
• 58:03
  they're these most pathologically kind.
• 58:06
  Yeah. Kind people, but then it becomes pathological when it's to their detriment.
• 58:10
  It can definitely be to your detriment. And so then they will even maybe even
• 58:13
  take the blame, hoping that it will cause that person to feel better.
• 58:17
  It doesn't. But now they just absorb the blame. And now that person has more to pile on with.
• 58:22
  Yeah. What a trip, Mark. That is, do dentists talk openly with people like your
• 58:26
  staff or other dentists about things like this or mental health challenges?
• 58:30
  No. We talk about crazy patients. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't talk about like how that affects. Yeah.
• 58:37
  At least not that I know of. We do a little bit, but not in any structured way. Yeah.
• 58:42
  I love that you said that too. I'm fortunate I have to work with every profession.
• 58:45
  I swear there's not a profession that I haven't worked with.
• 58:47
  And they all talk about their profession with other people within the profession,
• 58:53
  but then with people outside of the profession heard what they said,
• 58:56
  it would sound callous. It would sound nice, yeah.
• 58:58
  And I've had people before even bring in, if they have a spouse that's in a,
• 59:03
  like a law enforcement or something, and they'll say, can you believe they say this?
• 59:06
  And then later on, I might hear something, they'll bring up something from their
• 59:10
  workplace and it might even sound worse.
• 59:13
  I know there's a part of me that's wanting to say, oh, tell me some funny versions
• 59:15
  of that, but people would not understand. No, they wouldn't.
• 59:19
  Mark, what a blast. This was fun. It was fun. Yeah. So, I personally could not
• 59:22
  recommend anybody more than you, because, and especially now after this episode,
• 59:26
  the whole co-regulation thing and your vibe and the whole feeling within the
• 59:29
  office, where do people find you?
• 59:32
  Redford Smiles is the name of my dental practice down in Sacramento. Okay. I'll put that.
• 59:37
  I also have Redford Dental Care. I'm not there except a couple times a week,
• 59:41
  but I have another doctor who's great there.
• 59:43
  Okay. And are you always open to new clients?