There are many preventative measures you can take to avoid letting mental stress get away from you as a dentist or dental hygienist, forming a kind of mental plaque.
Just like telling your patients to clean their interdental spaces, it’s highly important to take your own advice, and apply it to your mind. You have to learn maintenance techniques that will keep your emotions in check, so the plaques don’t turn into something much worse.
A Practice Worth Preaching About
You tell your patients the value of flossing. You tell them the dangers of not flossing.
What is your REAL intention by telling them this? Aren’t you hoping they will avoid preventable procedures?
Now close your eyes for a second and imagine yourself in your operatory chair. Or, if you have a spare, go actually sit down in your chair and close your eyes for a second. It will help you visualize being the patient for once.
Now imagine there’s a DMS (Doctor of Mental Stress) leaning over you in a face mask, cap, and gloves.
“Okay”, he says. “We’re going to need you to open up your mind reeeeeeally wide for me here.”
You do, and he looks inside.
He pokes around a little with his probe and starts softly relaying jargony notes to his assistant.
“We have an ego inflammation in Lobe 12, looks to be causing unrest and toxicity in adjacent staff.”
Panic.
Lobe 12?, you think. Oh great, now he’s going to say he needs to do root causal therapy. Painful.
“We have a diminished confidence margin around Lobe 3, that’s going to need a full restoration before any career advancements take place.”
Full restoration?! What’s that going to cost me?
The better question you should ask is, “What’s it going to cost me if I don’t take care of my mental health?”
Further, “What’s it going to cost the people around me?”
Even if you think your mind looks clean enough, there are a few things that cause the plaques that appear in your life, between your thoughts and emotions.
- Looking at your phone excessively, putting off responsibilities
- Drinking alcohol to relax you
- Not feeling present in the conversation, mind wandering
- Getting overly angry at your spouse or kids
- Drug use
- Excessive eating of junk foods (you should know better, but you do it anyways)
- Nervous ticks like nail biting or picking
- Defensiveness
- Being on-edge
The Negative is Noticeable
The weird thing about feeling good is that, in a way, it’s really just a lack of feeling bad. If a lot of things in your life are making you feel bad, you’re going to notice it. If nothing is making you feel bad, you tend to just go about your day without paying much mind to the fact you feel fine. You just are fine.
The same goes for saying no to things. Saying no is actually much more effective than saying yes, because we tend to mean it more when we say no.
Think of deciding what to eat. Think of how much easier it is most of the time to say what you don’t want, than trying to think of what you do want.
Thoughts as Static Electricity
First, you have to realize that each of the above vices does not actually make you feel better. If you do the math, your post-activity guilt actually pulls you further down than the activity lifted you up. So if you can come to terms with the notion that you’ll actually feel better without these things, then you can start to rationally justify doing something different.
Secondly, you must set a routine of mental cleaning. You can think of your mental energy as static electricity. It sits, waiting for a connection opportunity, and then, just like that, as soon as the right environment appears, ZAP! Thoughts appear. When you allow that static to build up, you are allowing a negative emotion to be created accidentally. It’s like a background static that you know is there, but you can’t readily feel or see it all the time. The only way to release the charge is to do something that physically reduces it, like meditation, by routine.
Many people think of meditation as a mental exercise that in itself can cause stress from not being able to concentrate or focus like they think they should. Meditation is actually a physical exercise. Not in the sense that you’re lifting something heavy, or straining your body in some way. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, which is just as important as the heavy lifting.
It cannot be emphasized enough that you do not need a special place or a lot of time set aside for this. It can be done repeatedly, for seconds at a time, any time of day, in any place, and in any situation. It’s even recommended that you try it everywhere you can. Some meditation instructors even say that putting a special time or place aside is worse because it trains your brain into thinking calmness or peace of mind can only be achieved in that situation.
However, it is important to make it a routine for at least part of your day.
Here’s How To Lower Your Stress Levels In Seconds
- Every time you feel stressed out, just listen to your breath.
- Notice the feelings you have in your body.
- If you have mental stress, try to locate it physically.
- Just feel it, without giving it a negative or positive association, just allow it to be.
- Any time the mental chatter starts up again, take a deep breath and gently redirect your attention back to your breathing.
- Let all the sounds of the room just bounce off your eardrums.
What’s the Point?
The goal is to be in an observational, or outwardly conscious state, or focused on that which is outside your thoughts, and for your body to be in a kind of balanced stasis. You only need to do this for a few seconds before you realize that merely observing releases the involuntary physical tension in your body caused by stress.
This tension is usually held in your shoulders, neck, and belly muscles. This involuntary tension comes from an evolutionary remnant of the nerve that would have controlled your gills back when you were a fish. The same nerve controls our fight-or-flight responses. So just imagine “closing your gills.”
Stress management is just as important as flossing your teeth. Avoiding it, thinking you’ll just stash away those thoughts forever, so maybe they’ll fade away over time, is asking for “brain-givitis.”
About the Author
Jonas is a writer and editor for the content department at maxill Inc, a direct-from-distributor dental supplies manufacturer. The topic of mindfulness is a great passion for him, and he’s spent many years learning and practicing the art. Once he realized the dental community could use this tool to combat stress in the practice, he started sharing his knowledge with the community.
