333: Hygiene for Your Mind

Dr. Josh Austin is back on the podcast, chatting with Kiera about a continuation of the topic of their last episode: mental health. Dr. Austin shares that since he started therapy, his practice has seen a 16% increase in profitability on average each month. Because he goes to therapy regularly, he feels he’s become a better communicator, more empathetic, more productive, and a better leader.

To put it in dental terms: therapy is like hygiene; you’re never done with it. Thus, therapy is hygiene for your mind.

Joshua Austin, DDS, FAGD, FACD, is a native San Antonian. After attending San Antonio's Health Careers High School and the University of Texas, San Antonio as an undergrad student, Dr. Austin graduated from the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio Dental School. 

Dr. Austin is a member of the prestigious Seattle Study Club, which is a network of professional dental study groups dedicated to ideal comprehensive dental care. Dr. Austin's other professional memberships include the Academy of General Dentistry, the Texas Dental Association, American Dental Association, and the Rotary Club of San Antonio.

Dr. Austin is a published author and lectures nationally on restorative dentistry and reputation management. He has a monthly column and weekly e-newsletter in Dental Economics, the most read dental magazine in the world. Beginning in 2014, Dr. Austin has been named a Super Dentist in Texas Monthly Magazine.

Podcast Transcript:

Kiera Dent:

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator scheduler, biller, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants, where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.

Kiera Dent:

Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create a team. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera Dent:

Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera, and you guys, back by popular demand, I convinced this doctor, he's busy, he's got a lot going on, but Dr. Josh Austin, if you guys missed his last podcast, be sure to go listen to it. We actually talked about mental health, and he shared his story, I shared mine, and I will say we got some incredible feedback, and a lot of people reached out, we've even had some doctors... I have a personal doctor that I worked with who I know spoke with Josh personally as well, who now is in some awesome therapy, is making massive breakthroughs. I just felt like, Josh, we have to get back on the podcast, because it was so well received, and I think it's again, like we talked about before, a topic that's just not discussed, that we're all facing, especially with 2020 just wrapping up. People are facing this, this is real.

Kiera Dent:

I'm excited to welcome back Josh Austin, how are you today, sir?

Josh Austin:

Good. I'm glad to be here. I did a little homework for this.

Kiera Dent:

Oh, you did?

Josh Austin:

Yeah, because I know that your goal is to make... At the end of the day, and this is super simplified, your goal as a coach, and a consultant is to make doctors businesses more profitable, right? There's offshoots of that, that are make them happier and make things run smoother and make their lives better and more of what they envision. But at the end of the day, a lot of it has to do with the profitability of a practice.

Kiera Dent:

Totally.

Josh Austin:

I did some numbers research, because it was doing it for some other reasons related to the PPP, and all of that stuff. I looked at, month by month before I started therapy, and then monthly averages now.

Kiera Dent:

That is some good number research there, Josh. I'm proud of you, I'm excited to hear this.

Josh Austin:

Now, there's a lot of variables, and obviously there's no way to isolate it all down, and there's a lot of moving targets because we're in this weird pandemic, and then we had a shutdown. So, I left those months out, and then just tried to include more regular months. It's just, there's a lot of moving targets now. But since I started therapy, we are up 16% on average a month.

Josh Austin:

Now, it's probably way simplistic to say that it's because of therapy, but I have no doubt that it's part of it, because at the end of the day, therapy is maybe two things, a better communicator, although I'm not perfect, and obviously, I'll tell you a story that happened literally two weeks ago.

Kiera Dent:

Can't wait.

Josh Austin:

It makes me more empathetic, not only to my team, but my patients, which I think translates to more production, and you get more treatment plan acceptance when you're more empathetic to people, and it makes me a better leader at the end of the day. I would never use that as an impetus to go into therapy, I'm going into therapy so I can be more profitable in my business. That's a real crappy start to therapy.

Kiera Dent:

Hey, but whatever. Some dentists need that. Some people will just jump in, like this is going to help me out, let's try it.

Josh Austin:

It's a really cool ancillary benefit, and it really helps me realize just the importance of being emotionally grounded and emotionally... I hate to use the word stable, because that makes it seem like if you're not in therapy, you're unstable, but emotionally grounded, makes you a better business owner, and it makes you a better employer, it makes you a better leader, and it makes you a better clinician.

Josh Austin:

Whatever it takes for you to get there, whether that's yoga, or medication, or therapy or surfing or whatever it is, that needs to be part of your routine, because that kind of thing that gets you in the right emotional place to be your best while you're in the office translates to your bottom line.

Kiera Dent:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's actually a really fun stat that you came up with. I love that you did your homework on that because I hadn't even thought about profitability. Here we are just talking about the benefits. If you guys didn't catch the last podcast, Josh and I talked about our experiences of why both of us, I think they were both successful individually. Josh has an amazing practice that you're running, we run the Dental A Team, and yet our different reasons for going to therapy, we both had different reasons for going in. But then our experience through it and just the stigmas around it, and how great it's benefited both of us and this step by steps of how to even find a therapist on our last podcast.

Kiera Dent:

But as you said that I was thinking, I feel that the emotional and grounded state, again, it does not need to be therapy, it can be yoga, it can be meditation, just like you mentioned, I feel like one of the benefits, and the reason why, and I'm going to throw a proposal as to why I think it might make you a better business owner, is I feel like it helps you be very proactive versus reactive. You think through things, you are a better communicator.

Kiera Dent:

I just feel, like you said, it's a grounding. Instead of, I know, what I have, my coaches, my therapist, it pulls me in and centers me of what really do I need to focus on? It cuts out all the additional fluff, and then I became very laser focused, and I think that also might be... I would also say it's easier. I don't think it's easy to go through the path of therapy, per se. It's very emotionally draining, but it just pulls all of it up that I feel I'm actually doing less work. I'm not running around as crazy, and I'm actually seeing more profitability and more balance in my life, if you will.

Josh Austin:

Yeah, for sure. One thing that therapy has done for me is it's helped me develop better coping mechanisms, which I did not have on display two weeks ago. I keep teasing this-

Kiera Dent:

You do tease it on, I'm like, when it's coming already?

Josh Austin:

It's such a doozy. I love nothing more than telling stories that make me look terrible, and this story makes me look awful, which I love it.

Kiera Dent:

Fantastic, okay.

Josh Austin:

When you react to things, because there's always going to be crap that happens during your day, right?

Kiera Dent:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Josh Austin:

I say it's part of being a dentist, it's part of being a business owner, it's part of being human, there's just always stuff that pops up, and it's how we deal with those things that really dictate the course of our business. Generally speaking in the past, I was very reactionary, one bad thing that would pop up would ruin my day, ruin my week, in that it would just carry on, and it would just linger. When you learn how to emotionally process and what therapists called mentalize things is you learn to mentalize things. You start realizing the importance of things and the grand scheme and how unimportant a lot of these little events are, that can derail a day.

Josh Austin:

When you don't lose days, when you don't have days that get derailed, you're just able to stay more on top of your business, you're able to get more stuff done and not be as stressed out when those things do pop up. I think it's part of what you talked about, and it's part of just learning how to deal with things on the fly, so that they don't derail your day. Because the day is valuable. We only get 15 to 18 of them a month. If you derail a whole day, because of some event that happens, that's a really hard thing to overcome.

Josh Austin:

I think it's just things like that. Those aren't skills that you go into therapy, like I need to learn how to do this so that I... I need to learn how to not lose a day or get derailed by this or that. No, it has nothing to do with that, it's that you're doing all these other things to make yourself better, and one of the side effects is that you're more agile mentally and emotionally to deal with things as they come up, than you were before.

Kiera Dent:

Right. As you were saying that, I was thinking, I have gone through therapy, I went in for emotional trauma, and a lot of scarring in my life, that was what led me there, and I don't think you have to go to therapy when you have those experiences, per se, there's a lot of things. Like the doctor I mentioned, we realized because they just kept running into the same issues with their team members. So, not holding them accountable, and they would... We called it being good even though I feel like that's a yucky phrase. They were being great, they were working with their team. Then all of a sudden it would be this blow up and it would circle right back around.

Kiera Dent:

The team was getting so frustrated with this ping ponging effect, I had been working with them, and we finally realized, this ping ponging effect is coming because there's stuff under the surface that's coming up, personal and professional that just needs to get sorted through.

Kiera Dent:

As you said that, I was thinking, I feel that therapy and meditation and a lot of these things for mental health, it's building the muscle of your mind, I feel like. That's what I thought. I remember when I came back from Colorado and I had a lot of... There's a lot going on, and I thought, I could do medications, I could do this, I could do that, and I thought no... I don't think there's a right path, I will put that out there. If medication's for you, fantastic. I think everybody could try different things.

Kiera Dent:

I knew for me, I have a very strong mind and I wanted to just strengthen that, so that way when, like you said, life comes at me because it's always going to come, there will always be something. Don't think it's just COVID or it's this, like, oh it was a bad month. That's called life, that's a flavor of business, it's always going to come. But I really wanted to strengthen my mind muscle of how do I maintain that centered grounding, no matter what's going on around me, and that's what I felt therapy really helped me with, of really getting that stability.

Josh Austin:

Yeah, you mentioned the ping pong, or the blow up that would happen, and these cycles where things would bounce back and forth, and they would blow up at this office. When things blow up like that, they don't blow up because of that actual event that happened. The reason they blow up, and the reason that someone blows it is because they have a previous trauma in their life, that this brings... Whatever happened in the office that day or that week, brought all that stuff back up to the surface, and brings out those feelings that that person felt when they had their previous trauma, whatever it was. It boils up, and that's what leads to these emotional blow ups, right?

Josh Austin:

Everybody's got trauma. No matter what, no one has had a perfect life, everybody has trauma, whether it's a big T Trauma, like a parent dying, a brother, sister dying, being assaulted, being raped, any of those kind of things are all big T traumas, divorce, or a little T trauma, meaning like just like little things that you wouldn't even count it as a real trauma, but it's one of those things... I always relate to, have you ever been awkward around somebody or said something embarrassing 17 years ago, and it still pops up in your head all the time? I almost guarantee that the person that you said whatever to doesn't remember it, they've never thought about it a single time since then. But you think about it 18 times a year, and just anguish in your mind over it, that's a little T trauma, a lowercase T trauma.

Josh Austin:

But those things all add up, those things all combine to this deal. When something happens that triggers those same emotional pathways, that's when things blow up. That's why, going through therapy to process these previous traumas, whether you do that through mentalization, or EMDR, or ketamine, or micro dosing, psilocybin, mushrooms, it doesn't matter how you do it, but you're doing it under the care of somebody who knows what they're doing and how they treat things.

Josh Austin:

As dentists, that's really hard for us, because we are very linear or modular in the way we see treatment. We have a patient, we assess their needs, we come up with a plan that's stationary, or that stations, right? Station one, we're going to fix these cavities, station two, we're going to do these root canals, station three, we're going to do these crowns, and then station four, we're making a night guard, whatever, and it's done. The treatment plan has a finite period, it as a finite number of procedures, and that is it.

Josh Austin:

Therapy is not like that at all. There is no finishing a treatment plan, there is always something to work on. As a dentist, you look at that, and it's just like, man, how can treatment be like this? I don't know if I can commit to that. I try to tell dentists all the time, we think of therapy as like a clinical intervention that we would do with a handpiece, right? Therapy isn't that, therapy is hygiene, you're never done with hygiene. As long as patients have teeth, they will need to come see your hygienist. That's what therapy is, it's hygiene for your mind.

Josh Austin:

As long as you have one, you will potentially need to see a therapist and that's okay. There may be times in your life when you need to move to another therapist, or you can dial it back a little bit or try something different. But for me, I just know, that's always going to be part of my regular routine, is I'm going to see a therapist of some kind, and it just is what it is. We will probably be working on some of my previous traumas until the day I die, and that's fine, that's just part of the deal, it is what it is.

Kiera Dent:

Yeah. I love it. I'm hoping Alex caught that. I think that a great title for this podcast is Hygiene For Your Mind, because that... I love that you just broke it down into dental terms, because I do think that people feel like therapy is just like a crown. We're going to go get the crown prep, we're going to go dive in, we're going to spend a lot on it, and then we're done, I should be good for the next five, 10 years. But I agree with you, I noticed for myself, I'm not in EMDR anymore, guys. My therapist is like, "You've graduated." But I've just noticed I haven't gone to EMDR in gosh, it's probably been six, eight months now. But just recently I started noticing some of those same things were creeping back up. So, it's like cool, that is the time to go.

Kiera Dent:

But in addition to that, I've been working with other therapists. I just like it because I think we do so much CE for our clinical skills, that I almost feel that different types of therapy, different therapists, different thought leaders in the industry on it, they are like CE for your mind, and how can you expand yourself and become more dynamic and more grounded?

Kiera Dent:

For me, it's that peace, it's that calm. Even though I'm a very... Because I was like, I don't actually want peace in my life, I like the adrenaline, I like to be busy, but I'm like, I like that on my own terms, I don't like it when it just floods in from every angle and I can't handle it, and then I have the shutdowns and then I blow up with people, and then I'm cranky, and I don't show up as my best self. That's the prevention that I feel... I'm just working through that. But I will say, it is that maintenance process.

Kiera Dent:

When I've gone for a while without doing something, I noticed, things that I've fixed and I've healed, start to come back and I'm like, "Whoa, okay, you got to get... " Just like we don't want the cavities to show up, staying on that, I love that imagery.

Josh Austin:

Yeah. It's really helped me learn myself, which sounds stupid. How do you not know yourself? Yeah, all right, my dad died when I was 10, cool. I got it. But so many of the ways-

Kiera Dent:

I would just stop at that... Josh, let's just pause there, how many of us think of our lives because we've lived through them? But as you said that, I'm like, "I'm sorry. What? You think that's no big deal? Okay, great. This just happened." I actually want to hone in on that real quick, because how many of us look at our lives... I look at what happened, and I just think we live through that, so we think it's no big deal. But yet, as I heard that, and as other people heard that, I'm sure they're like, actually no, that's like a big T Trauma.

Kiera Dent:

But I want to put that out, even if you don't have a big T, it's a little T, those things stack up, and it's not to brush off, like no big deal, and I know I derailed you on that, but I wanted people to really notice, how often do we brush off that it's just our life, and it's no big deal? Those are actually the no big deals that are showing up and creating big deals all the time.

Josh Austin:

Absolutely, right. That's what I mean by learning yourself is that I've learned that a lot of the reasons that I react the way that I do go back to a lot of that stuff. Even this event that happened, and it's probably time for me to-

Kiera Dent:

I was going to say, Josh, have we forgotten the story? I'm ready.

Josh Austin:

It goes right back to it, and I would have never realized it until, Holly, my therapist broke it down for me. That's really what a therapist does is, is they can see through all of it, they have a list, they know your past, from your discussions with them, and they can connect these dots that you would never have connected before.

Josh Austin:

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a post on a patient. This patient had endo on a tooth and I put a post in. I noticed it was the last post. Now, typically, if I use the last of something, I might tell my assistant, "All right, this was the last one, make sure we order it." But the posts are in a little kit, they're in a little box, and I just assumed that she wouldn't open it up to look and see that we were out. So, I took it upon myself to go in my office and order new ones myself.

Josh Austin:

I didn't want to be out of them. So, I paid for expedited shipping. Then a few days later, the posts came and they got put on my desk. I opened the box, I was like oh, these are the posts that I ordered. I went and gave them to my assistant, and I said, "Here are the posts, I ordered them because I want to make sure we didn't run out of them. I ordered them." And I gave him to her.

Josh Austin:

The next week, literally like the next... That was like a Wednesday, the next Monday, I had a patient in at the end of the day who broke a front tooth off at the gum line. It had been a crown and there was a root canal on it. I was like, "Listen, this guy's not a great tooth, and we need to look at another option, but so you don't have to walk around without a front tooth, I can at least put a post in this and put this crown back in so that you can walk around and not be missing a front tooth."

Josh Austin:

We remove her from hygiene. It was like four o'clock, she had a four o'clock hygiene appointment. Now, it's 5:00. I'm like, "All right, it'll take me 15 minutes to do this. No big deal." Have one of the assistants get an operative room ready and I'll do it right quick. I'm getting everything set up and I'm like, "Go get the post for me." They go get the post, and they get some other post kit. It's some old post kit I haven't used in like 15 years. I was like, "No, no, no get the 3M one." They're like, "There's nothing in there." I was like, "No, they were just here. I gave them to you on Wednesday." "I can't find them anywhere." Go through the storage closet, can't find him anywhere.

Josh Austin:

Then I just lose it, and I'm tearing through the storage room, I'm tearing through the lab trying to find... I'm literally throwing stuff out of the storage closet, into the hallway, the office, trying to find these posts. For every second that goes by, I'm getting more and more angry, and I'm just losing it more and more. At some point, the switch flips in my head and it's like over for me emotionally. I tell my front desk is like my office manager is trying to calm me down, and I'm just losing it. I know that the patient can hear me, and I'm just like, "I can't count on anyone for anything in this place. This was the easiest task possible. I took care of everything, I put it in your hands, and I said, "Put this away." That's all... How can that get screwed up? I did 98% of the work, you guys had to do 2%? How can this get screwed up? If I can't count on you for this, what can I count on you for?"

Josh Austin:

I made a remark to my office manager. She's like, "Well, what do you want to do?" At this point, I'm trying to figure it out, figure out what other post I have that I can do something with. I said, "The way I see it, I have two options." I distinctly remember saying this, and it's a tough look. I said, "Option number one is I can just stop caring as much, because if I stopped caring, then you guys can't hurt me anymore. Or option number two is I can drive into the woods and swallow a bullet."

Josh Austin:

Then my office manager just left the lab where I was working, trying to figure this thing out, trying to figure this case out, and she went and she called my wife, and she told her what I said because she was scared that I said something scary. My wife comes up to the office, it's like 5:30, it's dark outside. My wife's on her Peloton biking gear. She had just gotten off the bike, and she's like, "What the hell is happening? Laureen called and told me that you said you're going to drive into the woods and shoot yourself."

Josh Austin:

When she walked in, I was in my private office, just my head in my hands, just buried in my hands. That was a horrible way to react to that. That coping mechanism of flying off the handle like that was not the way to handle something that happens in a business, even though that isn't something that should happen in a business, but it was not the way that I should have handled it.

Josh Austin:

Then, several days later, I had my therapy session with Holly and we went over the whole deal. She was like, "All right, let's really boil down to what was it that made you feel this way?" I was like, "It's that I can't trust anybody." She then quickly related it back to the fact that, when you're a kid, and when your parents dies, you feel abandoned, and that feeling of abandonment is also, another way to put that is that you can't trust people to be there for you when you need them. When this happened, this just tore the band aid off of this whole feeling of wanting to have somebody there for you that's not and that just brought all that stuff back up to the top.

Josh Austin:

She's like, "You spiraled really quickly, but you spiraled because of this feeling that you have in your life of not being able to rely on people because you have been abandoned." I was just like, "How on Earth can you have sifted through this, where a lost piece of dental supply leads to me feeling abandoned? But it was 100% true, and it just completely reactivated those old pain centers that I thought were... Shit, that was 30 years ago that my dad died. I should be past it by now or whatever.

Josh Austin:

She's like, "There is no past it, there is no over it, there is none of that. There is trying to learn what things trigger you into those feelings so that you can anticipate them and then react better to them, so you don't have to have your wife drive up to the office to make sure that you're not going to go shoot yourself, that kind of deal."

Josh Austin:

I told you I looked terrible in this story, and I look terrible on two fronts because I reacted really poorly, and did not take things in stride, the way that should have been appropriately done, and then I made a flippant remark, not even joking, but I made a flippant remark about suicide which should never be something that gets mentioned, even in a joking manner.

Josh Austin:

It's one of those things where it's like, I look back on it, and I look terrible in that story, I feel terrible about it, but it helped me realize where some issues still are, and that we still have a lot of work to do in therapy and this is after having been working on it for a year, or a year plus.

Kiera Dent:

Hello Dental A Team, I hope you are as excited as I am, because guess what, May 14th and 15th this year, we are running Dental A Team's full team summit for the first time ever. It's May 14th and 15th, a Friday, Saturday and it's CE training for you and your whole team in your practice. In the past, you've had to fly your whole team to get full team CE, and instead we're bringing the CE to you. You guys, I have attended so many virtual events and I cannot wait because this is going to be epic of all epics. We're going to teach you guys, with your whole team working together, how to build your dream practice, how to have accountable teams and run effective meetings.

Kiera Dent:

We're going to have breakout sessions with each department specifically. So, billing, OM, TCs, schedulers, Hygenists, assistants and doctors, and we're going to round table style learning from the best. We're going to have lessons on leadership. We're having guest speakers come in. You guys, it is going to be epic, and I want all of you there.

Kiera Dent:

So, head on over to our website, thedentalateam.com/ events and snag your ticket for you and your team to attend Dental A Team's full team summit this year.

Kiera Dent:

Well, Josh, I appreciate you sharing because I know as I was listening to this story, I saw myself doing similar things. How many times when my dang flights are not booked, and I lose it, because I'm like, my butt is sitting in this airport, why can't you guys get the freakin flights done? It's costing us so much money. I get ticked, I'm so irritated. I think we can all listen and be like, "Whoa, Josh, that was... " I'm like, no, no, it's not, whoa, we all do the same thing. Maybe we don't say the same comments, but maybe we do.

Josh Austin:

It's like that's the fourth time something similar like this has happened, and this wasn't the reaction after the first time. But after the fourth time, it's like, "How many times do you guys need to prove to me that I can't trust you?" That's obviously not the way to handle business, because the way that I handled it is just like, you know what, I'll just take care of all of it now myself. Well, that's a stupid way to do it, right? That totally disenfranchises the people on my team, that puts stupid menial work onto my plate that shouldn't be there, and it completely takes and breaks the decision making confidence of the person who was doing it before.

Josh Austin:

I guarantee you what happened is, those posts are in a small little box. I'm sure she thought she took them out and set them somewhere. But at some point, they were cleaning up boxes, someone looked in there and didn't see this little tiny box inside of this bigger cardboard box, thought it was trash and it got thrown away. When it's a mistake that can be made, but when it tears off that emotional scar and opens back up that emotional scar, you don't see those things, you can't walk your way through, oh, well, it was Kiera's third time going to Nashville this quarter. The other two were booked, I thought I had already booked the third... Whatever it is.

Josh Austin:

All that goes out the window, because you're reacting to it emotionally. If I didn't have Holly, to help me dissect all of it and get to the source of it. I hesitate to use the word diagnose, because that's probably not the right word, but to diagnose or to trace back where the feelings go and what the trauma is, and so that we can process and work on mentalizing that, then that would just continue to lie there, and it would just the same thing would happen the next time that an implant screwdriver gets lost, or we can't find a lab case, or whatever it is, whatever next event that happens that's in a similar vein of making me feel like I can't trust anybody. The next time that happens, it's just worse.

Josh Austin:

To me, the main benefit of therapy is that it gives you somebody to help you sort through those things, so that the reaction next time is better, because you have an understanding of what happens and where those feelings come from, and that it's okay to have those feelings, but this is why it's happening, and that just helps you deal with things better and-

Kiera Dent:

Totally.

Josh Austin:

... be a better leader.

Kiera Dent:

I think, if anything, at least for me, it gives me hope that okay, cool, that's what was causing it. So now I know how to react. I know how to respond differently. I know in our last podcast, we chatted about the book, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. I love how he explains that a lot of these triggers, if you will, things that come up are thorns that are sitting. Yes, of course, we're going to respond like, "Don't touch that, I'm trying to protect that."

Kiera Dent:

Imagine if there's a thorn in you, think of a splinter in your finger, it's small, it's tiny, and people touch that, and you're like, "Don't touch it, it hurts so bad." That's what a lot of these triggers are. When people are triggering you, I remember through a lot of my therapy and different things of saying thank you for that trigger, because it actually unravels a deeper piece, it's a deeper thorn in there, and then I can actually see. I remember, there's a person in my life that caused a lot of pain. It was a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse. I remember somebody one day said, "Kiera, you are going to be so thankful for that person." I was like, "I'm sorry, what? No way, this person should burn in hell." I have nothing but the vehement hatred towards this person. I'm like, no, they don't.

Kiera Dent:

Looking back, after processing a lot of that, seeing how this person was able to reflect back to me, just the areas in my life that I needed to heal, that I needed to fix, and they said, people just reflect back to us those areas, if we want to heal them and become even better. I would say, like you said, I'm going to just go back to the word grounded in ourselves, in our responses, because that's what I love about therapy, is I feel like it makes it to where I'm not reactive to all these thorns being touched, I actually can process through, figure out what the root cause is, and make different decisions in the future, versus feeling like I'm always... I would say, almost like a victim to whatever comes my way, I can't respond to it, because I have no tools to respond in a way that is pleasing to myself, and the way I want to present to other people.

Kiera Dent:

I love that you brought that up. There's so many pieces, and I think that one other piece I wanted to really capitalize on is how you mentioned, I think we think so linear, okay, here's the treatment plan, we take care of this, and then we're done. Yet, we're human beings, and we're dynamic. Emotions are just energy in motion, and that's a fluidity of us being in this earthly life.

Kiera Dent:

Recognizing that therapy and mental health is not a linear experience, it's a fluid, it's very much the people around you, they're going to show different thorns that you thought you were taking care of, different triggers. That's, I think, the evolution of soul in my opinion. I think that that's... One of the biggest pieces of this Earth life is to learn, to become even better versions of ourselves and to be very fluid versus looking at linear. Even though I love to be linear and start, stop, how do I create solutions? How do I find that and deep dive? But I think when we realize we're human beings, we are beings that need to constantly have that fluidity around it.

Josh Austin:

I'm sure a lot of what you do involves setting up systems for doctors, or refining systems, right? Outstanding insurance claims that haven't been paid after 30 days need to be followed up on, here's our system for fixing it. It's several steps, and it's linear and whatnot. You can't really do that for emotions and your mental health. You can't just set up a system to handle that. What you will find when you start going through therapy, and whether it's EMDR, or whether it's any number, other types of psychotherapy, it just doesn't work like that.

Josh Austin:

It's much more about unraveling this tangled ball of twine than it is a step by step system. It's like, all right, you're going to hang up your Christmas lights, and they're all tangled up, how do you untangle them? Well, you just start at this start of the strand, and you go little by little until it's done. Sometimes you find a place where it's all knotted up, and you got to double back and flip it under and do all this stuff. Sometimes it's just about unwinding or whatever, but that's how this journey is, is that you start unwinding the ball. Sometimes it takes us to really weird places.

Josh Austin:

We were doing an EMDR session one time, over a memory I had about my mother after my dad died, and seeing my mom cry, really the only time I ever saw her cry after my dad died. It's like a vivid memory, it's burned into my consciousness. We've been really working through EMDR to process that memory, and it took me to this thing... I won't bring up the details of it, but it took me to this thing from college that I haven't thought about in 10 or 12 years. It was a fairly traumatic experience. But it's just something that I don't think about routinely, and it was like, how on Earth did we end up there? It was like, it's the ball of twine that's tangled up, it's the Christmas lights that are tangled up.

Josh Austin:

We started untying this one knot and it led to this other place that I would have never thought we would have ended up, but we did. That's why you can't do this on your own, you need to have somebody who is experienced in this and knows what they're doing, because otherwise you're not going to get those tangles and knots out of it. If those aren't out, if you don't get those things untangled, then you never get to the point where you want to be.

Josh Austin:

Like I said, there's no end of therapy, which is really great business for therapists, right? Because it's like, but that's why I bring it back to hygiene. It's the closest thing that I can relate it to, and a psychiatrist told me that once, because when I first started this journey, I didn't know where to go, I didn't know enough about it. I had just seen movies.

Josh Austin:

In movies, you go to a "shrink" and you sit on their couch and you tell them stuff and they listen to you while they take notes or whatever. That's what it was in my head because that's what it was in Meet the Fockers or whatever. I didn't even know-

Kiera Dent:

It's true, I agree.

Josh Austin:

It was just every culture reference I've ever known about mental health is that. I go to the psychiatrist whose office I can see across the hallway.

Kiera Dent:

I wish you guys could see the Zoom right now, Josh is looking out the window.

Josh Austin:

I can literally see her building, I can see the roof of her building. We sat through two whole sessions. At some point, she just stopped me in the middle, and she's like, "Why are you here?" I was like, "I don't know. I've been anxious, and I've had all these things, and I feel like I need a psychiatrist." She was like, "I don't think you understand what I do." I'm like, "It's the couch in the movies-"

Kiera Dent:

I'm just supposed to sit here, write it down. Aren't you supposed to just-

Josh Austin:

She's like, "No." She's like, "I'm a physician. I treat things medically that need to be treated, I manage medications for patients, I deal in a multidisciplinary team with neurologists and other things on complex medical issues." The only way... " She said, and I quote, "What I can relate this to, is like when I need my teeth cleaned, I don't expect the dentist to do it, they have somebody to do that, a dental hygienist, right?" I was like, "Yeah." She's like, "You need your teeth cleaned, you need a dental hygienist. If you pay me to do that, I can accept your money to do it. However, you're not going to get as good of a job as if you have a person who's qualified to do this."

Josh Austin:

She's like, "Would I want you cleaning my teeth?" I was like, "No, absolutely not."

Kiera Dent:

No, never. Dentists should never clean teeth.

Josh Austin:

Do not let me [inaudible 00:36:40] on you.

Kiera Dent:

Anybody who's not a dentist, listen, don't get your dentist to clean your teeth. Don't think you're getting the elite package, you're getting the worst.

Josh Austin:

No, you're not, it's worse. It's far worse. I can do it, but it's not going to be nearly as good, and as gentle-

Kiera Dent:

It's not going to feel as good. You guys are like, in, out, just get it done.

Josh Austin:

Yeah, absolutely. That turned on the light bulb for me like, oh, yeah, absolutely. That's the best metaphor I could ever come up with for this with. That's what got that bug planted into my brain about this being hygiene, but for your mind, and for your emotions.

Josh Austin:

What's interesting to me is, the people in my practice who are most diligent about their hygiene, they're the people that come in every six months, and if something interrupts it, they're there at six months and one day. They're just by the book, it's part of their yearly routine, you get this done. Honestly, those are the people that need it the least. Those are the people that, if they skipped [inaudible 00:37:40] they'd probably be fine. The people that I worry about periodontally and hygiene wise are the people that are like whatever, I'll get to it when I get to it. I haven't been in in two years, whatever.

Josh Austin:

Those are the people that need it the most. That's why I look at it, like, if you are really hesitant to the thought of doing this, because it makes you really uncomfortable, I think that's probably a pretty good sign that you're really good candidate to start therapy. You're that person that doesn't think they need to get their teeth cleaned all the time, or twice a year, they come in every three or four years, and it's always problems.

Josh Austin:

I would just say, be more like the people in your practice that are there to get their teeth cleaned at six months and day one, no matter what, rain or shine, because it's part of their routine, and it's part of what they do, those are the best patients. The same thing holds true for therapy.

Josh Austin:

That's my goal, is to be... I have a patient named Emily who's like that, if she doesn't get her teeth cleaned on six months and day one, she just feels like she's a total slacker and she hates herself. I'm trying to be like the Emily of therapy, of just like, man, I could be having a great week, it could be no big deal. I feel like things are going great, I'm still going, I'm still going to make my appointment even if I'm tired at the end of day, whatever, I'm still going to do it, because I just see what a difference it makes. It just makes such a huge difference. It doesn't mean I'm perfect, obviously. I told my office manager I was going to kill myself and she had to call my wife. Obviously I'm not perfect.

Kiera Dent:

We all have those days.

Josh Austin:

Right. But I realized it immediately like, I need to talk to Holly about this quick.

Kiera Dent:

But that's something... I want to actually highlight that is I think give yourself a year ago you probably wouldn't have even picked up the, you even needed to dissect that. It would be like, that was just a bad day.

Josh Austin:

You know what I would have done? Absolutely. I would have I would have gone home. On the way home, I would have gotten a water burger, I would have eaten garbage food. I would have had alcohol that night and honestly I probably would have taken either some kind of pill like a Valium or I would have taken a THC gummy. Something like... I would have just tried to annihilate my brain with chemicals so that I didn't feel that pain anymore. That's now it's, I need to see Holly, I need to talk to Holly. I think that's probably a much healthier way to cope with it.

Josh Austin:

I'm not going to say I never have that THC gummy anymore, but-

Kiera Dent:

We all have rough days, right? We all got to have a little zen.

Josh Austin:

Now, it's more like, "Hey, let's eat a gummy and watch Edward Scissorhands." It's more of doing it out of fun than it is like as a reaction to something crappy that happened in my day.

Kiera Dent:

Totally. I do think that alcohol and numbing it is a form of self-induced therapy. You're trying to just process through it in whatever way you know how. I love that you brought that up of what you would been before, and yet now it's like, hey, there's actually this was a trigger, what caused this trigger? Who is that? What is this about? Because it's not about the situation, it's about, like you said, something else, and if we can process through that.

Kiera Dent:

I think what happened was on our last podcast, a lot of people reached out and they were like, Kiera, that was such a good podcast. Josh, I just appreciate that you're willing to be a dentist, talking about your experience, because I know when I was coaching a doctor, I was like, you got to talk to Josh, because he's more like you than I am. I can coach you guys, I can help with systems. I do some of this on a very light level with teams, helping them see what's your reality, with the stories you're telling yourself. But diving down into people's deep emotions, that's not what I'm trying to do, nor do I have a desire to.

Kiera Dent:

Josh, I know the doctor that you and I worked in tandem with reached out, you were able to give some great resources. I think there's two pieces. I guess as we wrap this up, one, people are like, okay, I heard on this podcast, I'm supposed to go to therapy. That feels a little uncomfortable, or we've got the people that are like, "I'm blowing up at my team all the time. I got to go to therapy. I don't even know what this is about."

Kiera Dent:

We talked about, everyone should go. But I could also see people being like you with your first experience, like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. How do they make that transition of being like, hey, here I am today, I'm going to go to therapy, and I'm going to follow that up with the second question, how do they even find a therapist, just like we did for that doctor?

Josh Austin:

I think to me, if you ever have the thought of hey, I'm overwhelmed, I'm emotionally overwhelmed. If you realize that your emotions more frequently than need be get the best of you, and you react in ways and cope in ways that are not appropriate, then you should take the next step of being a senior therapist. The great news is, is like, therapy is not like a surgery. It's not like an irreversible procedure. If you go to therapy a few times and realize like, hey, it's just not for me, or I'm not seeing anything, whatever, that's fine. But at least you have tried.

Josh Austin:

If you have the thought at all, just try, because at the very least, it's going to cost you a couple of hours, and a couple of hundred bucks. Nowadays, they're all virtual anyway, so you just do it from Zoom, or whatever their secure version of Zoom is. It's not like you have to take time out of the office. It's a no lose proposition, in my mind.

Kiera Dent:

Agreed.

Josh Austin:

The hard part is finding the right person for you.

Kiera Dent:

Totally agree.

Josh Austin:

It's not like a relationship, there's therapists that you will not click with, there's therapists that you will. My experience is that I know pretty quick. I know in the first five or 10 minutes of talking to somebody if they are a right person for me. I went through a couple before I found Holly who I see now. If you're in California, or Texas, you can see Holly Forman-Patel is her name. You can just google her name, or you can find me on social and I'll direct you to her website.

Josh Austin:

She's licensed in California and Texas. If you're a resident of any of those two states. If you're not in the states that you need to see someone who's licensed in your state, in my opinion, the best way to do it is go to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapist webpage, the aamft.org, and they have a cool find a therapist tool on there. You put in your zip code, and it pulls up a list of therapists and you can pull up each profile and it gives you, in their own words, a few sentences about their philosophy, and a few sentences about their focus.

Josh Austin:

Part of it depends on you. If you had some major traumatic event in your life that you need to work through, you want to find somebody who has had experience in working with people with previous trauma. If drug and alcohol abuse has been an issue for you in the past, and you've recovered from that through whatever program you did, but there's still the emotional baggage behind it, you can find somebody with that as a focus, dealing with people in recovery.

Josh Austin:

Whatever it is, after you start reading through some of these profiles of people in your area, you get an idea of what may be right for you, and you just try it. It's just like, I can't believe I'm going to bring this up, it's like Tinder, you just got to swipe right to see if you click with people. That's the only way you know if you click with somebody, is if you go out on a date with them, right? You have to date a couple of therapists and see. You may get really lucky, and find your "therapist soulmate" on the first one, and it may take you 10. But at the end of the day, most therapists do like an interview first, you will reach out and say that you're interested, and then they'll do a five to 10 minute phone interview.

Josh Austin:

From my experience, I can usually tell from that phone interview if we're a good fit or not. There's been a couple, there's been one time when I thought we were going to be a good fit, and we weren't. But most of the time, I can tell from that. It took me about four or five till I found Holly, and I knew almost immediately. It was just like this spark of, I felt so comfortable with her, I was able to open up and tell her things in that five minute interview that I've never told anybody ever in my life after knowing him for five minutes.

Josh Austin:

I was able to be really honest with her. One thing that they always ask, almost always in an interview, or your first session is have you ever had suicidal thoughts? For a long time, early on when I would talk to therapists, I would say no, just no, because it's just like, I don't want to-

Kiera Dent:

It's awkward, it's uncomfortable. I don't want to [inaudible 00:46:20]

Josh Austin:

I don't want you to think that I'm like that bad. I've got this other stuff we got to work on. I don't want to spend a bunch of time on that. For the first time with Holly, I was like, all right, first, I need to ask you a question, is there anybody who that thought is no? She was like, "That's a really interesting question." She said, "I will be honest. If most people are honest, they will say that at least, a fleeting idea of it has come through their head at some point. But most people always answer no." I was like, "Have you ever had a patient that you lost to suicide?" "Yeah, of course, every therapist has." "What did they say at this point?" She's like, "They always say no."

Josh Austin:

For some reason, I was just like, I had always brushed that question off before, and this time, for some reason, it was just like, I had this lightning strike of, I want to be honest with this person, and I want to tell her, but then I have more questions about this. Before it was just always like, just checking through the medical history. Got diabetes, now I got high blood pressure, suicide now. It was like, I don't know, it was just something told me in my head, tell this person yes, and then tell her more about it, and then ask her the questions that you want to ask about.

Josh Austin:

She was cool with it, and it didn't derail our therapy, or whatever. She's like, "I appreciate your honesty." All of that stuff. That's how I knew that she was the right one for me, was because I was able to answer that question. I'm not saying that's going to be the litmus test for everybody, but if you don't feel pretty quickly that you can trust this person, you're never going to get anywhere, because you have to trust this person, because you're going to have to tell them things that you've never told anybody else before. That's hard to do, and if you don't trust them, it doesn't happen. So, try it out, just try a bunch of people, and you will find someone eventually that's the right person for you.

Kiera Dent:

I agree. Josh, I love that you just went through the whole list of it, and I love that you said it didn't work out because I've had that where I've tried, gosh, I have seen 10 different therapists and I'll see different ones for certain times, for different things. But like you said, their bios tell you a lot of what they specialize in. I didn't even know EMDR was a thing, and then all of a sudden, it came up and I was like, okay, maybe that's what I want.

Kiera Dent:

I say, just follow it. Then oftentimes the therapist, if you tell them what you're looking for, they might have somebody that they know that really specializes-

Josh Austin:

Right. That's more for that.

Kiera Dent:

Just like every dentist has specialties, not every dentist is great at crowns and fillings, not every dentist is great at root canals, not every dentist is good at extractions. Finding the one who really is good for what you're looking for, and that can ebb and flow, but I love that you gave resources of where to go. I just think we... This isn't just for doctors, this is also for team members. I think people in general. Like you said, just try it.

Kiera Dent:

I think that Josh and I are on a mission right now to help with mental health in the way that we can, in our small way, because I think both of us feel very strongly. If we can help one person, which we already have. Guys, we're ready for our next person.

Josh Austin:

Yeah, we're done.

Kiera Dent:

We're doing some good work, but the doctor who Josh and I actually helped, that doctor told me, "Kiera, I'm so glad you pushed me to talk to somebody." Because so many things that were just coming up for this doctor, are finally now being resolved. They feel that there's a connection, they feel that they can say things that they've never been able to say, really starting to dissect where this is coming from and why they're struggling.

Kiera Dent:

I think that that's one of the most beautiful journeys that you can go on. Josh, gosh, you're so fantastic. I love these calls. I love our podcast. Thank you for your time. I know you're super busy doctor and for you to just get on the podcast with me, means the world. So, thank you.

Josh Austin:

Anytime.

Kiera Dent:

Awesome. Well, people want to connect with you. I know you're on Instagram, and I just cut you off. What were you going to say?

Josh Austin:

I was just going to say, I think right now is the one year anniversary of the last VOD, last Voices pf Dentistry, which was the last time I saw you in person. It's sad that we don't have VOD. It breaks my heart that we don't have that. Hopefully, VOD will be back in 2022, and all of the A Team listeners can come to Scottsdale and see VOD and do all that because honestly it's my favorite meeting, by far.

Kiera Dent:

It's so fun. I know. I miss in seeing people, we're going to do virtual events this year. But then 2022 is the year to, let's see people. Josh-

Josh Austin:

I'm at least glad we got VOD before the lockdown started.

Kiera Dent:

Right? I know.

Josh Austin:

At least that was good. At least that's not two years of VOD that got knocked out. But yeah, I'm ready for VOD to come back.

Kiera Dent:

Yes. For those of you who don't know, that's Voices of Dentistry.

Josh Austin:

Yeah. It's not some weird venereal disease. Voices of dentistry, it's the dental podcast meeting that's quaint. I don't know what, 300 people, but 300 really cool, passionate people, probably 30 people there who have podcasts, and it's the coolest place, it's the most open room where I'm comfortable doing any amount of material of different kinds that I would never do anywhere else. It's my favorite meeting of the year.

Kiera Dent:

It's so fun. Shout out to the [hacks 00:51:36] and DSI and Mark and Alan and-

Josh Austin:

Justin Moody.

Kiera Dent:

... Justin Moody and Jason and all those that put it on, shout out to them. But yeah, Josh, if people want to connect with you, I know a lot of them do, because you are a doctor, you can connect on that level. You guys can always connect with me as well, but Josh if they want to connect with you, how do they get in touch with you?

Josh Austin:

On social @joshuaaustindds. You can find me anywhere. I just joined Clubhouse. I have no idea what's going on, on Clubhouse. Have you been on Clubhouse yet?

Kiera Dent:

Yes.

Josh Austin:

It's the weirdest thing. I don't like talking on the phone. I do everything I can to avoid talking on the phone, and like, oh, here's a social media app, where you have to go on and voice talk with people, but other people can swoop in and listen to it. I don't get it yet. But you could find me on there, although I don't know how to answer anything on there. But yeah, Instagram is probably the best. I'm on Facebook, obviously, if you just search my name, or email, [email protected], or icloud.com goes to the same place. Anybody that has any questions, let me know. I'd be happy to help.

Kiera Dent:

I love it, Josh. Well, thank you so much. Guys, truly take our initiative. This is why we're podcasting again too, to just bring it back up. I think we've gone through a lot in 2020, and I think it's time to face that. Whether it was 2020 or years before or now, let's start getting that mental health, strengthen that muscle. All of us have it, let's start working on that as well.

Kiera Dent:

As always, Dental A Team listeners, thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera Dent:

All right, Dental A Team listeners, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening, and if you loved today's podcast, go leave us a review. It takes you five seconds and your review helps more offices, more practices, more team members, just like you find out about the Dental A Team. Thank you guys so much for being part of my Dental A Team family.