[audio-clammr mp3="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/podcastmp3/passionate+dentist_understanding.mp3"]In this episode we discuss:

–  Catching up from last time we spoke

– S.M.a.R.T – Stress Management and Resiliency Training – seminars and coaching

– Dealing with and understanding stress in the workplace

What is S.M.a.R.T?

Stress Management and Resiliency Training.  This is really a common term within my industry where it identifies the daily stress that you have in your life, and how you can bounce back from those stress triggers easier and more effectively. There are three steps to stress less.

– Know

– Assess

– Reduce your stress

There are three types of stress under the “Know” phase. You can not change what you don’t acknowledge.

1.     The first kind of stress is situational stress and that is about 80 to 90% percent of most stress that people deal with within their life.  It’s the most common form of stress. These stress triggers usually have a start and a stopping point. They have a beginning and an end. Some examples are difficult patients, difficult team members, money, and relationships. Now just because these stresses are the most common doesn’t mean that they are easy to manage or that there aren’t difficult decisions that need to be made in order to manage that stress.

2.     The second form of stress is psychological stress. The key thing to identify when dealing with stress is to know where it comes from. For example, maybe someone has a fear of working with certain types of personalities, or there is a confidence issue. Psychological stress is 100% self-induced. It’s the way that we perceive and think, that we interpret as feelings, and that is psychological stress. So many dentists will say that their stress comes from a difficult patient and so they decide that they don’t want to see certain types of patients because they think its the patient’s fault. When really that patient is not what is causing the stress. The stress is what the dentist is telling themselves about that patient. So I work with clients to help find what these stress triggers are and where they are coming from.

3.     The third type of stress is physiological stress. There comes a point with any good thing, where it is not effective. Working out more than four days a week, you are putting more stress on your body. Some people tell me that they do all these different things to cope with stress, but sometimes doing too much of that one thing can cause the same stress as situational or psychological stress.

The brain does not interpret one stress from another. It’s all the same response. The reason that knowing your stress is important is that the coping method for dealing with one type of stress is vastly different from another type of stress.

How do I find out what is stressing me out? How do I determine what type of stress I have?

Let’s talk about the second step, “Assess.” The purpose of assessing your stress is knowing how stressed out you are and knowing how damaging it is. I have multiple assessments on my website JenButlerpartners.com where you can find out what type of stress you are dealing with and what might be causing it.

The reason that assessing your stress is important, and I will relate it to periodontal disease, so when a new patient comes in and sits in the chair, the very first thing the dentist does is start assessing the condition. Its the same step in determining the levels of stress and urgency and importance. We take these assessments so that when we get to the next step, we can determine what methods we need to use, what area of our stress will these coping methods affect, and how much of a certain coping method we need to deal with the stress.

So what happens once you figure this out? How does this continue?

That’s what the third step is for “Reduce your stress.” I work with practitioners so 90% of my clients are in the dental field. No matter what position you are in a dental practice, it’s not easy. You have got to want to be in the field to work in dentistry and I love that. What I do, is create an S.M.a.R.T. strategic plan and we break down what stresses you out, what triggers it, and determining what coping methods will work. We dive deep and we don’t approach it superficially. The plan breaks down your stress to where we can identify, isolate, and help eliminate your stress.